Cartel: Ready To Pop
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 29-Oct-07 @ 12:45 PM|
After agreeing to a reality-show-styled publicity stunt, the members of CARTEL endured the kind of widespread criticism that would make just about anybody go crazy. But after emerging from The Bubble with an album they're confident in calling their best yet, the Georgia-bred pop-rockers are ready to silence their critics the only way they know how. Story: Trevor Kelley Photos: Chris Crisman Will Pugh is fired up. It's just past 2 p.m. in New York and outside, things are downright miserable. A group of imposing rain clouds loom overhead and the streets are vacant. You get the feeling that a lot of people may have called in sick to work today, so that they can lie around in bed. Yet, while others may be hitting their snooze bars on their alarm clocks repeatedly, the members of Cartel-Pugh, drummer Kevin Sanders, bassist Jeff Lett and guitarists Nic Hudson and Joseph Pepper-are having a heated discussion inside The Bubble, a completely transparent recording studio located near the Westside Highway in Manhattan. By now, you are familiar with The Bubble. This past June, it was not only the basis of an MTV reality show (Band In A Bubble), but also a seemingly unheard-of promotional campaign funded by Dr. Pepper, KFC, Wal-Mart and, well, just about everyone short of the Republican National Party. The Bubble is also where Pugh and his bandmates recorded their new self-titled album. It's their first release for their new home, Epic Records, and the follow-up to 2005's Chroma, a hook-heavy debut that spawned the hit "Honestly," an emo-rock anthem still receiving frequent spins on commercial radio, two years after its release. But on this rather dismal afternoon, it's not Cartel's music-new or old-that's riling up Pugh. No, as you have probably guessed by now, it's the online hate-mongers who have spent the past few weeks challenging Cartel's decision to jump in bed with both MTV and the bevy of corporate sponsors. During the relatively short amount of time the band spent inside The Bubble, they inspired more cries of "sellout" than almost any group in recent memory. Which, as they will all admit, was to be expected. But what wasn't quite expected was the number of genuine Cartel fans who have also expressed their detest for this particular experiment. Many of them stated it will be virtually impossible for Pugh & Co. to come up with a decent album, given the advent of the show. All along, the idea behind Band In A Bubble was to provide Cartel a mere 20 days to write and record their second album in an enclosed/controlled area, all while being followed by MTV's cameras. To most, this seems like it has the making of a total disaster. "My first reaction [to The Bubble] was that I would never do that," says Hellogoodbye's Forrest Kline. (It bears mentioning that Kline's band appeared on a handful of episodes of The Real World a couple years back.) "It's not the worst thing in the world [doing reality TV], but I wouldn't do that. I need privacy if I am going to make a song or a record. So to do it on TV? It would interrupt [my process]. People work in different ways. Maybe Cartel work best with cameras on them? [Laughs.] But I would want to be in a desert." As discussions like these have continued to rage on, the members of Cartel have remained noticeably silent. They haven't decided to retaliate with an overly verbose blog post or a "controversial" interview with MTV.com. But that doesn't mean they don't have an opinion on the subject. It's quite the opposite, actually, as AP learned while talking with the band in front of The Bubble's main mixing board. Throughout the interview, Pugh discussed the many critics who have dogged Cartel as of late. But perhaps more importantly, he also suggested that he and his bandmates have created an album that may be good enough to eventually silence them. "This is a chance for us to go on national television and produce what we feel is the best material that we have done to date," Pugh says, sitting in a leather office chair. "If we can do that in front of people who love our band, people who don't know what to think of our band and people who hate our band and still come out with an awesome record, [that will make] everybody who hates us shut the fuck up." Before we get into the inevitable discussion about The Bubble, I thought we could talk about where you were before all of this happened. So let's go back a few years. What were you doing before Cartel took off? WILL PUGH: I had actually moved to Athens, Georgia. We were still in college when Cartel started. We didn't drop out of college until we went on tour. I moved to Athens to [get a degree in graphic design at the] University of Georgia, and I was really going to work on golf because I had picked that back up. We were all taking such weird, divergent paths. It's kind of funny. I mean this in the least insulting way possible, but golf? Where did that come from? PUGH: [Laughs.] Well, my dad is a big golfer and I've been playing since I was 7. I played on my high school team, but I kind of gave it up in my freshmen or sophomore year. I picked it up again and thought, "Fuck it, maybe I'll try out for a small tour." I think we've always had big dreams. If it wasn't the band, it was going to be something else. How has doing a television show like this changed your expectations for what might happen with this record? PUGH: I don't think we've really thought about sales or an increase in our fanbase. This record is the most important thing to us this year, and we've got to make it awesome. Beyond that, if America doesn't think it's awesome, then we don't know what else to do. This is the best that we could have ever done. So as far as expectations, we've kind of left it up to the music. We put our heart and soul into that. KEVIN SANDERS: I think that it had been so long since we had written and recorded that [the songs] just came out. There was this [glut] of material that happened without even thinking about it. I mentioned this before, but I can't even imagine the kind of pressure that Panic! At The Disco is facing right now, just because of the quick success they had. The idea of Band In A Bubble is that the band are supposed to live here for 20 days and write and record an entire album. Did you do that? Or did you actually write this record beforehand? PUGH: Ugh...define "write." [Laughs.] The songs were done before you got here. PUGH: No, the songs were not done. But like we said, we recorded a record two years ago. It would be illogical to think that we didn't write anything before this [and that] we were completely dry up until 12 days ago. That's bullshit. We had a very good idea what the record was going to sound like before we came in here. By now, you've probably read the comments people have been making online about your involvement with The Bubble. Can you relate to the attitude that people have about this? SANDERS: Those were probably the first thoughts we had, actually. I mean, coming from where we came from, we're no strangers to the term "sellout." I was the 17-year-old kid saying to most of my favorite bands, "Dude, you're selling out." The day I had to buy a ticket to a New Found Glory show [instead of paying at the door], I was like, "What does that mean?" So coming from that, the first thing I thought of was how bad this could look. When MTV came to you, what were some of the pros and cons you had to think about before deciding to do this? SANDERS:The cons are that you are going to look like a sellout. But we have always thought that if you are changing who you are for someone else, [that is] selling out. But nothing about [being on Band In A Bubble] has changed anything. We feel like we never bent on anything. It's definitely weird getting used to this whole thing, but we've been the same dudes. What do you think a show like Band In A Bubble says about the music industry? This year, there may be more hit songs associated with reality shows than actual hit songs. PUGH: I think it's great. I've never experienced anything where someone has been able to physically watch a record being made from day one. With this, we laid it all out on the line [because] we wanted to bring something to the table [that could stand] up against Justin Timberlake or Maroon5, and say, "Little guys from Conyers, Georgia, can write songs for everybody, too." When this is all over and the album is finally out, do you worry that you'll only be known for doing this show? PUGH: Oh, absolutely. If this record blows up and, in a best-case scenario, we become the biggest band in the world for the next 10 years, people will still look back and go, "Hey, you were that band that got in that bubble, right?" It's like, "Yeah... we were that band." ALT |
