When you listen to Enemies Like This, the latest album from Brooklyn-based band Radio 4, one thing is made abundantly clear: you cannot pin them down. With songs that feature everything from reggae beats to congas (“As Far As The Eye Can See”), and recorded in the Salt Mines in the infamous artistic well that is Dumbo, Brooklyn, Radio 4’s latest album contains all of the impact of a searing unforgettable live show, neatly packaged into ten songs that have a sound that is eerily reminiscent of early 1980s U2.
As they gear up for their world tour in support of Enemies Like This, JIVE Magazine spoke to Radio 4 singer and bassist Anthony Roman about the upsides of being a record store proprietor, the importance of defining your sound and the subtle power of band rehearsal.
JIVE Magazine (JM): You own your own record store in Brooklyn, Somethin’ Else. What’s it like to own your own record store?
Anthony Roman (AR): It’s a lot of fun. We don’t carry that much stuff so it’s a small selection. We carry around 500 hundred, 700 CDs or something and then a bunch of vinyl. We try to carry things that we think are, not necessarily everything that we love, but that we think are relevant or important to be in stores.
JM: How do you make those kinds of determinations?
AR: I don’t know. (pause) For instance, the Red Hot Chili Peppers album that came out, we didn’t get any of those.
JM: So you tend to stay away from stuff that Best Buy would normally carry.
AR: We tend to stay away from stuff that we think is maybe, damaging to the culture.
JM: How many times a day do you get High Fidelity quoted at you?
AR: Quite a bit, but that movie’s very close to home. Sometimes we’ll put up a sign in the window that says, “We do not have the new U2.”
JM: Although you’re originally from Long Island, you’ve lived in Brooklyn for many years. What is it about Brooklyn that defines and influences your sound?
AR: That’s a tricky question. I don’t know, it’s something that you can’t maybe recognize or that’s hard to describe, you know, one of those things that’s not tangible but just exists. I think it’s maybe a vibe or an attitude. I don’t know if there is necessarily [a Brooklyn sound] but…
JM: You know it when you hear it…
AR: Yeah, I do. There are a lot of bands and a lot of writers that come from here. A lot of people that are involved in music and movies and the arts or journalists tend to live there and so it’s definitely like a vibe that comes from that.
JM: Where does your name, Radio 4, come from?
AR: It comes from a Public Image Ltd. (PiL) song, their second record [Metal Box]. We thought that that band summed up what we thought was interesting about music and especially post-punk. We’re all really into reggae and disco and dance music, and we’re all really into punk music. So those bands, they did all of those things, in a kind of rock n’ roll format. We thought their aesthetic was something that we were trying to embrace and bring into our group. But they’re a bit more abrasive than we are; we’re a little softer, more melodic.
JM: You wanted to capture a live sound on your album…that’s interesting because so many times albums sound very polished, you can always tell who the producer was. Why was capturing that live sound so important to you?
AR: At the risk of sounding kind of self-involved, we were just really happy with the way that things were sounding during rehearsals. So we were all just thinking, “You know, this sounds about right,” and made a couple of very quick demos and obviously listened to them ourselves and then turned them into the label and we asked them, “Well, what do you think of this?” And they said that it sounded about right. So I guess, being a band for a certain amount of time, we knew the certain things that we wanted to do and what we didn’t want to do, and the demo’s seemed to have the feel that we wanted. So we decided to record them like we did the demos cause we did the demos all in one take.
JM: You guys rehearsed for a couple of months though…
AR: Yeah, we rehearsed a lot for this record and we don’t normally rehearse that much. It’s always like one of those things that when you start out as a band you rehearse all the time cause you’re so excited. Then you put out a record and you start going on tour and you come home from touring and nobody wants to rehearse. Then you make a record that you don’t really rehearse that much for and you’re like, “Oh, I liked it better when we rehearsed.”
JM: Is there a notable difference in the sound because of rehearsing? Do you see the difference?
