Boy in Static “My approach is to take things and exaggerate them.”

Jumping from dreamy shoegaze to upbeat, crisp pop is one of the most radical and possibly dooming shifts a band could make. For Alexander Chen, the founder and songwriter of Boy In Static, the jump came easily. His latest album, Candy Cigarette, puts clever lyrics and viola in the forefront of synths, glockenspiels, and all manner of childlike sensibilities.

I talked with Alexander before his San Francisco set in May. He's fallen in love with the Bay Area and shared his insight on songwriting as storytelling, combining the ancient and the cutting-edge, and pirating music.

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Several of the songs on this album directly reference California and in particular San Francisco. What fascinates you about the city?

I just moved out here in 2008, and when I arrived, I became transfixed with all the stories the city has to tell. “Young San Francisco” is about a drive-by shooting that happened outside an apartment that my girlfriend was subletting. She said that there had been this shooting at night, and the next morning in the same spot there was a kid's birthday party. They had one of those giant jump houses just hours after the police lines and everything had been cleared out. That's the feel I wanted for the song – there was a tragedy, but it was gone by morning and no one knew. We fell in love with the Bay Area but noticed that there's something creepy about it sometimes as well.

Do you ever feel like telling these stories is a way for you to cope with that creepiness?

It is very personal. I don't think my life is interesting enough to just tell stories. I can't pull off telling people about my day in a funny way. My approach is to take things and exaggerate them or to embed them with fictional things and create a new character that's a hybrid of me and someone else. It still retains the personal quality, but it's not just about me.

Especially in the song “Wartime Bachelor,” many of the lyrics include dry wit. Were you trying to be funny?

I wrote that song a while ago when I was cooking for myself, and I was a terrible cook. I made a dish that was just a pile of potatoes, really tasteless, and as a joke I emailed it to my girlfriend and titled the dish “Wartime Bachelor.” It turned into a story of the one guy who didn't get sent to war. The playful, whimsical stuff is what I'm interested in now. I write about what's going on in my life, and my albums change year-to-year because of it.

This album has much more clarity in the production than your first two. Did you purposefully pursue that idea with this record?

It was very conscious. I focused more on the lyrics and wanted them to be at the forefront and to be more present. We toured a lot between this album and the last, and a lot of the clubs were loud and I had to learn to throw my voice. That combined with wanting the lyrics to be more upfront meant that everything else needed to crystallize around the vocals. The production style fit the fact that I had become more okay with pop songs, with the verse-chrorus-verse feel.

Is this a direction you think you'll keep developing?

I'm not totally sure, but I like this sound. The things I've been writing lately are continuing on this path, especially in focusing on the lyrics. I'm feeling more comfortable knowing which instruments to pick up, so I'm creating a new process – I've always written the music first and lyrics second, but I'm starting to flip it so I can do more storytelling.

What do you like about using a very traditional instrument, the viola, along with very modern musical notions like synthesizers in your songs?

It's a very conscious thing. I found it fascinating to juxtapose this very ancient instrument that I have been practicing since elementary school with a very new drumming style that Kenji (Ross, the other half of Boy in Static) taught himself very quickly. Fitting those two things together really showed how we grew up in a time when we have access to everything – tons of technology, you can sample anything you want, learn any instrument you want. We like the mashup of the old and the new.

Other artists, like Andrew Bird and Final Fantasy, also use both the violin and more modern technology. Do you feel like there's a reason audiences are receptive to the combination?

I think people enjoy violin because it's a very quirky instrument. It's sort of weepy and sentimental, and rock music at its core is very masculine and angsty, so to use violin and viola over rock music is a very interesting twist. With the synth or looping and things like that, it creates an atmosphere that is interesting to a lot of people.

Since you made the first two albums by yourself, how has it been transitioning into working with someone else on the songwriting process?

It's been fantastic, though gradual – Kenji has always been part of the touring band. We'd work out things in really weird places. We were on tour with Lymbyc System in Japan, and Kenji and I would sit in the back of the bus with an iPod and work on things.

[Mike Bell of Lymbyc System, playing at this show with Her Space Holiday, interjects]

Mike Bell: Wait, wait, there is more to this! There were way too many people to fit in the van, so instead of getting us a bigger van, our tour manager just threw some folding chairs in the back. It seemed like a lot of the time; you and me would be sitting back there having awesome conversations, but every time there was a sharp turn, we had to hold on really hard or we'd fall out of the chairs. It was high-liability touring.

Alexander: And a lot of the time I'd be working on a song back there, and sometimes it would have to be backstage before we went on. We fit it in when we could.

Did that impromptu writing have an effect on the record?

Not really, but having a second person definitely did. It let me be more brash with recording, because with another opinion, you can't agonize as much over what to keep or cut. Kenji was always there to say, “Let it go, it sounds fine, let's move on” or to say, “Cut it, that's terrible!” It helped me be more spontaneous and a little more daring with songwriting. Our dynamic works really well.

You used some very inventive ways to promote the album on the internet. Why did you develop that specifically?

We were trying to promote the album in ways that were more interesting, and I think my favorite is the game we created. We wanted to get people to play the game and figured we'd hold the songs for ransom, basically. We're just trying to find new ways to get music out to people.

Do you feel the need to combat the supposed negative effects of the internet on music?

I don't feel like it's combating more than complementing it. I've downloaded songs, but if I came across a band who suggested instead to play a fun game that's equally easy to access as a downloading website, I'd be interested to try out something new. We want to give a nice alternative, but not fight anything. I'm all for downloading – I'd rather have 100 new people download and enjoy the album than lose everyone from being closed-minded about it.

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