KBPS Interview: Heartracer

Brothers Chris and Chip Cosby and Bryan Reyes make up American band Heartracer. In one of our favourite interviews of recent weeks, we spoke to the enthusiastic brothers from the band ahead of them performing a live date as they revealed to us about exciting developments in their live shows both musically and visually.

“We’ve been expanding our live lighting set-up. Tonight will be the first time we’ll be busting that out! We have a giant LED motion drape and a guy has been programming the drape to each song, and we have light-bars that look like giant light-sabres which will go with the music as well. We’re just going to continuously keep adding onto that!”

Heartracer have a new single out called ‘Hollow’, which they describe as a cathartic anthem, building from a slow start to a crescendo. “By the end there’s this emotional release or breakthrough. I’m not sure if that was entirely intentional but we like the way it worked out.”

Inspiration for the song came from multiple sources. Chip told us about the inspiration for his guitar working, citing Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour and British band The Alarm. “I’m a big fan of British music,” he confessed mentioning Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music as their favourites. “I’m coming to over the UK in ten days to visit friends” he revealed.

Chris expanded on the influences, referring to them listening a lot to rock band ‘The War on Drugs’. “It sounds like if The War on Drugs were a more electronic, retro band. We’re trying to keep the natural instruments alive so we brought in the acoustic guitar and Bryan’s drumming, so we think it’s turned out well.”

The brothers are big fans of 1980s culture, which influences their music, mentioning Tears for Fears, Simple Minds and the Pet Shop Boys. In terms of favourite movies they talked about the John Hughes movies and also Chip’s large collection of 1980s horror movies. “Apparently when I was brought home as a baby he was watching Bloodsport with Jean Claude Van Damme, and that soundtrack is incredible. I found out years later that the person who wrote the script for the movie was called Christopher Crosby!”

Though there will be no music video for song ‘Hollow’, there will be one for upcoming single ‘Dream Girl’, which is taken from their upcoming EP out in September called ‘Eat Your Heart Out’. “We’re working with a director called Lucas Krost, who reached out to us originally about using one of our songs – Open Door, from our ‘Summer Gold’ EP – on a short film he was making.

“He’s been at the Cannes film festival. He drew up a script for the ‘Dream Girl’ video and though I don’t want to say too much about it there’s definitely a political message entwined in the love story between a girl and a guy. They’re trying to influence a senator on gun laws. As you know the United States has a pretty big epidemic now with guns. We’re trying to hardness a point in the video.”

The brothers said they weren’t political as a band, though Chris does have a Political Sciences degree. “I don’t want it to be forced. I think it can happen naturally at times. To me the gun issue isn’t even a political one it’s a rational one. When you have this many people getting shot every day, you don’t even need to have a political opinion on it, you just need to think rationally.”

Moving away to their live sound, the brothers confirmed they had a very high-energy live sound. “We do like to make it clear that though the 80s sound influences us it’s not as much a conscious effort on our part. That’s the era that we love but we are a contemporary band, and live we’re like the Killers or Brandon Flowers, with a little 1975. It’s an upbeat show, and I think we take people on an emotional rollercoaster with some of the ballads that we do, like ‘Light of Day’ which is probably my favourite song from our first record, which is another song that starts slow and at the end it crescendos.

“I get compared to the lead singer of the Pet Shop Boys a lot.”

Their upcoming EP – ‘Eat Your Heart Out’ has been completed. “It was a very meticulous effort. We thought it was going to be done much quicker than it was but we wanted it to be perfect, which it obviously never will be! We worked with Andreas on production. The core of the songs were all tracked in my home studio and then we took everything over to him and go through each sound and polish everything. He said it was the longest he’d worked on anything, and he’s done full length records, and this is just a 5-song EP.

“We’ve got a tonne more songs that we’re ready to record so we’re going to get back to it as soon as we can!”

We asked them if the song writing and recording process was something they enjoyed doing, an answer that was started with emphatic yes. “If you don’t enjoy that aspect of it then you probably should be in the business. There’s a lot of things in the music business that isn’t too appealing but that part and performing live are great.

“Just the song-writing for me is my favourite part. I don’t think there’s a better high for me in the world than when a song finally comes together.”

Having access to a home studio has helped them with this process. When Chip returned from California they had a clutch of songs to work on, the recorded helped by purchasing Pro Tools. “I had no idea what I was doing, but you can see the progression from ‘In Flight’ to ‘Summer Gold’. Everything we do is self-produced for the most part so you can get an idea on how we’ve progressed with song-writing and production, and I think our fans can connect with that. They like to see our progression, that we’re not a band just shot out of the marketing test tube! I think on our newest EP you’ll hear that even more. We’re even more refined!”

Looking to the future Heartracer said they’d love to come to the UK, an area that often has a bigger appreciation for live music than necessarily on their home turf.

“It can be tough over here!” Chris confessed. “Good music tends to have more success in the UK. It depends on where you go. I think it’s our sound. Every time we play people say we should be playing in Europe, playing with Coldplay or something!”

Alongside their hopes with Europe we asked them about their ambitions for the future. “If there’s one thing we have it’s not a shortage of ambition. Our ambitions go way beyond what they should. We have faith in our music and we think the songs are there. To me the most fun things would be to tour Europe and play shows!”

For more information on the band and to hear their music visit heartracerband.com/