interview: io echo

as you may or may not know, I am infatuated with the catchy dance-rock from LA based band io echo. their cover of the Beatles song "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is one of my favourite things, ever. I had a chance to ask the band a few questions, and they had a great sense of humour, so read on below.

A few days ago, I saw a commercial featuring “Doorway”. When and how did that come about? It’s interesting how a lot of indie bands get mainstream recognition via phone commercials. How do you feel about it?

Leopold: The director of the commercial became a fan of the band when he saw us live. He developed this whole idea for the commercial based around us and pitched it to Sprint. Licensing is so important for indie bands, especially in the age of file sharing.

The commercial also made me realize that your given name is Joanna. It clicked that io is like “jo”. Is “io” your stage name or have you adopted it in other aspects of your life as well?

Joanna: My mother wanted to name me after a Bob Dylan song, "Johanna." Conveniently, my father wanted to name me after his mother, "ioanna" which is Greek for Joanna. They settled on ioanna, which is the name on my certificate. That's where the io comes from. My friends call me "io" or "jo." Sprint chose the American spelling of my name.

The Cure or The Smiths?

Joanna: Joy Division.

The last time we spoke, you were working on a full length album. How is that coming along? What does it sound like and when can we expect a release?

Leopold: We are currently working on a bunch of new ideas and will record them over the summer, so I suspect you will hear it before the year is out. It sounds like God’s Vagina.

You are based in LA. How do you like the music scene there? Would you rather be anywhere else?

Joanna: The music scene here is very nurturing. I think it's a great place to live if you are a musician. NYC, my hometown DC, London-- yes I identify with these places more. But the Los Angeles community is really positive and supportive and I think it's an extremely exciting place to be right now.

io echo resonates a lot with horror punk. The Misfits, Siouxsie and the Banshees—did you listen to these bands growing up?

Joanna: We love Siouxie but we did not necessarily listen to her growing up. Growing up I listened to a lot of dead British and German classical composers and also bands like The Cramps, Aphex Twin, Jonathan Fire*eater, (the kids from Jonathan Fire*eater went to my brother school, St. Albans and I looked up to them so much, even before they were Jonathan Fire*eater, when they were The Ignobles), Enigma, and a lot of DC punk and old school hip hop. But with The Cramps and Jonathan Fire*eater I think there is a lineage which you can trace back from those bands to Siouxsie, Bauhaus, and even further back to the Birthday Party and Suicide, perhaps even Silver Apples. I look at it kind of like a family tree.

Your music is grounded in dance-pop. Some people seem to think that dance music lacks substance. What role do you think dance music should play? What purpose would you like your music to serve?

Leopold: The people who think dance music lacks substance do not understand the purpose of dance music. Our music is not strictly dance, but all the songs are groove based. Whether it be a slow ballad or a frantic song, the groove, the way the rhythm section is locking, that is what makes you nod your head and is attractive to us. There is no specific purpose I would like it to serve. I made it, I poured my heart into it, I gave it to you. Do with it what you will.

Your cover of The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s so Heavy)” is chilling and phenomenal. What drove you to play it for the first time? Is Abbey Road your favourite Beatles record?

Joanna: Thank you. Someone contacted us and asked us to play a Beatles tribute show. It was probably our third show as a band, but I had just seen the Horrors play at the same venue the week before so we wanted to play there too. After we played, the owner of the club came up to us and expressed that our version of Heavy moved him and that we had to put it in our set on a permanent basis. So we did. My favourite Beatles' record? Abbey road and The White Album are my favourite Beatles albums.

How did you meet Leo and when did you decide to form a band?

Joanna: We met at a seance. I raised him from the dead and he just followed me home. I was thinking about starting a band at the time, so I told him he might as well make himself useful if he was going to be hanging around, so he said that Jimi Hendrix had showed him the basics of guitar one night when they were chilling in hell, and that was that.

What’s the best thing about being on tour?

Leopold: Exploring the communities and subcultures of every place you go. It's fun to get lost in a new city and see where you end up.

What was the first song you wrote and how did you feel after finishing it?

Joanna: "Catapedaphobia." I felt shy about it. It was fairly recently, actually. I haven't been writing for very long.

What do you like to do when you’re not making music?

