New Black Issue #25

From record deals to Scrabble games, the Chicago foursome is on a winning streak

By Kristina Francisco
Published: September 1st, 2005 | 4:13pm

On a hot Chicago summer evening, I met up with three members of the city’s New Black. We planned an interview over a friendly game of Scrabble, and I planned to annihilate.

Vocalist-bassist Liam Kimball, drummer Nick Kraska, and keyboardist-vocalist Rachel Shindelman greeted me for our challenge (vocalist-guitarist Patti Gran was traveling in Europe). In the end, I narrowly lost, but knowing that winning isn’t everything, I take solace in the fact that I’ve come up with these fitting descriptions of my Scrabble comrades.

UPSTARTS: ONES THAT HAVE RISEN SUDDENLY
New Black was less than four months old when they signed to Thick Records in 2003. The label’s head honcho, Zak Einstein, signed the band after going to their fourth show, sending them into the studio shortly thereafter.

"Obviously, we eventually wanted to get signed and everything," Kraska says. "But when it happened, we were like, ‘Holy shit.’ It just kind of fell in our laps."

Before heading to the studio, the band only had a four-track demo under their belt but quickly cranked out nine songs for their self-titled debut LP. Immediately following the 2004 New Black release, the foursome flew across the Atlantic for their European tour — their first gigs outside of a handful of Midwest shows.

"I just remember that first show in the Netherlands, setting up, and thinking, ‘How did this happen?’" Kraska says.

COHORTS: INDIVIDUALS FREQUENTLY SEEN IN THE COMPANY OF EACH OTHER
"It was just like, ‘Wow, these are people that I actually like as individuals,’" Kraska says of the first time the band played together. "These are people who I would enjoy just having a beer with and hanging out with, but they’re also amazing musicians."

Indeed, the members of New Black enjoy hanging out with each other — so much so that three of four live in a house divided into two apartments. Kraska and Shindelman, who’ve been dating for a couple of years, live in one apartment, and Kimball and his wife live in the other (Gran only lives a mile or two away).

"We all get along really well, which is nice," Kimball says of the band dynamic. "With other bands I’ve been in, I didn’t want to see any of those people pretty much any time that I wasn’t playing music with them. This [dynamic] is pretty exclusive to this band — at least for me."

EVOLVING: TO DEVELOP OR ACHIEVE GRADUALLY
The band’s sophomore album, Time Attack, is just what its name implies: an 11-track audio assault clocking in at just more than 37 minutes. Sometimes new wave, sometimes dance, sometimes punk, the record is a layered piece of work, keyboard-laden and guitar-and drums-driven, with Gran and Kimball’s vocals leading the way. "Different people will love one song and maybe not the other, and depending on what they hear, that’ll decide what they think our band is," Shindelman says.

Going into the studio for Time Attack was a lot less intimidating. With more time to spend recording, the band reworked songs they started writing a year earlier to achieve the sound they wanted.

"The energy on the new record is a lot more true to the way we play live and interact with each other," Kimball says.

"It is the result of having toured Europe and played a whole bunch of shows," Kraska adds. "People who would see us live would say, ‘You’re a really strong presence live’ and when we went into the studio, that was a big thing on our minds, to make sure that that strong live presence and energy was captured."

Shindelman sums it up: "This is New Black 2005."