The Invincible Kids
Decider talks with singer Drew Everett Phillips about 9/11 conspiracy theories and writing songs about horny neuroscientists.
The Invincible Kids like it loud, something Drew Everett Phillips, the group’s lead singer, admits up front: “If you’re looking for whispered vocals and guitars played with a peacock’s feather, [we] might not be for you. We’re intimate like fist-pumps at a Springsteen concert circa 1988.” Supporting Phillips’ warning statement are the dense layers of sound that define TIK’s self-titled debut EP—police sirens, heavy distortion, and machine-gun drums. And while much of the music is conceived on a computer, The Invincible Kids have no trouble translating their studio trickery to a live stage, with Phillips just as comfortable putting his breath behind a microphone, megaphone, or saxophone. Completing the group are guitarist Stos Lymperopoulos and drummer Adam Plantenberg. Decider talked with Phillips about noise and conspiracy theories, and the band’s idea for an epic comic book that might combine the two. The band’s upcoming shows include Jan. 16 at 7th Street Entry with The Melismatics and Ghost in the Water, Jan. 30 at Beat Coffeehouse, and Jan. 31 at Triple Rock Social Club.
Decider: How did The Invincible Kids develop into a computer-heavy band?
Drew Everett Phillips: I guess it started my senior year of high school. My friends and I road-tripped to Chicago for the Triple Crown: Sasha & Digweed, The Chemical Brothers, [and] Paul Oakenfold was the opener! It blew my mind and really turned me on to the possibilities of electronic production in a stadium setting. I could tell you about our process for writing songs, but then we’d have to do the whole you’re-hanging-in-the-shed-out-back, suicide-note thing…
Decider: How did The Invincible Kids develop into a computer-heavy band?
Drew Everett Phillips: I guess it started my senior year of high school. My friends and I road-tripped to Chicago for the Triple Crown: Sasha & Digweed, The Chemical Brothers, [and] Paul Oakenfold was the opener! It blew my mind and really turned me on to the possibilities of electronic production in a stadium setting. I could tell you about our process for writing songs, but then we’d have to do the whole you’re-hanging-in-the-shed-out-back, suicide-note thing…
D: Is a laptop as a legitimate instrument?
DEP: What we do is slightly hip-hop. Except we spin disc drives instead of vinyl and we couldn’t scratch to save our lives. The Chemical Brothers use a laptop. Solid Gold uses one. Fuck yes, I think it’s a legitimate instrument.
D: Because you guys play harder music, the noisiness of it sometimes seems to find an emotional counterpart in anger or angst or frustration—are these the emotions you write from?
DEP: Our EP is an experiment in finding a large-scale emotional balance. “Continue” is about the sum of the love of a generation—not just the finite, real number of sexual experiences, but the metaphysical weight of creating the future. “Electric Instincts” is about having a brain and a dick, and then smoking a joint and having a sexy neuroscientist graduate student tell you about how your brain works whilst riding you like a wild animal. Explicit amazement… is that an emotion?
D: And then a few of the songs on the EP—especially the secret track—seem to have political origins.
DEP: As American musicians, it’s our civic duty to rock out when we’ve got evidence there are traitors in our midst. Hopefully the songs inspire people to dig a little. Since I’m an artist and I’m not actually trying to convince anyone, I get the luxury of being able to freak out about it. “The Brain Washington Mafia,” the secret track on our EP, was a song I wrote after my friend, Dustin Mugford, the documentary filmmaker of 9/11 Revisited: Were Explosives Used To Bring Down The Twin Towers?, disappeared without a trace and his film, his website, his Wikipedia page—started coming down off the internet.
D: Do you feel your music has been shaped by the current political climate?
DEP: We shoot for a timeless quality in most of the songs. And political songs are best rooted in their time, and are even better if they can actually make a change or define the struggle of that generation.
D: Are you happy with your balance of the personal and the political within your music?
