Last October, Pianos Become the Teeth released the album Keep You, a critically lauded departure from their previous sound. Now, they’re on tour with Gates and Loma Prieta. We caught up with guitarist Mike York in the wake of the tour’s opening show at Philadelphia’s iconic First Unitarian Church.
Street: Are you excited to open your tour at the Church? Have you toured with either Gates or Loma Prieta before?
MY: Yeah, very. Last October, we did a few dates with the band Gates. They were an awesome band to watch every night. We’ve not ever toured with Loma [Prieta]. We’ve done a couple shows with them before, but it’s pretty exciting to be able to do a full tour with them.
Street: How has this tour and debuting your album gone so far?
MY: So far, it’s been really good. We did a few dates when the record initially came out in October, and all of the larger shows like New York, Boston, and Chicago–they were sold out, which was the first time we’d ever done that as a headliner, which was awesome. Then we had done a tour with Circa Survive across the US and that was really good. We went to Europe, then we did a tour to South by Southwest, all of which were great. Definitely the best shows we’ve ever done as a band.
Street: How has it been coming off the success of this record? I mean, people were going nuts over it.
MY: Well that’s the hope! It seems to have been received very well. The response was very overwhelming. It was awesome to be able to put out this record. We were confident when we recorded it and it definitely kind of reinforces that confidence when people enjoy what you do.
Street: What would you say the band’s biggest influences are?
MY: I feel like that probably changes, and I also feel like it depends on who you ask because we have such a wide range of influences as a band. Personally, though, I would say Radiohead, Bon Iver, um…bands like that are definitely more influential now than they were… They were influences when we started, but I feel like we don’t necessarily align with those bands, but I feel like we have more in common with them than we did when we started.
Street: So, you guys have been a part of a distinct wave of music. You got big around the same time as La Dispute, Touche Amore, and all those bands. How has it been? Do you have relationships with those bands?
MY: I mean, no matter what, when you go on tour with a band, you end up forming a relationship with them, some more than others, just because personalities kind of align more. A lot of times, with those bands, we knew them before they got huge and we would be playing with them at our local place in Baltimore, when they would come through Baltimore. With a band like Touche Amore, we’ve always had a good relationship with them. They brought us out on their first headliner, which was really, really awesome of them. We put out a split with them, and they’ve always just been great guys.
Street: Last question: what are you guys doing for Record Store Day? (Ed. note: RSD is an annual event celebrating the culture of the independent record store.)
MY: We’ve got a 7-inch coming out, it’s called Close and it’s got a few songs that didn’t really fit into Keep You. We felt like these songs were really good and they meshed with each other better than they fit into the cohesive record, so we decided to release them as b-sides.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Photo by Evan Deli
