Adult Swim

ADULT THEMES is an eminently un-Googleable Brooklyn band with an arresting mix of dissonant songwriting and languid female vocals that has been hailed as the second coming of Sonic Youth, among other things. When I bring this up to the band (that would be Tom Martin and Ellie Logan), they vehemently deny copying, or even really being super into Sonic Youth. Except, pipes up Ellie, hiding her giggles behind her hand like a Japanese schoolgirl, “We gate-crashed a Sonic Youth music video shoot.” Not that it was an act of devotion, more just something that seemed like a good time. Anyone who’s ever acted in something, especially as an extra, could tell you it’s really pretty terrible. After 10 hours baking on a Midtown rooftop in borrowed formal wear, Tom and Ellie agreed.

I’m catching up with the band on another rooftop, this one attached to a practice space in a blighted slice of Bushwick—it is an abandoned brewery, or hospital, or junk storage center, possibly all three. It’s one of those nice days, wedged in between the too-hot and too-rainy days at the end of summer. The sun sets while we talk and drink. Manhattan shimmers in the distance. There’s a concrete factory below us on one side; we hear angry shouts from it at one point, and we joke that it’s where people get killed in action movies. Tom says he wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few bodies there. It’s nice. Tom is the guitarist for ADULT

THEMES, which he started with Ellie (Eleanor before we’ve had a few beers). They both have a few things to say about their name and their influences.

First of all, Ellie reminds me, ADULT THEMES is perfectly easy to Google: “It just brings stuff you don’t want to know.” Fair enough. If you want the real story, she adds, “We stole it off a DVD case.”

What about sounding like Sonic Youth?

Tom, ever the diplomat (he’s already called Ellie “a great musician, practically classically trained” and his drummer, Jeff, “a sick drummer, totally one of the best drummers in Brooklyn”), says, “Sonic Youth is amazing, but that comparison, we’ve never worn that influence on our sleeve, so to speak, but it’s very complimentary.”

ADULT THEMES (the band asks me to always write it in all caps) was born, like a lot of bands, when a few friends who talked about music all the time, and went to shows all the time, decided to start actually recording music together. At first, Tom says, “We were never, like, ‘Let’s be a band.’” Ellie adds, “We were just like, ‘What does this pedal do?’” This early part, call it an “Experimental Phase,” lasted a long time. Tom and Ellie learned to use samplers and program keyboards, played and recorded until one of them passed out on the floor (usually Ellie), sleeping while the other one kept playing, on and on, until the other one woke up and started playing again. So, how did that early stuff sound?

“I wouldn’t even call it music,” says Tom. “Just... noise.”

“Yeah,” agrees Ellie, after a long awkward pause. “Basically we just made lots of noise.” Somehow, in person, that’s hilarious and we all break out laughing.

Unlike a lot of bands, ADULT THEMES actually made it past this hanging-out, making-noise phase, thanks in large part to the drummer recruited for the band’s first 7-inch self-titled, out now via Cardboard Records and Ellie’s own Crikey! Imprint (she’s Australian). Jeff Ottenbacher, formerly of Golden Error and currently in a band with Guided By Voices’ Doug Gillard, was, given his resumé, unsurprisingly motivated. Shortly after finishing the single, as Ellie tells it, in her best low-register voice of authority, “Jeff was like, ‘Let’s play some shows! Where are the rest of these songs? Let’s start a band! Let’s get this band going!’

He’s, like, really proactive.”

Tom concurs, “Really proactive. He’s like, ‘Is the next 7-inch done yet?’ and I’m like ‘Whaaaa?’” Thanks to drill sergeant Ottenbacher, anyone who wants can find ADULT THEMES, live or on wax. When you do, you’ll be amazed at the music’s freedom, and its aggressiveness. Drawn together by an obsessive love of music, playing and experimenting and drinking in every underground band they possibly can, seeing three or four shows a night if they can catch the trains just right, Tom and Ellie are throwing it all back out again in a whirl of dissonance and melody and empty space and cooing and screaming.

It’s energizing. It’s thrilling. It’s adultsonly.

-- ADULT THEMES Sept. 17, The Studio at Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St. (betw. 3rd & 4th Aves.), 212-353-1600; 7, $10.