thine retail simps strike gold: an interview about the new album

Tha Retail Simps are dead. Theee Retail Simps are no more. We now welcome the era of Thine Retail Simps, whose excellent “debut album” Strike Gold, Strike Back, Strike Out arrives October 4 on Total Punk. The ever-changing definite article is obviously a prank. In its way, the Montreal band’s entire name is a prank. “As you’ve probably thought on your own terms, it’s kind of a stupid name in the first place,” says Joe C., who is speaking during a lull at his day job working for a Canadian indie label. “I always like starting new bands, so maybe it's just a way of keeping it fun—to make ourselves laugh.” 

Joe insists that Retail Simps weren’t a “real band” to begin with—a recording project that has grown into something gradually more legitimate (despite the seeming lack of reverence the band holds for anything resembling legitimacy). In 2020 during lockdown, Joe had recently landed back in his hometown of Montreal. He recorded a 12” under the name Itchy Self with rock’n’roll journeyman Chris Burns (whose own album came out this year on Joe’s label Celluloid Lunch). Within a couple years, he had more songs; Total Punk picked them up and released the phenomenal first Simps album Reverberant Scratch. 

Simps is a band that occupies a space of its own in the 2020s with their ramshackle, rollicking, and oddly rapturous garage rock jams. They make songs that wouldn’t feel out of place on a playlist of tracks from the ’60s. It’s basement party music for crate digging rock’n’roll heads. Strike Gold, Strike Back, Strike Out is the best Simps album so far, which is pretty wild considering what they’ve done to date. It’s a truly collaborative effort with everybody switching up instruments from track to track. Joe sent over a breakdown of who plays what on each song, and there’s a pretty balanced and democratic division of labor.

Prior to the album’s release, you won’t hear any of these songs, including their opening track theme song “Retail Simp$” or their Neil Young cover. After making goofy videos in the past to promote records, they decided to change course this time. “We felt like last time we took up a lot of space around the record with all these jokes online and everything,” he said. “We thought it would be fun to just try to include that spirit more into the actual record.” Get ready.

Tell me a bit about the decision to release the album without sharing singles beforehand? 

It’s a couple things. The record is longer than usual and there’s more songs, so for one, there’s not really continuity in the sense that you can pick a song. Maybe I’m just an idiot, but we felt like it was kind of cool to just hear the whole record. And then it’s the third record, so it kind of seems like the pattern so far is people either really like the band or they really can’t be bothered and don’t care. I don’t think we’re really aiming to get more people on board. We’re just hopeful that everyone that liked it so far likes the new record. And Rich [from Total Punk] doesn’t care.

Since you have your own label, why do you work with Rich and put out all the Simps stuff on Total Punk?

Well it’s a lot of work to put out a record yourself, and also Rich is just the nicest, sweetest guy. And he got people to hear us. You probably wouldn’t have heard of us if I just released the record. I feel like we’re just on the same page for so much, plus he gets me and everybody else excited about it. Half the time, if we have mixes or something, I send them to Rich. He’s part of the band, almost. He weighs in from the beginning of the process of making a record, or even prompts us: “You guys should make another record.” I mean, we would do it anyway.

Obviously there’s this pranksterism built into the Simps aesthetic. When you’re in a room together, is the band pretty focused or do you goof around?

Our practices are pretty much like we meet up 45 minutes or an hour after we’re supposed to. We drink beer and chat for an hour, and then when we get down to playing music, we pretty much just blast through everything. I don’t even call out the songs, I just start playing them and we don’t stop playing music for like an hour. Then we have a break, and the breaks last long. 

With the subtle changes in the band name from record to record, do you think of it as separate bands or the same one doing goofs?

I guess the second one, but it was kind of weird because the first record we weren’t even really a band. As soon as we started playing together we had really good chemistry, so now it really feels like a band. The name Retail Simps I think was just free association. I thought it sounded funny. I didn’t even know what it meant, the internet definition, and then Thomas explained that to me and that just made it seem even funnier. But I like coming up with band names. I’ve got a list at all times.

Wait, can I hear one?

One that I think is actually good that I will hopefully use at some point is Educated Fools. I’ve been jamming with my girlfriend. It’s not maximalist at all; it’s kind of shy sounding. I was saying a cool band name would be “Rock and Roll.” 

You have some jams on the record that feel like they could stretch out for an hour. It’s maybe an odd question, but how do you know when to stop?

When we started making the record, we were talking about how it would be cool to make one of those Swell Maps-style records where it’s a lot of compact ideas that are a bit disjointed. Other than that, it’s the same people so you end up sounding the same no matter what. It’s possible we went into it with the idea of making short songs, but also sometimes if there’s a crazy jam—as there was because there were some hallucinatory aids involved and whatnot—sometimes you can just crop it after into the part that makes sense. 

How long of a jam did you have to crop down?

We filled up two reels of tape that are like 35 or 45 minutes each. They’re not edited but some of the instrumental parts are just snippets of what was the most compelling part.

How did you arrive at the cover of Neil Young’s “Barstool Blues”? 

We talk about Neil Young a lot. I just thought, “Oh, this would be a fun song to try.” It’s funny because it was kind of controversial. Chris doesn’t play on that song because he loves that song so much that he didn’t like that we were doing it. It was too holy. I had to emulate his guitar style the best I could and do all the solos.

This album feels structurally different from the last two. Candidly, I think it’s your best. What do you think of it?

That makes me happy. I’m excited to see what people think of it. I know it’s a bit long-winded and almost maybe a bit annoying to listen to potentially. It’s funny, I actually felt really good about it—we all did—and then Chris has the least involvement on this record. He kind of just laid his parts down in one or two sessions, but he was kind of holding back his opinions of it when we sent around the final mixes. Finally we cornered him and we’re like, “What do you think about it?” And he’s like, “No, it’s good, it’s not my place to say.” And we’re like, “Well no, we want to know what you think.” And he’s like, “Well, I just think you guys can’t sing. Like you’re trying to do all these harmonies but it sounds like shit.” And I basically forced him to tell me that and it kind of killed my confidence about it a little.

That’s surprising—the vocals don’t seem all that different from how they’ve always been.

I think there’s more harmonies. That was just a gut reaction. He might even change that opinion if he heard it again. It’s easy to get weird about a recording before anyone’s heard it. I don’t know if it’s good. We tried hard.

Do you know what the future is for Retail Simps? Will you keep making records?

We’ll probably just keep making records, but obviously our lives are not centered around the band because that would be foolish. Mine kind of is centered around making records and I think we all feel that way—we all have our own songs we write and everything. But it’s like people might move away, we all have jobs, people are going to start having kids soon. So I really don’t know, but I think we could probably keep up just making a record a year if Rich was still into it.

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