In early July, Time Thieves released their debut full-length, titled Space. We spoke with singer/guitarist Jonathan Pool and drummer Mike Oberlin and discussed how the band formed. Their lineup also includes bassist/singer Annie Saunders, guitarist/singer Tim Reynolds and keyboardist/singer Lilly Choi. In addition, we talked about how the album was written and recorded, as well as what inspired some of its songs. Time Thieves incorporate indie pop and synth-driven melodies, along with subtle Chicago punk influences, to create a sound that’s both nostalgic and contemporary. The end result is a fun, consistent record that reflects the years the band spent perfecting these songs. Be sure to give it a listen at the end of the interview.
Bill – When and how did the band form?
Jonathan – In 2015, Mike and I were talking about some different pop bands that we both really liked and that was kind of it. We talked about starting a band at that point…
Mike – Yeah, you wanted to start a band that sounded like The Rentals and I had been listening to a lot of Grandaddy, and I think that actually really sums up our first couple songs right there.
Jonathan – Yeah, that’s it. That the whole impetus of the band, (laughs).
Mike – Jonathan and I have been close for a long time now and for some reason, our other bands played together, but we never had a band. We go on trips together all the time and stuff too. It was finally like, “Alright. You and me, let’s just do this and we’ll hang out.” Slowly but surely the band fleshed out to what it is now. Annie Saunders, who plays bass and does a lot of vocals, was a very good first addition. Tim Reynolds, who plays guitar, was right after that I believe. They happened to know each other already, so that was easy. And then Lilly Choi, who plays synth and does vocals, was last but certainly not least. Getting this lineup together took years and then right after we did, Annie had to move out west to Washington. Then we were using other local bassists when we had to for shows for a little bit there. I don’t know if we’ll do that too much anymore, but that’s basically where we’re at now.
Jonathan – The other thing too with all that is that at some point we realized, and this is probably true as you get older in bands, really the only way to hang out with friends is to be in a band with them, (laughs). If you’re working and you’re in a band or multiple bands, that’s pretty much all your time.
Mike – I would agree wholeheartedly.
Bill – Given that the band has been together for roughly five years at this point, when did you first begin writing songs for this album?
Mike – Right at the beginning. We pretty much had to use every song to get a full-length together, (laughs).
Jonathan – That’s totally true, because we weren’t trying to do a full-length right off the bat. I really just wanted to put out songs a la carte. Then later on, you and Tim both convinced me to do a proper record and that makes so much more sense to me now. But at the time, I just wanted to put songs out as we got them done and record with all our various friends who do production.
Mike – So we re-recorded all the songs and complied everything. Once we did that, all the songs really fit well together. I don’t think they did before because they sounded so different, but once we recorded them in the same circumstance, it actually came together really well.
Bill – That was going to be my next question. I wanted to ask what it was like recording with Joe Gac at Kildare Studios.
Mike – We’ve all worked with Joe for a long time. To put it lightly, it’s distracting. First off, it’s amazing. But secondly, I think everyone has their own kind of survival mode or just knows what they have to get done and then the party can begin. As opposed to just starting off that way and never getting anything done. So, we have a blast with Joe. I would say that’s the one thing is that we have to limit how much of a blast we’re having in order to actually get something done.
Jonathan – It’s actually hard because it’s so easy. You don’t realize that you’ve been in the studio for 12 hours and you’ve barely gotten anything done, because you were just hanging out.
Mike – Joe’s gotten extremely proficient these days though, as far as I’m concerned. The drums were almost mixed by the time we were recording the last couple songs. I could just hear them getting better in my headphones as I was recording. He’s just so quick. He’s amazing to work with. Anytime that any band I’m in tries to record somewhere else it’s just like, “Ah, we should’ve gone with Joe.”
Bill – That’s awesome. When you go back and listen to the record now, what aspects of the recording do you like best?
Jonathan – That’s what I was going to say too, because we did the vocals with Luke McNeill, (The Copyrights) at Capitol City Recording in Springfield, IL. So those two worlds were completely different, as far as how the music was recorded and how Luke approaches vocals. So, hearing it now, it’s so huge musically and then there’s just so much vocally.
Mike – I think for me it’s the vocals. I think everyone is kind of lonely right now, so when I listen to it, especially in the past couple months, I just miss everyone in the band. I think it goes all the way back to what Jonathan said before about getting older and being in a band. It’s just kind of like these are the people that I want to see on a regular basis. Outside of my family, these are the only people I see on a regular basis. So, my favorite part about it all is just how good it makes me feel to know how much I really love all these people that I was able to do this with.
Bill – That’s really cool. I wanted to ask about a couple of the songs in particular. “Flicker of Light” is one of my favorite songs on the album. How exactly did that one come together?
Jonathan – My friend Scott Witt wrote that song and he lives in Portland now. He’s been a friend of mine for years and I used to live in north Texas and know him from there. He’s just one of these genius songwriters who’s not usually in any active bands, but he just writes tons and tons of songs. He records them and they just live wherever they live. I happen to have pretty much all of his recordings because I think I’m his biggest fan. That song was written in 1999 and it’s just been sitting there. I bought it from him for a bottle of Mellow Corn whiskey, (laughs).
Mike – I didn’t know that until recently, but Scott has kind of been a muse for a lot of the songs. He probably would’ve been in the band if he lived around here at any point. I think we demoed that song really quickly and then Annie was in town for something and she was able to do her parts. That song is one of my favorites too.
