Interview Eric Lovold of The Alarmists

In their short time on the Twin Cities music scene, indie-rockers The Alarmists have weathered enough highs and lows to rival any grizzled veterans. After winning instant acclaim for its 2006 debut EP A Detail of Soldiers, which blended Spoon’s taut melodicism with deeply reverent nods to The Beatles, the fresh-faced quintet found itself on the cover of City Pages and selling out venues all over town. Fast-forward two years, however, and the group was in limbo, struggling to find the right formula for its third disc, with lead singer Eric Lovold unhappy with recording sessions done with Andrew Lynch, the big-name producer behind Earlimart and Imperial Teen. Rather than continue floundering, Lovold took hold of the ship, changed up the band’s lineup, and re-recorded the album on his own terms at his home studio. The result, released in June, is The Overhead Left, easily the strongest album of the band’s still-promising career. Prior to The Alarmists' 7th St. Entry show on Aug. 14, Lovold talked to The A.V. Club about loving classic rock, learning hard lessons, and keeping focused on the music.

The A.V. Club: Much of the lyrical content on The Overhead Left centers on dissolving relationships and people in transition. Considering the behind-the-scenes drama, how much of Overhead is art imitating life?

Eric Lovold: It’s a bit of both. A lot of the lyrics were written before those things happened, and some came after. It’s a very transitional record in my mind: I see it as the third part of a trilogy, and they all make sense together. So while it’s connected to our past work, it also sets us up to do something different in the future. We’re feeling pretty good about the record as a bookend to that phase of our career.

AVC: The Overhead Left feels like a direct reaction to its predecessor, The Ghost And The Hired Gun. It’s much shorter, and smaller in scope in terms of the instrumentation. Why did you scale things back?

EL: At the time, we were excited to make The Ghost And The Hired Gun the way it was. We took all the songs to these crazy high levels and gave everything a pretty epic and big sound. There are things I would probably change in retrospect, but I don’t have any regrets. Having that experience allowed us to be more comfortable scaling things back this time, refocusing on littler parts, writing shorter songs. The reality is, we’re always going to write songs in a couple of similar veins, so where you can really differentiate is in presentation and production. A Detail Of Soldiers and Ghost were on opposite ends of the spectrum, and I think this record takes elements of both, but is ultimately quite different than either. I’d rather not repeat myself.

AVC: Did you take away any insights from the aborted initial recording sessions for the album?

EL: It was frustrating, but it was all part of the process. I had no way of knowing that it wasn’t going to work out. Ultimately I’m glad it all happened, as it taught me a lot about my values and what I really care about when it comes to making music. The reality is, it’s a lot of money to work with an outside producer if you’re working without label support. When I wasn’t happy with the initial sessions, I just had to put things in perspective on a life level. It made more sense to invest back into my home studio and produce the record ourselves. They won’t be perfect records, perhaps, but at the scale we’re on, it didn’t make sense to spend $8,000 to record with someone else for six days.

AVC: How have your goals for the band changed since you started out?  

EL: I was poised to go to law school this fall and actually ended up deferring because I’m having too much fun making music right now. The goals haven’t really changed. I want to keep pursuing it, keep improving. Everyone in the band wants to tour soon and hopefully the stars will align where that’s something that can happen. The reality is, you have to work very hard to get the right promotion, the right booking. Look at Solid Gold. That’s a band that has worked very hard to make things happen and now they’re starting to reap some of the rewards, but the average person doesn’t know how hard they’ve been busting their ass behind the curtain. Unfortunately, in a lot of the indie-music scene, people get excited about you and you’re the cool thing for a while, and then people move on. It’s frustrating for me if people want to focus on our lineup change and assume I’m some kind of asshole. I’d rather they focused on the fact that the band as it exists right now is really happy and having a good time making music. But I understand that people want a story and like concentrating on drama. That’s fine, but it’s not my focus. I care about the music and working toward the next project. We’re already demoing the next record, and I’m excited with the direction it’s headed. It’s much more of a revved-up rock sound than we’ve ever had in the past.