By Guillermo Herren
School of Seven Bells is one of those bands that’s born with a pedigree. Made up of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza from On!Air!Library! and Benjamin Curtis, formerly of Secret Machines, there was buzz around the band even before its debut record, Alpinisms, was released last fall.
These days the band is been opening shows for Fujiya & Miyagi—including one tonight at (Le) Poisson Rouge. The Press caught up with Alejandra on the road to talk about touring, shoplifting and fighting. ---
How’s the tour going?
It’s been going really well actually. We’ve only done our second show with Fujiya & Miyagi but we did three college shows before that and it’s been going really well. Better than I expected.
Is it tough being the opening band?
Not at all. It’s really cool. People are getting there really early, like, in Minneapolis they opened doors an hour and a half before we went on and that place was packed from the stage to the back of the room for an hour and a half. It was awesome.
Are you psyched to come back to New York and have the hometown advantage?
Well, I really like the venue we are playing because we've played there twice already and the sound is so incredible and everyone there really loves their job, you know. The lights are great; everything about that club is great.
How did the band start out? Have you known Benjamin for a long time?
No actually we met because we were on tour. Claudia and I were in On!Air!Library! and he was in Secret Machines and we were both on tour with Interpol on this caravan going across the U.S. That’s basically how we met. We were both New York bands but had never seen each other in New York. I don’t think we had heard each other’s music. It was only then that we heard each other play.
So you decided to form a band right then?
I had already decided that I was going to start another band as soon as the tour was over and I kinda talked about doing stuff like that and Benjamin [said], ‘Well when you get that together give me a call.’ It took me by surprise. It was awesome. So he basically went on to do his band for a couple more years, and we actually didn’t start writing together until January 2007.
I’ve read reviews and bios that say the name School of Seven Bells came from a mythological Andean pickpocket academy, but they don’t really explain beyond that. What he hell is that all about?
Yea, I know that’s exactly what I thought when I first heard it. I was actually watching PBS really late one night and they were doing this show on a shoplifting ring in the ’90s that was pretty elaborate and extremely smart and efficient. It was two people going into an Old Navy and lifting ten to twenty thousand dollars worth of merchandise, which for those stores that’s a ton. They had special coats that were lined with aluminum and everything on them, whether it was a bag or a hat or a scarf, had these compartments... They said in the show that they think these people were trained in the School of Seven Bells, which was a pick-pocketing school from the ’80s in South America which may or may not have existed, nobody really has a straight answer for that. I think they are still investigating. The name actually comes from the final exam for the academy where a person has a coat, or whatever they have on, [with] seven pockets and each pocket has an item and a bell attached to it and if the pickpocket… can lift each pocket without ringing the bell than they [are] graduated.
Have you always been doing music with your sister? Did you come from a musical family?
There was music around. My dad was an opera singer before we were born and… he always had a lot of vinyl in the house and there was always music around. My parents are Bolivian and Costa Rican so there were always their traditional instruments in the house. I guess it was just always around…I’m not sure it was pushed on us so much. We were always in music classes.
Do you think the Bolivian and Costa Rican music influenced the School of Seven Bells?
I’m sure it has. We pretty much looked into everything and we pretty much absorbed everything and that has to come out, probably not intentionally, but it must be somewhere in there.
Is it hard to reproduce live what you do on the album?
Oh no not at all, and that’s weird because when we were recording the record we weren’t really thinking about how we were going to do it live. It was like, we’ll cross that when we get to it. When we first got together to go on tour after the record had been released…we really kinda winged it, and it came out almost exactly like the record, which was crazy. I’m sure the parts that we play aren’t exactly the parts on the record, but when you put them together it sounds like the parts on the record. It’s crazy. It’s like we found another way to put it together [to] come up with the same result.
Critics seem to be trying really hard to put a label on the band. Are you pissed about that or do you have your own classification in mind?
I understand that people need a reference point of some kind and it’s cool, [though] a lot of the comparisons I don’t really get. I just think there are so many elements to our music and they just focus on what’s familiar to them, like shoegaze is one. I can see kinda where they’re coming from with the guitars and things like that. We get Cocteau Twins a lot, which is very flattering, but I really don’t understand the similarities, you know, there’s two singers and we have harmony as a lead vocal and I really don’t know any other shoegaze bands that do that.
I think it’s more trying to be clever because of the twins thing.
Yea I think it’s the twins thing, you’re right. I think it’s implanted in there somewhere: twins, twins, Cocteau Twins, girl voices, reverb. It’s cool because usually when they say that it’s a band that they love and I just take it as a compliment… if you love Cocteau Twins and you’re comparing us to Cocteau Twins that’s pretty cool.
A lot of people have said My Bloody Valentine, too.
Oh, I will take that any day.
How often do you fight with your sister when you are on tour?
How often do we fight? [Laughter] We don’t really fight. I know this sounds boring but we’ve figured out how to get along. We all live together. It’s important to keep that petty shit out of your life when you’re going to be spending so much time with someone. I don’t know, I think we know each other pretty well and we know how to keep things positive while we are out. (Talking in background) Yea, maybe I’m a liar, a little bit. Everyone’s laughing at me in the car right now…no but it’s true. It never gets ugly. You just [have] to deal with it. If you want to start a fight and your pissed off and hung-over, then by all means, start one.