Jonathan – I think we discussed for a while putting that song at the very front of the record, which we ultimately decided on. I think it was a good choice because if you don’t like that song, you’re probably not gonna like any of the other ones.
Mike – It basically sums us up in about two minutes or so.
Bill – That makes sense. I think it definitely sets the tone and gives the listener an idea of what’s to come. “Road” is another song that really stands out when you first listen to the record. What inspired its creation?
Jonathan – I remember I wrote the very end of that song first and then wrote around that part.
Mike – That was the first hard song we did for me to play. It’s not a standard beat. It’s more of a swing beat and that’s not usually how I play. So that took a second and I was just trying to play easy drums in this band. I think I just wanted to hang out with Jonathan and drink a bunch of beers. That song helped me to realize that it was actually going to be a thing. We got like six good songs going really quick. We tried to just get enough to play a show and then we found whoever wanted to play.
Jonathan – It was more like my dream band kind of thing. I wanted to find all the people where I really like their band, I really like how well they play, they can cover up my flubs…
Mike – That’s Jonathan’s favorite thing to do is to try and have himself buried in his own music. He’s the conductor, (laughs).
Bill – It’s interesting to hear you say that, because to me the best bands are the ones where the various musicians know their part and they’re okay going in the background sometimes to let other members shine. As opposed to a lot of bands, who want to show off at all times. It’s not often that you hear people in bands say they’re comfortable taking a back seat. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why the songs came together how they did.
Mike – Absolutely.
Jonathan – I think because we’re all older too and we’ve all been in basically punk bands for our whole lives, where you’re always firing on all cylinders. These songs are fun to play live because they’re super-easy. They’re not fast and there’s not a lot of changes. We can hang out and have four beers before we play and it’s not going to be a problem.
Mike – One hundred percent. Maybe even six, (laughs). It would just sound silly though if I was back there like Keith Moon on the drums. It’s honestly changed how I listen to drummers. It is absolutely a skill to play pop or catchy music and not overdo it. I like the honest approach that I think the record really gets across pretty well.
Bill – Tell me about the video that you made for the song “TWKR.”
Mike – I would just like to start by saying that Jonathan just poured himself into the making of that video. I don’t have a whole lot of time, but if I did, I would’ve absolutely helped him out with it. I’ll let Jonathan explain it, but I just want him to know and everyone else too that I appreciate him going into almost madness for these videos that he’s done.
Jonathan – No, it was actual madness, (laughs). “TWKR” was all done in quarantine and I had been kind of been obsessed with the idea of a Goldberg machine for years. It was so dumb. It was literally like, “How can I make this garbage knock other garbage over?” It was all stuff from my basement that I hadn’t cleaned since we moved, eight months earlier. Long story short, I just spent the first two months of quarantine going to work, coming home and then stacking rubber balls and wood and tape next to each other until it finally made one thing that fell down all at once. The other half of that video is our friend Kyle, who has been in all of our other videos, and we just kind of continued the storyline that has an arc throughout all four of the videos that we’ve put out for this record. There’s a line through it, I don’t know that anyone knows or cares, but there is a story there if you want to find it.
Bill – We’ll leave it up to the viewers to see if they can uncover it, (laughs). On a different note, how did you end up partnering with Anxious and Angry for the album’s release?
Jonathan – I’m good friends with Ryan Young, (Anxious and Angry owner, Off with Their Heads singer/guitarist) and we work together a lot because we’re both screen printers. Our bands have crossed paths over the years and we’ve all been in this punk scene for around 20 years. I sent him the record just so he could check it out. I wasn’t scouting it for release or anything. At that point, it was about two weeks before quarantine started.
Mike – It was definitely a weird time and there was a lot of uncertainty. We were thrilled that he wanted to put it out, but obviously there wasn’t anything we could do in terms of playing shows. But, by the time it came out, it felt appropriate with so many bands doing stuff on social media. Ryan had a little bit of foresight I think that he just wanted to do it and I’m really glad we went through with it.
Jonathan – Yeah, he has a very strong presence and voice to get stuff out there. And we’re all on the same page as far as how we think that band stuff should work. We cancelled a bunch of the promotions we had planned during some of the protesting and whatnot. I didn’t want to do it and I was feeling kind of weird about it. I reached out to Ryan and he was like, “Oh totally, we’re not doing any of that.” We postponed it for a week and came back to it when it was appropriate. It’s that kind of stuff that makes me want to work with him.
Bill – For sure. It would seem important to be on the same page with your label like that. When you think about the future of Time Thieves, what are some of the things that come to mind?
Mike – I miss everybody and I miss everything. We are certainly not trying to be the be-all and end-all band that if you had one band to listen to, this is the band. I appreciate being a part of something bigger. I think we all do. I just hope that we can remain a part of it and just keep it alive. I think everyone is itching like hell to go to a show right now and it’ll happen eventually. I just want it to be as prevalent as it was. I’m trying to think of all the venues and it was already kind of shrinking around here. I just hope that there are still places for us to be a part of what we were a part of. I really hope this has kind of stripped away a lot of layers from people, like ego and that, and just kind of made everyone realize what this was all about. For me it’s honestly just getting out there and being around everybody. It’s not about us in particular at all. I just want to go out and be a part of it again in any capacity.
Jonathan – There’s a lot of stuff that I want to do, just like practicing or recording demos, but there’s lots of uncertainty. I don’t know how realistic it is or not. I feel like everything is just kind of floating. I want to do all of it. It’s very weird, but we’re going to figure out a way to be progressing and be productive, regardless of the hellscape we find ourselves in, (laughs).
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