Over the course of the last decade, Andrew Kenny has released five albums with The American Analog Set that map heartache with a scientific precision. The band's early reliance on heavy farfisa drones has slowly given way to more compact, spacey pop that, while hinting at influences of Galaxie 500 and Stereolab, continues to be refined into one of the more unique sounds in independent music circles. The American Analog Set's music is both lilting and jilted, resting on a palpable heartache with whispered vocals that are as serene as they are sincere. Junkmedia recently caught up with the band in San Diego, on one of many stops on a summer tour in support of their latest album, Promise of Love.

Besides the new album, Kenny has also recently released a split EP for the Post-Parlo Home series with Ben Gibbard from Death Cab For Cutie. We talked about his recent projects, as well as his other passion, lab science, which led him to New York's Columbia University last year to pursue his doctorate in Biochemistry. And you thought you were busy...

B :Let's talk about Promise Of Love. I've heard it was recorded under different circumstances, with you living in New York now. How was it different from past recording processes?

A: It wasn't so bad, we recorded it before I left for New York actually. Before we went on tour last summer.

B: So, it's been sitting around a bit then?

A: We recorded all the basic tracks and then it was sitting in my closet from August to Christmas when I went, "Oh, yeah there is an almost finished record in there -- Just sitting on the reels. Maybe I should finish this up." So I took about a month, month-and-a-half finishing up the vocals, adding little bits -- spending a lot of time mixing it and I think that's the really important stuff in recording. So I just spent some time getting things right where I wanted them. But as far as the songs, the songs were basically done. So really we toured twice for Know By Heart and really by the second tour or the set last summer, there was more resemblance to this tour's set than for the first Know By Heart tour.

B: Know By Heart was a big record for you guys.

A: Yeah, it was big, but it wasn't even twice as big as the one before it. Like it wasn't that big of a jump. I mean we've never been that big of a band where one record outsells the previous one by four times. Not exponential growth really. But a lot of new people bought Know By Heart.

B: The songs on Know By Heart are a bit more compact, it's poppier.

A: Yeah, well I knew it would be a more presentable record. We tried to go to a different label [Tigerstyle] and just, not be a new band again, but present ourselves to a newer audience. It was definitely and intentionally a pop record -- maybe not pop -- for us it's pop. But anyone else's standards it is still mellow rock, which I guess it is.

B: Didn't Ben Gibbard from Death Cab For Cutie help you with that or contribute to that album?

A: Yeah, I guess he sang on three songs and we ended up using two of them for the record I think. Umm, they were all songs that I demo-ed. [Ben and I] trade demos occasionally so he had heard all the songs and he had a couple favorites. And so Death Cab was playing -- I guess it was in February 2000 when they came through Texas -- and you know, they had an extra day and were staying at my house anyway. So [Ben] asked what I was doing and I told him I was doing vocals for the new album. Having known some of the songs, he asked which ones. I was like, well, I am working on "The Postman" and that was his favorite one from the demos we'd traded. He did the back ups for "The Postman." We recorded two different versions of "Postman," one with a drum machine or well, the one that is on the record.And then we decided to kind of just flip it over and he sang and I did the back ups. So there is another version floating around that he sings. I don't know, maybe it will be on the next singles release/ B-side compilation [the frist release was Through The 90s: Singles and Unreleased, - Ed]. It's really cool sounding. It's definitely a very Gibbard experience. Cause, like without ever looking at a lyric, or anything, he just sang it. And that was the first take and I said, "I am definitely taking that one."He's all, "I can do it better" but I said, "I know you can do it better, but that one was really honest.I don't think he ever heard it after it was done.

B: Was that the first time you guys really hung out and is that what prompted the new Post-Parlo Home release?

A: No, I [think it was] right before their first record came out. I want to say Something About Airplanes came out maybe spring of 1999? Or maybe right after. I can't remember but [Death Cab for Cutie] came out and played South by Southwest. They played the Insound coming out party. The first year Insound was around they played that party. And I had never heard of them before and I thought the name was goofy -- [aside: "Who are these jokers?"] -- but I just loved the set. It was my favorite show at Southwest and I just chatted him up after the show, told him I was in American Analog Set and he knew us and liked us too.So, I was going to give him a copy of From Our Living Room To Yours, but he already had it so I told him we had a new one just finished called Golden Band, which I ended up giving him on CD-R. So as soon as we met them, we just started to trade stuff that wasn't released yet. And we've just always been friends ever since. We'd have overlapping tours so that we'd be in the West together or something like that. Play a couple shows. They opened for us a couple of times in Austin until you know, it was obvious that they could really do their own headline show. Like, "You guys can play bigger shows. This is ridiculous."

B: You guys have similarities in sound, a musical kinship I'd say.

A: Yeah, I guess. He is one of my favorite songwriters, though, and I was really jazzed that he asked me to do that Post-Parlo thing with him. But for "The Postman" we'd been trading stuff a long time before that. It was just really a link in the chain. It was just more like a really convenient thing where I love his voice and we sang together. I want to say he sang something else but we didn't use it.

B: Do you have many more songs finished for the next album? More floating around in the closet?

