Interview: Time Spent
Posted on Play Crack The Sky Music on Thursday, October 6th 2011.
Hailing from Dublin, Ireland, Time Spent are five-piece pop-punk band featuring members of Starters, Home Star Runner, Young Wolves and Anderson Mesa.
Formed together by a love for the pop-punk genre and inspired by more recent bands such as The Wonder Years, The Story So Far, and Turnover, Time Spent recently released a free four-track demo that greatly showcases the bands tight, upbeat and fun sound. Tracks like Open Books and Absent Friends have urgency and are easy to relate to lyrically.
PCTS Music recently caught up with bassist and vocalist Seán Reid to discuss how the band formed, how their other bands have influenced Time Spent, the new demo, the Dublin music scene and more.
How did Time Spent get together? I understand you have played in other Irish/Dublin-based (cancel where appropriate) bands before.
Yeah, we all grew up playing gigs around Dublin in different bands, so we all knew each other pretty well before Time Spent came together. I’ve know Iano (Kelly - singer) since I was like 16, he sent me a text saying he wanted to start a band and if I wanted to play bass. Then me and Anthony (Kelly - drummer) are in another band (We’re Wolves) together already. So it was pretty cool we where all good friends, or at least knew of each other, before the band even came together.
When you joined together, did you have idea how you wanted Time Spent to sound like?
I suppose we all knew we wanted it to be a pop-punk/emo band, but for us to put our own spin on it. There was no real specific direction as such, we all just came into the practice room and put our ideas together and just tried to write some cool songs.
What bands have influenced the way Time Spent have turned out?
Well pop-punk has always been a massive influence on me since I was around 13. Like a lot of people, I found it was easy to identify with. So bands of that genre really influenced us. Me, Iano and Rob (Flynn - guitarist) where really into the new Story So Far album while writing our songs and we all are massive fans of the Turnover EP. So I guess we all got influenced from different bands and styles within the pop-punk genre.
Has the experience from your other bands contributed to the sound of Time Spent?
Yeah I definitely think so. It was great from a song-writing point of view; everybody bringing their own experiences from different bands they’ve been in, and adding it the song-writing process. It helped make the band fun to be in. There was always a really fun aspect about writing the songs.
How does Time Spent differ from your other bands?
My other band (We’re Wolves) make a more heavier approach to pop-punk. We’re just two different bands really. In Time Spent, it’s also my first time singing in a band as well. That’s been such a fun experience so far, I really enjoyed recording vocals and singing live.
You’ve recently released a four-track demo. How did it come together and what has the feedback been like?
The funny thing is that the demo is literally the first four songs we wrote as a band. The songs came together really quickly, which was awesome because it felt very natural. Within the first month of the band being together, we were ready to record. We’re all really happy with the job Ciaran Parnell (proudcer, guitarist/singer in Starters) done on it and how it came out.
People seem to be into it as well. We got to play with Living With Lions and played Demented Fest in Dublin as well, and people seem to like the songs.
I get the impression that Time Spent is an example of how close and strong the Irish pop-punk scene is. Would you agree?
Well, I think not only in the pop-punk scene, but with the scene in general. It’s cool when I go to a show in Dublin and you see a pop-punk band and a metal band on the same bill. They’re my favourite kind of shows. But, everybody in the scene over here are pretty close and through it, I’ve met some of the coolest people I know and friends for life. Its definitely a very close community.
Has the Demented Promotion group and the Lockdown club night helped this?
The work Mackel and the rest of Demented do is great. They get really cool touring bands over, for example they’re putting on the Man Overboard/Story So Far gig in Dublin in February, and ran the Such Gold and Starters UK and European shows, and local bands get the chance to play the shows as well. I guess people have made friends through coming to those gigs, which is so awesome.
What other Irish bands should we be checking out?
I’m really enjoying a cool band called Driveway at the moment, they remind me of Sunny Day Real Estate. Definitely check out Starters and Jody Has A Hitlist too.
My friends just recently started a band called Boardwalk and their first show was great, look out for their first release.
Away from the pop-punk side of things there’s an absolutely awesome metal band called Red Enemy from around here, their latest EP is so good. Overhead, The Albatross are an incredible instrumental band. It’s really uplifting stuff and amazing live. I would advise people to check them out as well.
This country has some really amazing bands and I hope that in the future, they will get recognized more. I think it’s incredible for such a small country to produce such great bands like these.
What’s next for Time Spent? New material? More shows?
At the moment, we’re working on a few tracks for a split EP we want to do. We have one song written that is really different from the songs on the demo. We hope to have the songs recorded in a month or so. After that we just want to play more shows, and hopefully try hit the UK at the end of the year or early next year.
Are any final words you’d like to say to close the interview?
Go download our demo for free on Bandcamp and come see us at a show soon.
Time Spent: Facebook|Twitter|Bandcamp
(Source: pctsmusic)