Leopold: Fuck



io echo - I Want You (She's So Heavy) (The Beatles cover) [mp3]

visit the band on MYSPACE

io echo playing BOTH in May

Bottom of the Hill doesn't have an email list, so I have to check their website periodically to find out about new shows.

the show is on May 11th. for $10, you get to see the following:

-Sonny (singer from From First To Last)
-io echo
-Dan Sena
-Dead Sara

tickets can be purchased in advance HERE

the following mp3 has been popular around these parts, download it if you haven't already:

io echo - I want you (she's so heavy) (The Beatles cover) [mp3]

according to their MYSPACE, they also have upcoming San Diego, Anaheim, and Las Vegas shows. catch one if you can.

Band of the Week + concert review: io echo

I'm a bit of an arrogant prick when it comes to music.
I'm a purist, through and through. Although I am open to hear anything, very, very few things impress me. I enjoy a wide variety of music but I am rarely dumbfounded by a band's presence. In other words, few things stay with me past the initial experience hearing a record or seeing the band. The feeling is in the moment, it's fleeting and it's incomplete. A handful of artists (The Strokes, The Clash, The Beatles, Delta Spirit, Ryan Adams, Spoon, Arctic Monkeys, Wild Sweet Orange…you know, the artists I post about over and over and over again) never fail to deliver, and they have my loyalty. Other than that, I’ll go years without listening to most bands, because they can’t capture my attention and my interest past perhaps news of a new record or whatnot.

Now, my regular readers should be accustomed by now to my habit of combining my Friday weekly post of “Band of the Week” with either a record review of an album I’m digging at the moment, or with a concert review of a band I had seen recently and really enjoyed. Two birds with one stone (or, as the high school vegan in me would say, “two soy beans with one caring hand”): I could simultaneously expose my readers to a band that I think they should hear about and feel satisfied with my concert going experience, having dissected it for the review.

My super meticulous readers will also know that I have never posted an opening band as band of the week WHEN COMBINED WITH A CONCERT REVIEW. As in, if I have the title “Band of the Week + concert review”, the “band” in question would ALWAYS be the main act. (this does not, of course, disallow me from posting about opening bands that I dig as “band of the week”, just not combined with a concert review.)

But I am elaborating far too much. This is what happens when I go two days without writing academically. I flood my blog with in depth details. Sorry guys, I know I’m a shameless English major, but I’ll get to the point now.

Wednesday night, I saw OK Go at Great American Music Hall. I didn’t know which bands were opening, I actually missed the first couple of songs of the first opening band, having lost track of time at Amoeba.


As I found my place in the audience, I thought the band on stage was decent. The song shortly ended as I found a spot on the dance floor, and the lead singer, ever so shy, hesitantly introduced the band. “We’re io echo,” she said, “and you can find t shirts and cds and stuff in the back”. I thought she was going to faint with fright, or, rather, was suppressing an urge to run away and lock herself into a closet, which isn’t something I found appealing in a band. I thrive on good ol’ fashioned bravado: shameless confidence on stage. Maybe that’s why I love Pelle Almqvist so fucking much.


As I began to lose interest, however, their guitarist caught me off guard with riff that I know so well, it’s well under my skin, more an intrinsic part of me, really. As I looked back on stage, the front woman said, a bit more boldly, “and here’s a Beatles cover we like to do.”


io echo then proceeded to blow me away with one of the best Beatles covers that I have ever heard. They tackled my favourite song off Abbey Road: the perfect antecedent to the happy-go-lucky “Here Comes The Sun”, the ever brooding, ominous, epically awesome “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”.

Nobody has the balls to cover The Beatles anymore. Or, rather, unsigned artists who are the first of three bands playing relatively small venues usually don’t muster up the courage to tread into such sacred territory, in fear of backlash from the audience. I was impressed not only by the gesture itself, but its execution. In short, they nailed it. And then they proceeded to play an incredibly infectious tune, and then closed their set with a slightly less impressive song. But it didn’t matter. I was sold.


Now, for part two of my “I am an arrogant music purist” schpeel:

I turn my nose up at most people's tastes and attitudes. This, of course, is because most people have awful taste in music. I blame pop culture for this. Most of what is popular today is pure and utter shite.

