Kisses is the disco-ish side-project of Los Angeles's Jesse Kivel, who normally fronts the indie-pop outfit Princeton with his twin brother Matt. On the debut Princeton LP, The Heart of the Nightlife, Kivel sets sad indie songs to glitzy '70s-disco synths and beats, recalling the work of Arthur Russell and Jens Lekman. Live, he splits the Kisses band with girlfriend Zinzi Edmundson.
Interview: 14 October 2010
When did you first start making music?
"The first songs I wrote were pretty bad. It was when I was in high-school, maybe 15. I started writing songs on guitar, and sort of went from there. The initial music I was inspired by was pretty terrible, so I think my songs reflected that. Some of the stuff was jam-band inspired, some of the stuff was Oasis-influenced. I was really into Brit-pop."
Did you sing in an English accent?
"Kind of, yeah! I wasn't pulling it off, though."
When did you feel like you found your own voice, so to speak?
"Actually, it felt that way from the beginning. Even though I was obviously influenced by, say, Oasis, I feel like those songs were an accurate representation of my 15-year-old self."
Did you'd make music with your life?
"Definitely not. It gradually became that. You convince yourself that it's never gonna happen, and you make a bunch of back-up plans. And then, years down the road, you just suddenly find that this is all you're doing."
When did Princeton begin?
"We started using that name in 2004. Because we started playing together at such a young age, we didn't start the band with these really specific ideas in mind, or throw ourselves into it. It was just to put a name on literally anything we came up with. We chose the name because that was the name of the street my brother and I grew up on. It didn't really have a meaning to us. Later on, when we were doing more ambitious recordings, it took on a different meaning, obviously."
How so?
"We just had a bunch of people tag us as elitists, I guess for a lot of people there are connotations of arrogance just from even referring to the very idea of academia. Obviously, given we never named ourselves after a school, that wasn't something we were thinking."
Did you end up hearing or reading about Vampire Weekend a lot, just by dint of being supposedly preppy, or elitist?
"Oh, absolutely. Because that time when we were coming up was when they were becoming huge, so we'd always be lumped in with them. It was fine sometimes, and frustrating other times. It's weird: some musical genres or styles, people love to see a ton of bands do. But, then, other styles it seems like the world only allows one band, and anyone else doing anything similar is a poser, or a rip-off. There could be a million bands that sound like Animal Collective or a million bands who are really, really lo-fi, and that's totally welcome, but if you have more ambitious, or more specific ideas about your band, people don't seem to be as all-inclusive."
Is Princeton currently on hiatus?
"Not at all. We've actually just finished a new album, and we're going to start touring again in the new year."
What did you want to do —or do differently— on your second record?
"We didn't want it be as twee-sounding. We wanted to be more sophisticated, more mature. It's darker sounding, there's a lot more strings, more orchestration. There was much more of a focus on making this cohesive thing. This was our first chance to really approach this project as something new. The band started so naturally that we never stopped to ask ourselves who we were, or what we were supposed to be. We were just guys making music. It's something you notice so much when you decide to do a side-project. Because that's exactly the first thing you ask yourself: what do I want this project to be?"
So, what did you want Kisses to be?
"I wanted to really focus on making dance-music. I was interested in sentimentality and sincerity; toeing that line, making something that you hope can sincerely affect people, without it getting too cheesy. And I wanted to try to do that by making music inspired by long-playing disco records, and my new-wave Swedish indie dance groups."
Is sincerity a difficult quality to capture?
"It's hard being American. I think the Swedish have a way with English —because it's a second language to them— where there's a naïveté to the words. Growing up in American culture, with my particular relationship to the language, sincerity is a hard thing to pull off. But, I was up for the challenge."
What was it, exactly, about long-playing disco records that inspired you?
"I liked the idea that they could keep people dancing for these extended periods, by luring them into these repetitive rhythms. I initially tried to make these long tracks, but, after four minutes, I just got too bored; I didn't have the discipline to write anything but pop songs. So, I think it's more a conceptual than literal disco record. I don't think these are songs people could actually play in clubs. I didn't record them with this super hard-hitting low-end that'd be perfect to pump in a club. I don't think any DJs are going to mistake this for a dance record."
Summery?
"Well, I live in Los Angeles, so it's like summer here all year around. I don't look at the record as a summer record. For me, I hear the songs and think of 4AM. It's more a record about really late at night, and really early in the morning. I don't really care that everyone seems to think it's a summery record, nor does it bother me that I keep getting these super-contemporary comparisons, like Cut Copy or Jens Lekman. I'm cool with that. I just want people to spend time with the record. That's the only hope I really have, both with Kisses and with Princeton. I'm just glad that people seem to really like it. I don't care if they think it’s just a fun record to dance to, as long as they spend time with it."
Was it a more fun record for you to make?
"In some ways, yeah. There's certainly more of a carefree attitude. In Princeton, everything is very considered, and discussed, and laboured-over. And that produces its own results, in a good way. But, there's definitely something to be said for putting less thought into things and just expressing yourself in a more carefree way."