DEP: My politics are ruining my life, and I try not to get heated about them at parties. Unless you’re talking about committing one, “conspiracy” as a concept is a real buzz-killer. Having seen the architect Richard Gage’s presentation about building collapses at Macalester College this summer, there is no doubt in my mind that the buildings on 9/11 were brought down by internal explosives—but I’m wary of writing a song about that.
D: So it seems really—in dealing with pan-generational emotions and conspiracies—TIK is interested in themes that are larger-than-life. I’ve heard rumors of a graphic novel counterpart to the band, that has its own epic mythology…
DEP: Yeah. We’re writing a saga called The Invincible Kids, which actually has nothing to do with the band. It existed before the group—we just thought the name was strong. The first installment of the TIK saga is called “Death to Kronak.” Kronak is a giant griffin with diamond eyes and laser vision that has been body-snatched by a nano-machine and is trying to eradicate the race of man and obtain the sphere of Ka’rin. We’re planning on publishing a series of hardcover graphic novels of the story and selling them exclusively at our shows. Maybe someday we’ll have a movie in theaters. That’s the dream, anyway.
DEP: What we do is slightly hip-hop. Except we spin disc drives instead of vinyl and we couldn’t scratch to save our lives. The Chemical Brothers use a laptop. Solid Gold uses one. Fuck yes, I think it’s a legitimate instrument.
D: Because you guys play harder music, the noisiness of it sometimes seems to find an emotional counterpart in anger or angst or frustration—are these the emotions you write from?
DEP: Our EP is an experiment in finding a large-scale emotional balance. “Continue” is about the sum of the love of a generation—not just the finite, real number of sexual experiences, but the metaphysical weight of creating the future. “Electric Instincts” is about having a brain and a dick, and then smoking a joint and having a sexy neuroscientist graduate student tell you about how your brain works whilst riding you like a wild animal. Explicit amazement… is that an emotion?
D: And then a few of the songs on the EP—especially the secret track—seem to have political origins.
DEP: As American musicians, it’s our civic duty to rock out when we’ve got evidence there are traitors in our midst. Hopefully the songs inspire people to dig a little. Since I’m an artist and I’m not actually trying to convince anyone, I get the luxury of being able to freak out about it. “The Brain Washington Mafia,” the secret track on our EP, was a song I wrote after my friend, Dustin Mugford, the documentary filmmaker of 9/11 Revisited: Were Explosives Used To Bring Down The Twin Towers?, disappeared without a trace and his film, his website, his Wikipedia page—started coming down off the internet.
D: Do you feel your music has been shaped by the current political climate?
DEP: We shoot for a timeless quality in most of the songs. And political songs are best rooted in their time, and are even better if they can actually make a change or define the struggle of that generation.
D: Are you happy with your balance of the personal and the political within your music?
DEP: My politics are ruining my life, and I try not to get heated about them at parties. Unless you’re talking about committing one, “conspiracy” as a concept is a real buzz-killer. Having seen the architect Richard Gage’s presentation about building collapses at Macalester College this summer, there is no doubt in my mind that the buildings on 9/11 were brought down by internal explosives—but I’m wary of writing a song about that.
D: So it seems really—in dealing with pan-generational emotions and conspiracies—TIK is interested in themes that are larger-than-life. I’ve heard rumors of a graphic novel counterpart to the band, that has its own epic mythology…
DEP: Yeah. We’re writing a saga called The Invincible Kids, which actually has nothing to do with the band. It existed before the group—we just thought the name was strong. The first installment of the TIK saga is called “Death to Kronak.” Kronak is a giant griffin with diamond eyes and laser vision that has been body-snatched by a nano-machine and is trying to eradicate the race of man and obtain the sphere of Ka’rin. We’re planning on publishing a series of hardcover graphic novels of the story and selling them exclusively at our shows. Maybe someday we’ll have a movie in theaters. That’s the dream, anyway.
