This past Friday night, mtvU blogger Adrian made his way up to New York City from DC. Cue partying. He met up with fellow co-blogger Lindsay later that evening to catch Neon Gold’s party at The Delancey where Giantess, one of their favorite as-yet-signed bands, was playing that evening. BAM. IT’S A MUSIC BLOG CO-POST!!! Lo and behold the group, comprised of lead singer Jan Rosenfeld, fellow synthers Karl Hohn and Chase Nicholl, and drummer Joey Sulkowski, were willing to sit down and talk to the two burgeoning as-yet-to-be famous rock and roll journalists. That’s a whole lot of budding talent under one roof. After learning that the friends had all met at Berklee and Lindsay got the preliminary “I lived in Boston too!” chat out of the way (She and Joey might have lived in the same apartment building at one time! Giantess played gigs at the Middle East and Great Scott which Lindsay used to frequent regularly!) mtvU questioned these talented fellows who are just about to break into total super stardom.
mtvU: Well let’s just jump right in. Tell us how you guys all came together and formed this band.
Jan: The songwriting started off as a total joke. I think I was just trying to have sex with girls because all the songs were about having sex with girls, like very literally having sex with girls and then Karl heard it and he was really into it…
Karl: Well, not into having sex with you.
Jan: No, but the songs. So we set up our keyboards and laptop in this tiny hot girl’s bedroom at a party…
Karl: Using my speakers from home!
Jan: And after that we thought maybe we should try and do this seriously. Be an actual band.
mtvU: How did you guys hook up with Neon Gold?
Karl: We actually met Derek [Davies of Neon Gold] through our friend Ayad [Al Adhamy] who plays in Passion Pit, who produced our stuff. All of us have been friends for a pretty long time now. Ayad was really responsible for giving us a lot of visibility.
mtvU: Let’s talk about how you came up with a name for the group. Right now there are about four bands on MySpace using this moniker. [Ed.’s note: There was a brief discussion about how the band might be changing their name to Giantessé in the near future to avoid confusion.]
Jan: We were talking about this crazy viral video we saw of this little four foot man being dominated by this like… seven foot woman! She wouldn’t let him leave the house. He would try and walk down the stairs and this enormous woman would be all, “NO!”
Karl: Somehow or other I said the word “giantess” and we kind of just looked at each other and thought, “That sounds good.”
Jan: Ironically, that video has mysteriously been deleted off the internet. I’d love to find it again. If you look up Giantess on YouTube, you’re likely to find a lot of porn. Although the upside is we get thousands and thousands of plays. Once we got 6,000 hits in 2 hours.
mtvU: So are you still writing songs to have sex with girls? Do you all have girlfriends? [Ed.’s note: First question is Adrian’s. Second is Lindsay’s.]
Jan: Yes we all have girlfriends.
Chase: All of us.
Jan: And the biggest dilemma with our songwriting right now is that we want to be serious, but writing about having sex with girls is so much fun and we want to make people say, “This is the most ridiculous song ever!” but at the same time we can’t always write about that particular topic. So we have this weird dichotomy going on right now.
Joey: But I feel like part of going out at night is that excitement about the potential of hooking up with someone.
Karl: We like to help that!
Jan: I’ve actually seen people start hooking up to our songs in the crowd.
Karl: Which is about the highest critical praise you can get.
mtvU: And all this movement for the band is happening for you guys while you’re still in college?!
Chase: Jan and Joey have graduated; Karl and I have one semester left.
Jan: By the way, Chase is in ten classes this semester!
Chase: I am just trying to push on through in this home-stretch.
And there you have it. Although the intentions behind their music may be shifting, Giantess still hopes that their synth-laden tunes will bring some love to the club. Both Adrian and Lindsay stuck around for the show and agreed it was high up on their lists of live performances. (They also concurred that Jan Rosenfeld looks exactly like Jay Baruchel from the Judd Apatow gang. Seriously. They’re frickin’ twins.) The Boston foursome doesn’t put on any ordinary brand of dance music; think of the cheeriest electro band you know, give it a bunch of happy pills, drench it in sunshine, and slap on some fun lyrics about getting girls and baby-making, and you’ve got Giantess. Think of them as the second coming of the boy band, except this time it’s completely okay to like them.
You definitely have to see these guys live to feel the true power of their music. Their recorded material alone is great; the intro to “We Were Young” is unbelievably ringtone-worthy and is all you need to hear to know that Giantess is going to get big (”Tuff n’ Stuff” and “The Word” are some other songs you should listen to). But the Delancey provided the perfect, intimate setting for Giantess to get the job done; once the synth hits you, it’s real hard not to start moving. We couldn’t have had a better time, and we’re real excited to see and hear more from these guys in the coming year. So uh, record labels… get on that already would you?! Check out the band’s official MySpace page and let’s start gathering some support.
Thanks to Derek Davies of Neon Gold for putting on a great show. Next up, Giantess will be headed across the pond to Brighton to play in The Great Escape Festival then onto London to play a few gigs with Marina and the Diamonds. They are also releasing their single “Tuff N’ Stuff” on French label Sister Funk so keep your eyes and ears peeled.