A: Well, we had planned on writing more when I cam back to Austin to practice for the tour cause I wrote a bunch while up in New York, but Tom our keyboard player is getting married in five days -- on Friday. So that being the case, with the day before being the last day of the tour, I told him, "I don't know if I want to get in Dutch with your wife this early in the game." We got Craig to fill in for him. So I just taught Craig the keyboard parts the week before the tour.

B: So you are studying biochemistry right now. What attracts you to that and are there any similarities between that and your pursuit of music or those twin disciplines? Do you see any ways that they overlap?

A: Well lab science to me is really similar to music just because everything I like about it is in the details. A lot of repetition involved. And it's a very solitary pursuit. Lab work you spend a lot of time by yourself and you have to keep a lot in your head like, an experiment that takes days is a lot like recording and mixing a song over a couple of days. And, knowing at any point, if you decide to cut corners it will only end up detracting from the end result. Yeah, so one thing I try to keep in mind when I am recording is, I can do this really fast or I can take my time and do it once and have it come out how I want it. In that respect they are very similar. Obviously you don't need to have a lot of knowledge to record, you just build on experience. You do it a few times and kind of get the hang of it whereas in science you kind of have to know the theory behind it to make it work.

I mean, there are a lot similarities between molecular biology and recording to me. At least in analog recording. Just in that you know the manipulation of DNA & RNA. These are information molecules just like analog tape is information on a medium. They are both linear formats. I mean analog has a North and South end. At no point does the tape branch. There is a start and end. It is read in a certain order and the info is sort of meaningless, but it certainly has an entirely different meaning as soon as you take a bit out and put it somewhere else. DNA is the same way. The language is totally simple: [there are] four characters and a couple words made by those characters. And really the translation from DNA to RNA the protein, these are like languages with simple alphabets and not many words. There can be a lot of information stored with just four letters. Again, left and right in a certain direction and the information doesn't become meaningless but entirely different when you take something out and put it somewhere else.

Whenever you are reading DNA, it's almost like, if you can imagine the transcription machinery that changes RNA to protein, well it reads it at almost a certain pace. It reads it with almost a meter. Every three spaces are a word and it reads them. It reads three, then skips over and reads the next three, and then skips over and reads the next three.

B: If you took one out, it is not changing the information content very much,But it will throw off how it's read.

A: Exactly. Imagine taking a beat out of a song and having all the other instruments play along with the different beat. The information content hasn't really changed but all of a sudden this song doesn't make any sense any more. There are some really weird comparisons between molecular biology and recording. Not the least of which is my preoccupation with making loops and splices and that's essentially what I do all day in the lab -- culling bits of DNA and larger DNA and making new information -- making new machinery out of smaller bits of DNA just like you can do with small bits of spliced tape. A lot of things are really similar.

B: You've obviously thought about this before.

A: Yeah. Have you ever taken a reel of tape, an entire reel of tape and spooled it all out? It's like a trash bag or GLAD bag full of tape. It really is! Now, imagine if the tape box is a cell. How can you get the contents of that GLAD bag into a tape box? There are packaging problems that you have to get over. So, we get over them by spooling the tape over and over and over and packing it very closely. I think, I forget what it is but in every cell there is, well, DNA is a linear molecule but even so there are forty-six chromosomes -- but if you took all those chromosomes and put them together, end to end, the DNA being linear, I think it ends up being like two meters of DNA. Like the size of a person. And to get that into a cell, which you can't see with the naked eye, well, you see, packaging problems again. So the cell or body overcomes that packaging problem in a much different way than a spool of tape does, though they offer similar problems. You have a vast amount of information that you want to keep in a very small area. I have actually written down these comparisons before and they just go on and on and on. I guess I should write an essay someday.

B: Yeah, you should. So a lot of your music deals with heartache. Is there a biochemical that produces that and do memories of certain experiences trigger it? Have you had some bad experiences and who keeps breaking your heart?

A: [Laughter] Yeah, well, I have had a few bad experiences. I wouldn't trade any of it in, and I am glad it happened the way it did. Really, I don't know. I think I am pretty well grounded now, but if it wasn't for the band I am certain I'd be dead. No question in my mind. If it wasn't for Lee [bassist] my best friend, and seeing someone just as dark as I am, there's no way I'd be alive. But you know, you open yourself up to this kind of stuff. No one just gets up and gets their heart broken. You put yourself out on a line, and you do it to yourself. Or I did it to myself. But that being said, after not really going out with anyone for the last ten years and being really jaded, I have a girlfriend now and I am definitely putting a lot out there. And she is just as jaded as I am, so it's a bit of a hard sell. Makes it more fun in a way. So, you know after all these years, I still believe, I am still a believer.

It's so comical to look back and think of all the stuff I've done to earn someone's love and have it not work out. It would send John Hughes scrambling for a pen and paper. I am sure everyone feels the same way. I know people who have had it worse. I guess overall, I am still winning, but I am not undefeated.

B: Who is? But, the band's long distance relationship is going to work out, you guys aren't breaking up, are you?

A: Yeah, I mean, we put out an album every two years so if you can keep up with that pace, no problem. I do have some decisions to make soon, because school is heating up and if I want to stay in school it will have to be a full time thing year round. So, we'll either barely get the record done and not tour for it or we'll have the record done by the end of summer and tour for years. I'll either have ample amounts of free time, cause I drop out of school or we'll just take a little break.

Barin McGrath

August 11, 2003