The Chime School Interview
Shapeshifting from one eager entity to the next, some folks were made to channel the cosmic contents of the past as a result of not necessarily conquering the characters they admire, but instead, projecting the ultimate cultural connection of the ghosts that once roamed the creative consciousness of what seemed like yesterday since they graced the globe. Maybe that’s because we’re constantly repeating the past for better or for worse. In this case, Bay Area-based musician, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Andy Pastalaniec has been celebrating those sonic specifics for the better part of two decades with groups and projects such as Cruel Summer, Pink Films, Seablite, and his most recent band Chime School. Blending the notorious narrative of psych pop, garage rock, and the dreaminess of groups like the Pastels, Black Tambourine, and Primal Scream, to name a few, before branching into his unique universe of sound and tonal texture.
Photo courtesy of the artist/Slumberland
Are you originally from the Bay Area? When did you first begin to connect with music, and was this relevant to your household growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences during your formative years, and how quickly did the gap from learning to play to wanting to perform and record music happen for you?
I’m originally from San Diego, North County near Carlsbad/Encinitas. I had my first truly formative experiences after moving to northern California in my late teens to go to UC Davis for college, where I got involved at the college radio station, KDVS. I started doing a radio show, digging into their vast library, and also learned to mic up bands and work a soundboard, becoming one of the go-to sound engineers for bands coming through town to play on the air. I think some of the first artists I ever worked with were Charalambides, Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate), and Magik Markers, so not a bad way to get started at 19 years old! We’d get pretty experimental with on-air broadcast performances, sometimes using the long hallway outside the station as a massive reverb chamber late in the night, or the time we had guitarist Jack Rose and Marissa Nadler broadcast live from a decommissioned bomb shelter some friends discovered in the backyard of the house they rented. Crazy sounds! Most of my roommates worked at the radio station too, and we booked hundreds of shows during those years, around 2004-2008. The bands would often stay at our house as well, so I met musicians around the world in those years. It was incredibly formative not only musically but also seeing what it was like in a band, underground, and DIY culture generally.
Photo: nematode
I first became aware of your music while working at Folk Yeah! and dug the group’s eagerness to capture and reimagine the evolutions of the past, in particular the spirit of the 1960s. What elements of the past, present, and future influence your creative drive the most, would you say?
It started with a love of 1960s pop music, and getting into 60s guitar bands, British and American, girl groups, and baroque pop. Especially the way all those records sounded. Eventually, I got into power pop via Big Star and a myriad of other groups who had their 70s take on classic 60s stuff. When I first discovered indie pop, I saw it through the lens of punk or just as its own thing altogether. But then I started learning about some of the groups that were more explicitly 60s-inspired, like the Pastels covering “Different Drum,” or Black Tambourine covering “Can’t Explain”, and started to see that even the groups that sounded more shambolic or punk at first were drawing on that era too. The first time I heard “Gentle Tuesday” by Primal Scream was a turning point. That was the huge sound I heard when I thought of The Byrds, that they never quite reached sonically. The first time I heard Teenage Fanclub was similar; it was like an updated version of Big Star. Then I just went down the rabbit hole in many different directions. In the 80s and 90s, indie groups (many of them British) seemed to bring that music into the modern era in a way that helped me chart a course for writing my music.
Branching out from bands such as Cruel Summer, Pink Films, and Seablite, how did Chime School initially come about? Tell me about the early days, while navigating the Pandemic and everything that would follow. The band quickly released its self-titled debut in 2021. What was the overall process of writing and recording this album? As a producer, musician, and multi-instrumentalist, how did you approach Chime School compared to previous groups and projects in the past?
Before Chime School, I only ever played drums in bands. Pink Films was closest to what Chime School sounds like. My bandmate Tim Tinderholt and I would record a lot on a Tascam 388, an 8-track analog reel-to-reel machine. He had a 12-string guitar and would write 2-3 minute pop songs with an articulate and simple 12-string guitar riff at the center. That band played out a lot but only released two 7”s. Listen to “Wrong Direction” or “Do You Recognize Me” for an idea of the direction I’d move in later. That group split up in 2013, and Tim realized more of his ideas under Odd Hope, which released a great record in 2015 on the Fruits and Flowers label. In 2016, my girlfriend bought me a Tascam 4-track cassette machine as a Christmas gift, and that’s when I sat down and started to force myself to write songs. I got a cheap 12-string guitar and made a bunch of 4-track demos in the vein of Pink Films, but my influences were starting to outpace the more lo-fi analog realm. I eventually moved over to recording on the computer, where I could get more creative using drum machines with more tracks. I started recording the self-titled album around 2019, finishing it during the lockdowns in 2020. I often talk about how being a songwriter who can play the drums is like having a secret weapon. There’s something about being able to play every instrument in a ‘rock band’ lineup that helps with the writing and arranging. It’s incredibly liberating to have the ability to record and play everything, not out of a sense of control, but because you can take all the time in the world to experiment and fail and work things out without wasting anyone else’s time. That’s what drove Chime School to start as a solo project.
