Smalltalk are a five-piece band based in Neptune City. Composed of members from several area bands -- Zak Kaplan (The Ratchets), Pete Steinkopf (The Bouncing Souls), Jamie Goldfarb (Miss TK and The Revenge), John Chladniček (Zero Zero), and Tara Jones (The Get Rights) -- Smalltalk have a sound that calls to mind bands like The Wedding Present, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and other British bands I was listening to as a teenager.
The band introduced themselves to the world back in April with a show at Asbury Park Yacht Club that also marked the release of their debut, self-titled EP. They've added a couple of shows to their schedule with dates set for New Brunswick's Court Tavern on June 20th and Asbury Lanes on July 18th. I decided it would be good to get you all in on the ground floor with Smalltalk, so I sent some questions to founding members Zak Kaplan and Jamie Goldfarb. Check out what they had to say about Smalltalk's origins and what they have planned for the future.
How did the five of you decide to come together to start Smalltalk? How long have you been making music together?
Jamie: Zak and I had been talking about doing a band like this for quite some time but could never make it happen. Two summers ago we decided to start a Cheap Trick cover band with our friend John.
Zak: Well, we only worked up one Cheap Trick cover, and some Elvis Costello, Plimsouls, a few others I guess. I’ve been in various other bands with both John and Jamie for over a decade and I think we tried doing a similar type of thing like five years ago, practiced a few times, then I moved to San Francisco and that was that.
Jamie: Anyway, eventually we started writing our own songs. We asked Tara to sing and play some percussion, and then recorded at Little Eden with Pete.
Zak: At some point during the recording, Pete asked us what we were going to do with this stuff, and I said we were still looking for another guitar player. He asked if he could join. I thought he was just being nice, but then he harassed me about it for the next couple weeks so I knew he was serious. It was a no brainer: We would have thought to ask him in the first place, except we have no brains.
You come from a pretty eclectic set of musical backgrounds -- from punk to straight ahead rock to synth pop. What drove you all to start exploring the sounds of late 80s dream pop and early shoegaze?
Jamie: [The Wedding Present's] David Gedge drove us to it.
Zak: Yeah, we are a Straight Gedge band.
"Kill Me Fast" is an example of a song, I think, where the more rock and roll background of some of the members shines through. Can you talk a bit about what everyone's experiences in other bands bring to Smalltalk?
Zak: I dunno. Things just happen as they happen. I don’t think that song is particularly any more or less rock and roll than any of the others. If anything, it’s a little spazzy, has tempo changes, but it does have this very Stones-y chord thrown in there. I dunno. I hate music.
James: Weirdly, those three songs seem so long ago, like a demo or something. They are, in fact, some of our older songs. I think Zak’s influence and my influence reign a little heavier with regards to those songs, whereas the new stuff reflects more our collective vibe. We're still new at it, learning each others tendencies and strengths. It’s a process.
I was 17 years old in 1987, driving around in my car, listening to FM106.3 here on the Jersey Shore. I hear a lot of those sounds -- particularly sounds that I associate with British bands of that time -- on the EP. Were you consciously trying to give the record a sense of time and place?
Zak: A pretty young lady came up to me after we played our first show. She probably wasn’t even born in 1987, and she said something to the effect that our music made her nostalgic for something that she never experienced in the first place. I thought that was a really nice compliment, but no, I don’t think it was a conscious effort to evoke a past time and place. I guess we just have a classic sound, which makes sense, since we only write instant classics.
Jamie: I thought it all sounded like the E Street Band until people kept mentioning the 80s and England.
I understand you already have a follow-up EP ready to go. Can you tell us anything about that? Are there plans for a full-length?
Jamie: The plan is to keep releasing 3 song EPs this year. Ideally, after this one, we’ll do two more and then collect them all on on LP at the end of the year. But it’s only June and Polygram or Geffen may want those songs for our major label debut release.
You have a couple of shows coming up: June 20th at The Court Tavern and July 18th at Asbury Lanes. What are your plans after that? Is Smalltalk a going concern or just a short-term project?
Jamie: We’ll be playing and making records. If people want us to then we’ll make more records and play more shows. If not, then obviously we are awful and should quit, for the sake of music.
You can find Smalltalk on...
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