@thearchivesband Ready To Make History

http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/4140651-the-archives-ready-to-make-history/

By Neil Mcdonald

Toronto band The Archives are making a name for themselves seven inches at a time.

The explosive alt-rock four-piece released their new vinyl single Vol. 2 last week, the followup to the group’s Vol. 1 seven-inch release from earlier this year.

As the band’s bassist and singer Anthony Menecola explained, the release of two singles in such a short span of time was an intentional strategy.

“We wanted to have a constant stream of content, so basically what we decided on doing … is to record an EP, couple it with a live video and kind of do a couple of staggered smaller releases along with the video, just to keep a steady stream of content coming,” he said on the phone from Toronto.

The decision to issue smaller releases more frequently is something that’s becoming more and more appealing to independent bands, Menecola said.

“When you think about it, nowadays it’s a lot harder to gain funding for a full-length record. Records aren’t cheap to record and a lot of bands nowadays are doing the steady, constant release thing to gain more attention and to get their name out there and to be in people’s ears more frequently, so that the buzz is generated before you’re dropping a whole lot of money into, say, a full-length record,” he said.

Though Vol. 1 was recorded with producer and friend Jon Drew (Tokyo Police Club, Alexisonfire), the second release was done “DIY-style” due to timing and financial constraints, with the band’s guitarist and fellow founding member Crispin Day at the helm.

“We’re a pretty self-sufficient band — Crispin does a lot of recording and I’m a graphic designer myself — so we take on a lot of the responsibilities and roles that other people would have to hire people out to do,” Menecola said. “It’s worked pretty well for us. It’s been a lot of hard work but it’s been beneficial to our pockets as well.”

Menecola and Day are joined by guitarist Will Gooch and new drummer Jeff Ayers, Jr., a North Carolina native who joined the band in August after approaching them online with a unique job application that helped him fill the band’s backbeat vacancy.

“He went out of his way to learn a couple of our songs and actually send us recorded YouTube videos of him playing them. And just that kind of determination and that drive was really awesome and really kind of stuck with us and, on top of that, he’s a really, really good player,” said Menecola.

Menecola said the band has already started writing new material with Ayers, Jr., though he’s not sure if the group’s next release will be a third consecutive seven-inch release or the band’s first full-length album (the group’s debut EP, Transitions, was released in 2010).

“We were planning on doing a Volume 3 but we also are planning on recording a full-length next year, so right now it’s kind of up in the air. We might decide to put out a couple of songs on Volume 3 or we might just continue writing and compiling and work our way up to a full-length album to record next year,” he said.

After their show at Van Gogh’s Ear in Guelph, Oct. 4, the band will be heading out on the road for a 10-day East Coast tour that will wrap up a busy year for the group, which also included tour of Ontario and the Maritimes and appearances at the S.C.E.N.E. Music Festival in St. Catharines and North by Northeast in Toronto. All that hard work, however, is starting to pay off, Menecola said.

“We had a lot of planning and preparation for these two releases and we’ve been pushing really hard and working very hard in order to get our stuff out there and I definitely think that the momentum is growing.”

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