Photo: Kittie K
Jumping ahead to the band’s most recent effort entitled “The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hote,” I’d love to know some of the backstories to songs like “Give Your Heart Away,” “Points Of Light,” “Desperate Days,” and “Words You Say.”
“Give Your Heart Away” is one of my favorite songs, and it came together as a happy accident. I was working on something in the home studio when Nick from the Umbrellas randomly texted me to share some footage he found online of Harvey Williams and Julian Henry performing “You Didn’t Love Me Then” at the Sarah Records Christmas Party in 1991– just the two of them on acoustic guitars. For some reason, the chord progression grabbed me in a particular way that day, and the verse and chorus of “Give Your Heart Away” came together on the spot. Very grateful to Nick for randomly texting me that day! Photography is another medium I’ve spent a lot of time on and informs a bit of what I do musically. The song is ‘framed’ by an out-of-time intro and outro; there’s a lyric about a camera lens opening to another time and place; and generally the song is meant to capture a moment in time, perhaps in one’s younger years, when one might spend a bit too much directionless time out and about in the bars at night. Not necessarily autobiographical (I’ve never had bleached hair), but I think it’s something most of us can relate to. “Points of Light” was the last song I recorded for Paisley Hotel, and it was deliberately recorded as an ‘ender.’ I wrote the skeleton in early 2020, but never quite figured out what kind of song it was. When I dug it out for the Paisley Hotel, I knew I wanted to slow it down and make it more dramatic.
Photo: nematode
I went through countless influences looking for inspiration before landing on a palette on the spacier end of Field Mice/Northern Picture Library, with a nod to “Is This Music” from Teenage Fanclub’s “Bandwagoneque”, one of the all-time great album enders. Rarely do I have specific arrangements or instrumental interludes planned ahead of recording; it’s usually like ‘solo here’ or intro here.’ A lot of the creativity comes during the recording process. I recall pushing myself to compose the distorted, harmonizing guitar solos and acoustic interlude on “Points of Light,” striving for the perfect crescendo to conclude the record and the extremely cathartic feeling when I finally nailed it! “Desperate Days” is about the changing face of San Francisco. There are references to the streets of houses painted gray; my favorite long-gone dive bar, The Attic; and the Castro Theatre, one of my favorite places on earth, that’s sadly being transformed from a world-class historic movie palace into another private event and concert venue. I’ll never forget the feeling of heading to the Castro with friends or (especially) alone, with a brown bag of Anchor Steam and a slice of pizza, some of my most cherished memories of San Francisco. Musically, I was really into The Tubs’ 2023 full-length when I was recording it, and also aiming for the loud/quiet verse/chorus of one of my favorite Field Mice songs. As for “Words You Say,” my partner was listening to The Pastels’ “Illumination” album. Through the walls, I heard the faint intro of “The Hits Hurt.” I went downstairs, and “Words You Say” came from nowhere. I arranged and recorded it as a mellow acoustic interlude between louder moments on the record. When we play it live, we do a rendition that’s inspired by “Everything Flows” by Teenage Fanclub, which is a fun way to re-interpret it.
Have any plans for the summer? Is there anything else you would like to share further with the readers?
Yes! We have two local shows coming up, the first on Friday, June 20th, at Bottom of the Hill with our friends The Telephone Numbers, and a new group called Remedy & Wren (that features Alicia Vanden Heuvel from the Aislers Set and Tony Molina). Then on Thursday, July 31st, we’re playing at the Knockout with an all-girl punk/powerpop group from Paris, France called Alvilda, who are on their first US tour. They released a great debut record last year, so I’m looking forward to it. Aside from that, we are doing a second UK tour in July that will end with an appearance at the Glas-Goes Pop festival, where we’ll be playing with several great bands, including legends The Pastels and Comet Gain, among others. We’re excited for that too!
