By Erik Adams
For The State News
According to keyboardist/vocalist Erin Fein, Headlights makes "melody driven pop." Listening to the band reveals the modesty of this assessment. The songs on Headlights' "The Enemies EP" are an epic brand of indie pop, with enchanting male-female harmonies and a hint of shoegazing expansiveness.
Fein and her band mates — vocalist/guitarist Tristan Wraight and drummer Brett Sanderson — have embarked on a massive spring tour and will be stopping by Lansing's own Mac's Bar on March 23. The State News talked to Fein about the tour and much more, including the "surreal" experience of hearing her voice set the mood for a scene on ABC's "Grey's Anatomy."
State News: You say Headlights is a pop band, but it's certainly not the kind of pop that you would hear on the radio today.
Erin Fein: No, I guess it's hard to use the word pop because it gets interpreted in so many ways… pop in the sense that we like writing songs that don't necessarily have a formula, they're just, you know, a pop song… The Beatles wrote pop songs, you know, I guess you could say that The Killers write pop songs, but it's the same type of thing.
SN: There seems to be plenty of boy-girl indie rock groups around these days. How does Headlights distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack?
EF: It's funny because, even back in the days when I was in Absinthe Blind, my brother and I sang together, and I don't know that we're really out to distinguish ourselves. We just really like male and female vocals, we really enjoy harmonies, and so what we write is simply just the songs that, you know, happen to come out ? I think we just do what we love and it comes out how it comes out, you know?
SN: How are the preparations for the tour going?
EF: Really well. We're actually extremely busy because we're recording a full length right now, and we're also preparing to take a fourth musician on the road with us so that we can have just a little more depth to our sound. He's going to be playing the bass and accordion and possibly some percussion.
SN: How is that full length coming along?
EF: Oh, it's going to be wonderful; I can't wait to hear it. I mean, you know, I hear it now but it's always different once it's mixed and all the pieces are sort of placed and spaced where you want them to be. We still actually have a string quartet that's going to be playing on a few songs, which we're actually doing the composition for that right now, which is taking quite some time, but it's almost finished. And we've been doing lots of keyboard overdubs and accordion, and it's going to be really lush. I'm really excited: We've got like seven different keyboards that we acquired over the last year, and we're really just trying to be creative and, you know, find the places where we need little ear candies.
SN: Are you going to be dragging all seven keyboards along with you on the road?
EF: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no (laughs). Not at all. I have two keyboards I'll be using on the road. I used to only use one and now I'll have two, and then we also have a sampler, probably just for a few of the little keyboard parts that add to the songs.
SN: What is it like playing for crowds whose only previous impression of the band is a four-song EP?
EF: I have to say we — in our touring experience so far — we've had really overwhelmingly positive response in our live show. And it seems like people really enjoy the EP but also seem to really like where we've gone with the new material, which is different but not so different that I don't think people are necessarily particularly surprised by what they hear in the rest of the set.
SN: What was it like to have your song "Everybody Needs A Fence To Lean On" played during an episode of "Grey's Anatomy?"
EF: It was so surreal (laughs). I think it was just very strange because they used a part of the song that I was singing on, and actually, we were in the recording studio when it happened. But my parents videotaped it so I got to watch it the next day. It was strange, you know, it fit very well with the scene… I think it's very interesting to hear your song, you know, sort of being the soundtrack to some emotional event that's happening in a show … It's definitely exciting when… things happen that encourage you to keep being a band and keep going.