>School of Seven Bells
Feb. 17, (Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. (betw. Sullivan and Thompson Sts.), 212-796-0741; 10, $12/$15
These days the band is been opening shows for Fujiya & Miyagi—including one tonight at (Le) Poisson Rouge. The Press caught up with Alejandra on the road to talk about touring, shoplifting and fighting. ---
How’s the tour going?
It’s been going really well actually. We’ve only done our second show with Fujiya & Miyagi but we did three college shows before that and it’s been going really well. Better than I expected.
Is it tough being the opening band?
Not at all. It’s really cool. People are getting there really early, like, in Minneapolis they opened doors an hour and a half before we went on and that place was packed from the stage to the back of the room for an hour and a half. It was awesome.
Are you psyched to come back to New York and have the hometown advantage?
Well, I really like the venue we are playing because we've played there twice already and the sound is so incredible and everyone there really loves their job, you know. The lights are great; everything about that club is great.
How did the band start out? Have you known Benjamin for a long time?
No actually we met because we were on tour. Claudia and I were in On!Air!Library! and he was in Secret Machines and we were both on tour with Interpol on this caravan going across the U.S. That’s basically how we met. We were both New York bands but had never seen each other in New York. I don’t think we had heard each other’s music. It was only then that we heard each other play.
So you decided to form a band right then?
I had already decided that I was going to start another band as soon as the tour was over and I kinda talked about doing stuff like that and Benjamin [said], ‘Well when you get that together give me a call.’ It took me by surprise. It was awesome. So he basically went on to do his band for a couple more years, and we actually didn’t start writing together until January 2007.
I’ve read reviews and bios that say the name School of Seven Bells came from a mythological Andean pickpocket academy, but they don’t really explain beyond that. What he hell is that all about?
Yea, I know that’s exactly what I thought when I first heard it. I was actually watching PBS really late one night and they were doing this show on a shoplifting ring in the ’90s that was pretty elaborate and extremely smart and efficient. It was two people going into an Old Navy and lifting ten to twenty thousand dollars worth of merchandise, which for those stores that’s a ton. They had special coats that were lined with aluminum and everything on them, whether it was a bag or a hat or a scarf, had these compartments... They said in the show that they think these people were trained in the School of Seven Bells, which was a pick-pocketing school from the ’80s in South America which may or may not have existed, nobody really has a straight answer for that. I think they are still investigating. The name actually comes from the final exam for the academy where a person has a coat, or whatever they have on, [with] seven pockets and each pocket has an item and a bell attached to it and if the pickpocket… can lift each pocket without ringing the bell than they [are] graduated.
Have you always been doing music with your sister? Did you come from a musical family?
There was music around. My dad was an opera singer before we were born and… he always had a lot of vinyl in the house and there was always music around. My parents are Bolivian and Costa Rican so there were always their traditional instruments in the house. I guess it was just always around…I’m not sure it was pushed on us so much. We were always in music classes.
Do you think the Bolivian and Costa Rican music influenced the School of Seven Bells?
I’m sure it has. We pretty much looked into everything and we pretty much absorbed everything and that has to come out, probably not intentionally, but it must be somewhere in there.
Is it hard to reproduce live what you do on the album?
Oh no not at all, and that’s weird because when we were recording the record we weren’t really thinking about how we were going to do it live. It was like, we’ll cross that when we get to it. When we first got together to go on tour after the record had been released…we really kinda winged it, and it came out almost exactly like the record, which was crazy. I’m sure the parts that we play aren’t exactly the parts on the record, but when you put them together it sounds like the parts on the record. It’s crazy. It’s like we found another way to put it together [to] come up with the same result.
Critics seem to be trying really hard to put a label on the band. Are you pissed about that or do you have your own classification in mind?
I understand that people need a reference point of some kind and it’s cool, [though] a lot of the comparisons I don’t really get. I just think there are so many elements to our music and they just focus on what’s familiar to them, like shoegaze is one. I can see kinda where they’re coming from with the guitars and things like that. We get Cocteau Twins a lot, which is very flattering, but I really don’t understand the similarities, you know, there’s two singers and we have harmony as a lead vocal and I really don’t know any other shoegaze bands that do that.
I think it’s more trying to be clever because of the twins thing.
Yea I think it’s the twins thing, you’re right. I think it’s implanted in there somewhere: twins, twins, Cocteau Twins, girl voices, reverb. It’s cool because usually when they say that it’s a band that they love and I just take it as a compliment… if you love Cocteau Twins and you’re comparing us to Cocteau Twins that’s pretty cool.
A lot of people have said My Bloody Valentine, too.
Oh, I will take that any day.
How often do you fight with your sister when you are on tour?
How often do we fight? [Laughter] We don’t really fight. I know this sounds boring but we’ve figured out how to get along. We all live together. It’s important to keep that petty shit out of your life when you’re going to be spending so much time with someone. I don’t know, I think we know each other pretty well and we know how to keep things positive while we are out. (Talking in background) Yea, maybe I’m a liar, a little bit. Everyone’s laughing at me in the car right now…no but it’s true. It never gets ugly. You just [have] to deal with it. If you want to start a fight and your pissed off and hung-over, then by all means, start one.
>School of Seven Bells
Feb. 17, (Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St. (betw. Sullivan and Thompson Sts.), 212-796-0741; 10, $12/$15
