Q&A: The Thing is Electric in Their New Record "The Thing Is"
NYC BASED ROCK BAND — The Thing is running into the new year at a full sprint with the release of their sophomore album, The Thing Is. Members, Zane Acord, Jack Bradley, Michael Carter and Lucas Ebeling, focus on capturing individual moments within each of the 11 timeless tracks. They blend the grit and energy of New York into their sound, reflected in their first single released from the album, a cover of Sonic Boom’s, “You’re The One.”
The Thing Is marks a new era for the band. Prior to writing the album, they quit their jobs and took the leap into becoming full-time musicians. They used this album to express pent up creativity, describing it as a burst of energy. With the addition of Ebeling on drums, they unlocked a newfound confidence and excitement for what the future holds.
Following the release of The Thing Is, The Thing will embark on a 38-stop US tour, which kicks off with a sold out hometown show at TV Eye in Brooklyn, NY. You can also find them on the lineup of some iconic music festivals across the country, including Gov Ball, Boston Calling and Treefort Music Fest.
Read on to learn more about their inspirations for the album, evolution as a band and plans to tour Europe later this year.
LUNA: Tell me how you guys met. How did The Thing become a thing?
ACORD: I went to middle school with Michael. We’ve known each other since we were about 12 or 13. We started playing music together then. Then I went to Millbrook, where I met Jack and Joe, who's our kind of operations manager.
BRADLEY: Yeah, high school.
ACORD: Pretty much us three would meet up and record demos. Probably from like, what, 2016–2017, onward? Then we moved in together and did the first record without Lucas. Lucas came at the beginning of last year and signed on in February. That's when we believe that the band started.
LUNA: Your sophomore album, The Thing Is was released on Feb. 2. Congratulations! Did you guys have any musical influences while you were making this album?
BRADLEY: Yeah, I think we all came in with different influences, which is cool. Something we do [frequently] as a band is just blend a lot of what each of us is listening to.
CARTER: The first single we released was a Sonic Boom song. He [and that era of music] became a pretty big influence of mine … like Spacemen 3. I stumbled across that later in my life, and it's been pretty fun to get into that over the past few years. That was a cover, so that was cool to do.
LUNA: Were there any main themes in the album?
BRADLEY: I think a big theme for us was we had a lot of pent up creativity and energy at that time and we just wanted to unleash it all in a short period of time. So we did it in less than a month. I think it just feels kind of like a burst.
EBELING: Yeah, it’s a lot packed in… We did it in, like, 10 days. We recorded a song a day in the studio. We wrote it, recorded it right after, and captured that moment in time, which was awesome and kind of a new process. It's been a great process for us for any kind of recording, practicing, and learning new songs.
BRADLEY: We were all living in New York City at the time, just working a bunch of jobs. All of us were hustling to make a living and make music work. It was a time we took off to really dedicate ourselves to making an album, and I think that comes across as a lot of the themes.
ACORD: We were excited because we quit our jobs and were finally taking the leap of faith into being a full-time touring, professional band. So it was exciting and intimidating. We were super excited with the addition of Lucas. I think it's shot all of our confidence levels through the roof. We were doing this, these ideas that we had, with so much more energy, and in a different way. It totally changed songs that we thought would have gone one way, but then with Lucas, the first time going through, we really felt like, “Holy shit, this is this is it,” you know?
EBELING: I was super excited, too, because I had never been in a band that's like, “This is what we're doing.” Right? This is our sole thing, this is what we're committing ourselves to. I was just a freelancer in New York City, playing different things every night, but I was really excited to actually put myself and my creativity into something important.
LUNA: You kind of touched on living in New York. How do you think that has influenced your music?
BRADLEY: Yeah, there's so many great bands in New York, and even better venues. It's really inspiring, but there's a lot of work involved in making things happen. That can eat you up and be exhausting, but it's also fun to be in the rat race for a little while.
EBELING: It's an attitude of the city that we put into the music as well: this hardness and grittiness. I think that's really important, and I think that separates all New York artists from other artists. You can always hear that edge, and I think our music captures that.
LUNA: You’ve released a few singles from the album, one of them being “Neptunne.” Can you tell me a bit about how that song came about?
BRADLEY: That one happened in a pretty cool way. We were in our studio in Brooklyn, just playing, and our friend Nicole Miller, who is an amazing rock and music photographer, was hanging out with us. She took a video of us jamming a song that we hadn't written before — it was an in-the-moment type of thing. A couple months later, when we were compiling ideas for this album, somehow that video came up and [we were] like, “Oh shit, that sounds awesome” and made a form around that. We decided to call it her Instagram handle which is “Neptunne.”
ACORD: We wrote it about a hero's journey, and she's kind of like one of our heroes — being in New York and an independent artist, cutting her teeth. She's such a pleasure to work with, let alone [to] just hang and be around. She always has a smile on her face and has definitely inspired us.
CARTER: That was a cool song too because that was one of the first ones that was a little more experimental with the form, a little more abstract and free-form. We came up with the idea to have a drum solo in it. That was really fun to practice doing, and getting to record something like that was really fun for us and has definitely influenced the way we do things now.
LUNA: Do you feel like your style has changed at all from your first album to this one?
BRADLEY: It's tough to get across the whole array of influences and styles — we all have so much that we want to do. I think [with] this second album and the projects in the future, we are going to keep exploring, experimenting and pushing the boundaries of all of our styles.
ACORD: We’re an “in the moment” band, I would say. Each of these records are taken in the present. We just go in, we capture that energy, capture that feeling of that song. Then we just kind of move on.
BRADLEY: I think something that made this album that's coming out now a bit of a step up too is that we recorded it, all four of us together, live [for] each song, which is not something we did for the first one. It takes a bit of a more mature form I think.
ACORD: It’s more alive.
LUNA: What’s your favorite song from The Thing Is?
ACORD: Mine didn’t make the album.
CARTER: I think I like “You’re The One.”
BRADLEY: I really like “Neptunne.”
EBELING: I like “Neptunne” a lot as well. It’s tough — they’re all a little different.
ACORD: I like “What is This.” That or “You’re The One.”
LUNA: On Feb. 2, you kick off your US tour for three months. You're also playing some festivals: Gov Ball, Boston Calling and Treefort over in Boise. What else do you guys have going on this year, and what are you looking forward to the most?
ACORD: We’re going to Europe in September. We're very excited!
BRADLEY: We’re really excited for that and just to keep making more albums. We have a lot of plans for this year.
LUNA: Do you have any dream venues or festivals you want to play?
ACORD: Glastonbury.
EBELING: Kings Theater.
BRADLEY: The Brooklyn Steel or Webster Hall would be pretty awesome.
CARTER: It’s not a venue, but it would be pretty cool to play in Tokyo or Japan. Something farther out and with a crowd that’s completely different.
LUNA: What about dream bands? Who would you want to tour with in the future?
CARTER: Creed.
BRADLEY: Geese, also from New York. Those guys are awesome, and I'd love to do something with them.
ACORD: Wet Leg would be awesome.
LUNA: For any new listeners, how would you describe your music in one word?
EBELING: Electric.