Enter opening band #2. Calling themselves Jaguar Love, two assholes took the stage and proceeded to torture me with 45 horrid minutes of agony. I will not call it music. The poor guitarist was actually decent, but his occasional spurts of borderline-enjoyable guitar bits were drowned out and overpowered by the lead singer, who was the exact antithesis of io’s lead singer. Loud, abrasive and annoying, this guy was trying to be Ozzy, Gerard Way, Bowie, and Andrew VanWyngarden, all at the same time. Identity crises aside, he couldn’t sing to save his g-d forsaken life. The noise on stage was an utter mess, like the idea of MGMT, only gone terribly, terribly wrong. On crack, if you will. There was way too much happening at once, nothing aurally pleasant in sight.


Back to my point, people have shite taste in music. Following io’s spectacular (albeit short) set, the girl standing next to me said “I didn’t really like that, the lead singer was weird” and later proceeded to make an equally stupid comment regarding Jaguar Love. While her friend was nodding enthusiastically after the duo left the floor (because, failing to capture the audience’s attention with their music, the guys had resorted to jumping on the dance floor and finally got people enthused before they ended their set), the girl gushed “awesome! And that guy has a good voice, too.”


I could have slapped her, or thrown up. I managed to avoid either, but I was very well on the verge of the first urge.

Anyhow, moving on to the main attraction (ostensibly, as they were headlining), OK Go were good. In earnest, I enjoyed their set. Damien Kulash has a great voice.


Both he and his bandmates Tim (bass),



Dan (drums)


and Andy (lead guitar)



are - surprise, surprise, quite musically talented. You wouldn’t expect that from OK Go, they seem more like a joke band (Flight of the Conchords) than one you would take seriously. All of that aside, they have a solid set of songs, and based on what I heard at the concert, the new record is shaping up quite nicely, although a tad too slow for my taste. They bust out the acoustic guitars a bit too often, and OK Go is best enjoyed like your favourite sugar rush: fast, short and super sweet.

They captivated the crowd with streamers and confetti, with plastic tambourines thrown to the audience, and, most provocatively, with Damien spending a good five minutes telling us about the state of his testicles.


Set List:

and here's the one I snagged, it was Damien's and Dan signed it:


The best part of my night was the 15 or so minutes that I got to hear of io echo. I caught up with the band after the show, and they told me that after the tour, they’re heading back to LA to finalize their record. They have a wee EP out now, containing three original songs and, (this made me giddy), including the fabulous Fab four cover.

Now, listen to “Addicted”, a song that takes the best bits of Rocky Horror Picture Show and adds a funky twist to it to make it listenable on the 364 days that are not October 31st.

io echo – Addicted [mp3]

according to the band’s myspace, “IO IS FROM THE EAST COAST. SHE WRITES SONGS IN A LATE HOUR LOCKED IN A BEDROOM SITUATION. SHE PLAYS THE GUITAR AND KEYBOARDS. IO'S SONGS ARE PRODUCED BY LEOPOLD ROSS (KORN, ERROR). HE IS PALE AND BRITISH. HE ALSO PLAYS GUITAR IN THE BAND. THEY ARE YOUNG, HYPER, AND HAVE BRUISED KNEES AT ALL TIMES.”

I’m guessing, based on their poster, and the above description, that the “band” is really just io and Leopold, with accompanying band mates for live shows.

And those talented mo-fos are the following:

Michael Edelstein: guitar
Aram Kirakosian: bass
Paul Rinis: drums
Salvatore Romano: tambourine, keys

visit them on MYSPACE

here are the remaining tour dates:
Mar 27 Wonder Ballroom w/ OK GO Portland, Oregon
Mar 28 hop Suey w/ OK GO Seattle, Washington
Apr 4 4th and B w/ AUTOLUX San Diego, California

Stay tuned for Sunday Morning Covers this week, you guys will be getting an mp3 of the song that transformed not only my perception of the band, but of my blogging habits as well. “Band of the Week + Concert Review” has blossomed and is no longer limited to headliners. Kudos to io echo, and, of course, all my gratitude to the best four-piece import America ever received from Liverpool.

conclusion:

io echo - 4/5

jaguar love - 0.4/5

ok go - 3.5/5