The Neighbourhood on Their Expanding Music & Making a Vid with Tommy Wiseau

By Karissa Lund  •  05 Jul 2018 in Features

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The Neighbourhood have come a long way since their mysterious emergence online in 2012 with moody-rock debut track ‘Female Robbery’. It’s 2018 now and the five band members are heading towards a more aggressively experiment with digital textures, heck even Jesse Rutherford (lead singer) has dabbled with some R&B for his solo work. Ranging from the age 24 to 27, they’re trying on different identities yet maintaining their core sound.

Their latest self-titled album was issued early this year and they’ve combined some of the songs from their prior EPs with new additions. After years of fans begging organisers to bring them to our shores, they’re finally performing for Malaysians, headlining the anticipated Good Vibes Festival this 21/22 July.

Luckily for JUICE, we had the opportunity to chat with The NBHD’s drummer – Brandon Fried. We discussed everything from the band’s changes, to even asking how the heck they got Tommy Wiseau (yeap, the dude from The Room) for their music video…

Although you guys are evolving through your music, the band still manages to hold up the same signature style as when y’all first started. How does the band manage to do that? Is there a secret to it or does it come naturally?
I guess it does come out naturally. At this point whenever we’re in the studio, however we’re feeling at the time, wherever the music we’ve been making over the concept of the time, it comes out naturally. Whenever an idea comes out from me, Jeremy, Michael, or Zachary, we all adapt to whatever that’s been brought on the table. Basically it’s like we’re pitching a song or an idea and everyone kind of jumps in. The music that comes out is pretty natural and quick.

Before your latest self titled album The Neighbourhood came out, there were two previous EPs (Hard and To Imagine). Soon, y’all will be dropping another EP, Ever Changing. Turns out that the sentence “Hard To Imagine Ever Changing” is lyrics from one of your songs called ‘Compass’. Is there’s a storyline or concept for the long run that y’all are planning to do?
Yeah totally, we had the idea for that sentence before as we were making it. It was definitely an idea that we had while we were making ‘Compass’. Jesse wanted to fill it in there in the bush of that song because it kind of tied in with the message that he was talking about in it. It also goes along with what we wanted to portray to the fans and the world.

We always do change but at the same time we stay in line with what the fans can expect of us – but at the same time its something that distracts them so it changes but it doesn’t change at the same time.

It’ll always have the same core sound.

I heard that the writing/creative process for your previous album, Wiped Out was a lil’  rough on you guys. So is there any difference when creating your latest album? Any challenges or creative differences this time around?
No, we actually had so much fun working together. At the end of the day and night it was really nice, everyone were pitching their own ideas and working on each others songs and it ended up being really smooth and it was a really fun experience.

Speaking of your current album, which track is your favourite to perform live?
Well there’s two, ‘Stuck With Me’ was the band’s favourite. It’s a really fun song to play but whenever we’ve been playing ’24/7′ from the Hard EP, we’ve been getting amazing reactions from fans. It really does boosts our energy when we’re on stage and getting that kind of energy from the fans. Those two are definitely the two that we love playing on stage for sure.

Jesse recently released his solo album entitled &. Personally, what do you think of it and is it affecting the band for the better?
It’s definitely for the better, it’s fantastic anytime when someone wants to go and do their own thing.  We’re all really super close friends and we don’t ever feel left out or scornful. If Jesse were to bring an idea to the group that we didn’t gel on, instead of just filling it in the trash, he can now able to go off and make his own thing. That just creates another creative outlet for him. It’s also less pressure on us to have to accept ideas, like a rap trap song.  Instead of getting mad at us, he can just put it out on his own.

We have to ask you this, how did you manage to get Tommy Wiseau on the ‘Scary Love’ music video?

Haha, funny story. We actually messaged him on Twitter, he answered back and that’s about it. It was really easy, it wasn’t that hard. One of our friends that works for us DM-ed him and said “Yo, would you be interested in doing a video with the band – The Neighbourhood” and his manager said, “Yeah, I’ll be in contact with you and make it happen”. It was awesome, Tommy is an amazing person – he’s a great guy.

Is there anything you like to say to all your Malaysian fans out there that are excited to see you in a few weeks?
Yeah! We’re super excited to come, we can’t wait to play all the old & new songs. We get really excited to come to a new place where they’ve never heard of our music live. The energy’s always crazy and we’ve always noticed that Malaysia has been really supportive, so we can’t wait to give them the gift of our music live finally!

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For more details on #GVF2018, click here.