What was the recording process?
I don’t know whether it was technique or lack of technique. We recorded that record in our basement. We pretty much wanted to capture the songs as soon as they happened and to let accidents become part of the song. We used reel to reel. In Columbus there’s this tradition to sit in your basement and record music. We didn’t want to overproduce, we wanted to reflect how we sound in our basement.

Did you notice any backlash when you got signed to Matador?
We got around that pretty well. Whatever fans we got from the underground they didn’t think we sold out or changed what we were.  The reason we signed with Matador wasn’t because we wanted to break out and be huge or anything. It was just a progressive step. They just wanted us to be who we were, they didn’t want us to change anything. Our main directorate was to sound better.
In Ohio, there’s always been the tradition where you’re competing against your friends. It’s a pretty close knit community but we have a pretty good tradition of do-it-yourself. We don’t follow trends, y’know what I mean.
It’s strange there’s a bit more now than there has been. You see kids in bands trying to sound this way and it just doesn’t seem right. The more attention means it’s more of a trend and more people try to do it whatever. Some of the bands doing lo-fi now were probably disco punk a few years ago!
I would rather not have the responsibility! Maybe we were one of the first. Some of these bands should go to the studio and not do it alone.
Lots of early Eighties bands, we took our cues from. You can do it yourself, get together with like-minded people. We try not to be flashy. Doing something that you love and putting as much effort into it as you can.
We tried to make it more high-fidelity. It’s a little warmer but it’s still pretty lo-fi. We were pretty exhausted from touring and we were in a bit of a funk. We thought the songs out a lot more. For the first 3 records, the songs are pretty much a document of a moment. But we let ourselves go on a couple of songs. Beth plays violins on one song! That was her first and only time!
We try and do a good combination of gigs.  We try and do basement and house parties and we want to be accessible to people. We played a house party the other day and people were blown away. They didn’t realize that for the first 3 years, that’s all we played. Sonically we sound best in a basement.
I’m feeling pretty good about the future of independent music right now. I’d like to do away with bedroom critiques. I’d like for kids to not read every guy’s blog because I think there’s a level of journalism that’s gone away. I hope young kids starting bands and won’t be so influenced by the internet. It seems like jealous old guys who never did anything who complain about

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