LoveLikeFire

A conversation with Ann Yu

(January 2008)

Interview by Amber Henson

LoveLikeFire.  One word.  Don’t make it three.  Don’t read into it.  Just go with it.

When I first pulled the LoveLikeFire album out of The Red Alert inbox, I had no idea the journey I’d be taking.  After becoming somewhat enamored with them once I  listened to and reviewed their first EP, Bed of Gold, I made it my mission to see them in concert.  Then came their album, An Ocean in the Air, and upon the second time of seeing them live, in early December at the Bordello Bar in downtown LA, I worked up the courage to ask Ann Yu (vocals and guitar) if I could have an interview.  She accepted, and next thing I knew we were on the phone on a Friday night, giggling like schoolgirls about our sighting of Elijah Wood at that downtown bar.

After exhaustive internet research, I still could not figure out how LoveLikeFire was at all related to the Stratford Four.  If you look up LoveLikeFire on Yahoo, the description of the band reads: “San Francisco band formed out of the ashes of The Stratford 4.”  It turns out, the two former members of the Stratford Four were originally in LoveLikeFire.  “When we first started the band,” Yu told me after I stated my confusion, “We had half of the Stratford Four.  We (she and drummer David Farrell) were together for about three months, and we played, like, two shows.”

Once it was just Yu and Farrell, they decided the City of Angels was the place for LoveLikeFire to be reborn.  “I was ready to leave, quit my job, go down, to go start looking for potential people to be in the band and potential neighborhoods to live in.”  But they gave San Francisco one last shot.  After reading a Craigslist ad placed by Ted Parker (guitar and piano), they had a session with him and decided to try him out.  “Craigslist is how everyone finds everyone,” Yu explained.  “I forgot what was in that ad, but it’s kind of amazing, I mean, there are a lot of ads, and the kind of music we’re playing, like, there’s only a one percent chance that people out there are really gonna get it.  We wanted a serious musician, someone who wants to be in a serious band that wants to make it.”

So the move to LA didn’t go through, and soon afterwards, they found bassist Robert Kissinger.  “It’s like a miracle when you can find four people, who work well together.  It’s insanely hard to get that together.  I feel like we’d been trying out bass players for years, but there’s always an issue, like wrong gear, or some red flag.”

I admitted that I wished that move to LA had gone through so I could see them live more often, but I knew it was a Catch-22, as they wouldn’t have become the same band.  “Yeah,” Yu said, “Some bands can have six or seven members and that works for them, and some bands do well in LA, but it changes the dynamic so much.  LA’s just a different scene, there’s something in the water down there.  Both are awesome, but it’s just different.”  And it’s not just the water.  “The logistics of LA are so different, like, it’s very unlikely that everyone in the band will be living in, say, Silverlake, and that their [practice] space will be in the same neighborhood.  Up here, we all live within walking distance to our space.  It just doesn’t work that way in Los Angeles.”

Because of that convenience, LoveLikeFire gets to spend more time playing and less time commuting.  And that means that their sound, both live and on their EPs, is polished.  But it’s not just the music that takes up Yu’s time.  “I quit my job last week, so I could deal with the business needs of the band.  Right now it’s pretty manageable.”  LoveLikeFire is not, in fact, signed.  When asked about that, Yu responded: “It’s pretty nice not having so many cooks in the kitchen.”

But doesn’t it seem strange to have such amazing press and still have yet to be signed?  Yu seemed totally unfazed, “We feel lucky, and we know we’re not big yet but all signs point to yes.  We have high standards, and we need more shows and more notoriety.  But with the way the music industry is now, so many bands are doing it on their own.  We have people that help us tremendously, that are basically functioning as a label.  I think we’ll know when we need more help.  I mean, a label can set you up with tours, which would be great, but also marketing, which is not what we’re about.  We don’t need a big name, we have and like our underground roots, so we’re doing it ourselves.”

Back to that amazing press - after reading quite a bit of it, I picked up that a running theme through many of them seemed to be the concept of “love at first sight.”  I asked Yu if she had an explanation for this.  She responded as humbly as possible given my blunt question.  “We find it really flattering.  The thing I always try to make sure I don’t forget is to be honest and truthful.  I mean, I’m singing and writing, and with a new song, there are times when I tap into things that could happen, but I always make sure that everything I’m working on comes from my own experiences.  I think that people read into that honesty, and it doesn’t matter what age you are, I think people have an inherent ability to pick up on bullshit.  I mean, I can tell what is sincere and honest, and I think that’s what’s compelling.  All of us in the band strive for that, and we’re not out there to put up any façade.  Our image is us, and the only thing we want to sell is us and our music.”

So how does that music get made?  “Our writing process is that Tod or I will have a rough idea or a guitar arrangement, and we’ll create the structure of the song and then live with that for a few days.  It always starts with the melody, and then we bring it to the group, everyone has a say, like ‘oh, I think the bridge should be longer’ or a certain verse, or change the intro or outro.  Sometimes a song will take a few days or months, and we play off each other.  It’s always the four of us working on it, so that each person has an ownership of their part.  It works well for us, because that’s part of the creative process, if someone has more possession then they put more into delivering it.”

This delved perfectly into my next question:  is it this ownership that makes them appear so confident on stage?  Yu laughed.  “I’m still learning.  Before a show I’m nervous, I always have butterflies, but right before we walk on stage it all disappears. When I’m up there, it feels so . . . it feels exactly the way I want to be feeling.  It’s like I’m not me anymore, the person who does my day to day life is not the person who’s on stage.  But we all push ourselves, and when I comes to playing live we get to share our music with all those people, at one time, and you get to interact.  I feel like, some bands will have a lot of onstage banter, but what works for us is having something special that we radiate.  We prep outside of the show, and make sure that we have that intensity and that thing that happens only when we’re live.  Like, I’m a big Blonde Redhead fan, and that feeling I get when I see them, the goosebumps . . . well, we’re not there yet, but we’re striving for that.”

I switched gears at this point and asked Yu what bands LoveLikeFire is currently into.  “Right now I’m really into Shout Out Louds. I’ve been really into Swedish indie pop lately.  And Ted recently bought the Peter, Bjorn, and John album, and they’re also Swedish.  Um, Robert’s been really into Film School, and Dave, well, MIA is on the CD player a lot.  He’s more into to harder metal, and I’m the exact opposite with my indie pop. It makes for a lot of good musical tension in the group.”

Lastly, I was curious and worried to know: would their forthcoming LP be in in the same vein as their EPs?  “It’ll be pretty close to the EPs, but will definitely some quiet tracks.  One track will be piano, for instance.  It’s being written as album, so instead of an EP where we were trying to write one epic song after the other, the LP will have an ebb and flow.  It comes from experiences, and will have the ongoing theme of our EPs, which is, well, what inspires me is like a place of sadness.  Ohh, I don’t want to sound too goth or emo here, but like, you get a point, like a quarter-life crisis, and you feel, oh my god, I’m not sure what it’s gonna be like in ten years.  I’ve always felt that way, nervous or full of anxiety.  And I’m at the point where that’s all I want to do is talk about that or sing about it.  So we don’t write a lot of happy chord progressions.”  But all that sadness leads to really thrilling feelings about the album as a whole.  “I’m really excited. I feel like it’s been forever since we put out music. We grow so much with every song.  We’re going to release it as soon as possible, although when that happens will be dependent on how we’re going to release it.”

Godspeed, LoveLikeFire.  Save us from the crap that exists out there.  Save us all.