{"id":3246,"date":"2011-08-09T12:01:27","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T19:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3246"},"modified":"2011-08-09T12:04:21","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T19:04:21","slug":"tapes-%e2%80%99n-tapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/tapes-%e2%80%99n-tapes\/","title":{"rendered":"TAPES \u2019N TAPES"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

TAPES \u2019N TAPES<\/h1>\n

An indie-rock upstart finds space in its songs during a full-circle journey to independence<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In some ways, the story of Tapes \u2019n Tapes reads like a case study of how the music business has changed over the last\u00a0half-decade. The Minneapolis quartet released its debut, The Loon<\/em>, in 2005, independently (in the U.S., at least) on its own Ibid label. The buzz earned them a spot on the roster of XL Recordings and a bigger budget for their sophomore effort, 2008\u2019s Walk It Off<\/em>. By the time the group began work on its new album, Outside<\/em>, the members had decided to\u00a0go it alone again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d saved enough money so we could do that, and the overall music climate has changed enough since 2005,\u201d singer and guitarist Josh Grier says. \u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0always had a strong idea of how we want to do things. When we released The Loon<\/em>, we did things on our own for a while, but it got to be too much, doing all the distribution and everything. There was a lot of learning going on. This time around, we\u2019ve grown a lot, and bands put their own records out now. It\u2019s way easier to do distribution\u00a0on your own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Left to its own devices, Tapes \u2019n Tapes created arguably its calmest, cleanest-sounding album yet. While the group hasn\u2019t completely abandoned the mangy guitars and rolling-boil drums heard on its breakout 2005 single \u201cInsistor,\u201d the Outside<\/em> tracks lead with melodies set high in the mix. \u201cPeople You Know\u201d is a \u201950s-style ballad about the comforts of home, while \u201cOne in the World\u201d is a Spanish-tinged number complete with horns and castanets. \u201cSonically, we talked a lot about making sure there\u2019s space, where you can say, \u2018Oh, I can pick out that bass part,\u2019 or \u2018I can pick out what the guitar is doing,\u2019\u201d says Grier, who co-founded the group in Minneapolis during the winter of 2003. \u201cWhen we were making the last record it was kind of a stressful time. We\u2019d been touring a long time\u2014a whole bunch of stuff was going on. I was more wound up, and that overflowed into the record.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Outside<\/em> will do little to quiet critics who incessantly point out the group\u2019s debt to \u201990s alt-rock acts, Grier pays such talk no mind. \u201cI definitely like way more bands than the Pixies and Pavement,\u201d says Grier, who also cites favorites like the Beatles, Wire and Bruce Springsteen. \u201cHopefully, people see us for more than that. You can\u2019t ever tell people how to think about you. You just hope they do\u2014and that they like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Kenneth Partridge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TAPES \u2019N TAPES An indie-rock upstart finds space in its songs during a full-circle journey to independence In some ways, the story of Tapes \u2019n Tapes reads like a case study of how the music business has changed over the last\u00a0half-decade. The Minneapolis quartet released its debut, The Loon, in 2005, independently (in the U.S., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[1334,10156,2338],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3246"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3249,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions\/3249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}