AR: Yeah, I do. I don’t know if anybody else does.
JM: The rest of the band might disagree?
AR: Most people that know the band pretty well or are friends of ours say, “You know, you guys sound like you’re really playing,” and we were. We became very close knit, in the time leading up to recording the record. Actually it’s funny, while I’ve been on the phone with you two members of the band have called already. We do hang out a lot together. We felt there was a certain energy and vibe coming from us being in a room together so we tried our best to get that on tape.
JM: You’ve played throughout the States and across Europe, what’s the reception like? Is there a difference—touring in Europe and touring here in the States?
AR: I think it’s a bit better over there. We’ve always done better over there for some reason. Once our records started getting released in the UK we went over there and it went a lot better. I don’t really know why. A lot of our friends do better over there.
JM: What’s the most surprising thing about touring?
AR: It’s always surprising to me when people show up at the shows. (laughs) But definitely, the interaction that you get out of different people in different countries is always interesting, and always strange. That can be really surprising—the way people view your band or view people from New York or Americans.
JM: How so?
AR: We were on tour right when the war started, we were in Europe, and people were really coming down on us about it, like we had something to do with [the war]. But we realized that we were probably some of the only Americans that they come across and they want to vent at somebody.
JM: How did you come to sign with Astralwerks?
AR: We made a record called Gotham and a friend of ours had this label called Gern Blandsten that we were on, we recorded that for him and somehow it got in the hands of Errol [Kolosine] who runs Astralwerks and he was like, “Oh, I might want to put this out.” It didn’t work out for that record so we ended up staying with Gern Blandsten, for a variety of reasons, and then we ended up being on City Slang in Europe, which was part of EMI, and they were like, “Well, why don’t we try and make this like an EMI record and maybe Astralwerks will put it out.” And we thought that maybe they would because they were interested in the last one. So we did that. Since then City Slang has become a part of V2 so we just stayed with Astralwerks. So it’s become a kind of long and interesting relationship. It changes every year actually. But I hope that everything stays at Astralwerks for as long as possible.
JM: In listening to the album, there isn’t really a way to peg it down and say, ‘Oh it’s this kind of album or this kind of sound.’ When you went in to record it, did you go in with any kind of particular theme in mind? Is that how it usually works for you or do you just kind of see how it goes?
AR: That’s how it worked in the past. This time we actually just said, ‘Let’s try to record these songs.” We tried to not think about anything else as far as a style or other influences or anything.
JM: How come?
AR: Again, I guess because we’ve been around a while. We felt we had an identity that was strong enough to be our own thing. Because when you first start out it’s kind of hard to form your own identity or sound, so you’re always thinking, ‘Oh, it sounds a little bit like this,’ but we tried to now make it like, ‘It sounds like Radio 4.’
JM: So it was a conscious decision?
AR: For me, I don’t know if anybody else in the band would say that. Who knows what they think. I’ll ask them when I call them back.
JM: Are there any influences that you’ll admit to thinking about when you were recording this album?
AR: Not really when we were recording but they’ve always been there from the beginning. We’ve always been into post-punk, we’ve always liked the Clash and we’ve always liked Jamaican music and reggae and Afro-beat. So we try to get it all in there. But we have a lot of influences.
JM: Has your perception changed through the years, having this as your job? What’s changed?
AR: Being able to enjoy the fact that you are able to do this and it is what you do, being able to accept that…generally for a while you think, ‘Well, it’s this other thing that I do.’ And then all of a sudden it actually becomes what you really do and it’s nice to be in that position, it is what you do everyday.
JM: Are you still surprised by it?
AR: I don’t get surprised by that many things. I’m comfortable with it and happy about it. It’s too gradual to be surprised. It’s like if someone gave me a dollar everyday and at the end of the year you had 365 dollars. It wouldn’t be surprising cause you could see it happening the whole time. It’s like watching your hair grow longer—it just keeps happening until you have long hair.
