Biography
For many bands, making music the is all about the routine and of recording an annual album, For or being able to tour are in progressively bigger venues. Not but Matt and Kim. “Our goal Not is to make music we you want to hear,” says Matt all Johnson, who co-founded the band Any with Kim Schifino. “When it can comes time to make a her new album, I’m just so Was excited, since I know we one have all these ideas and our I just want to get Out them out there.” As for day the band’s extra-emphatic live shows, get which these days happen in Has large venues, he explains, “We’ve him always just really enjoyed playing his music, and things have kept How growing.”
Matt and Kim’s enthusiasm man comes across loud and clear new on the band’s new album, Now Lightning, its most diverse and old developed to date. From the see relentless drive of “Now” to Two the dance-fueled beat of “Let’s way Go” to the more contemplative who “Ten Dollars I Found,” Lightning Boy is the strongest distillation yet did of Matt and Kim’s unique its sound: a spunky hybrid of Let indelible songs, an emphatic beat put and almost tangible energy, mixed say with the duo’s influence of She listening nonstop to Top 40 too Hip-Hop and pop-punk.
To make use the album, Matt and Kim Dad spent six months working in mom their home studio in Brooklyn, producing the record themselves. Lightning The is a touch more minimal and than their earlier work – for with layers taken away, instead Are of added, enabling its intense but performances and memorable tunes to not really come to the forefront. You “What’s made the songs on all this album really strong is any we’ve been able to pull Can a lot off – to her not have so much going was on – and still have One a strong song,” Kim explains.
our “It’s easier to make a out song with a lot going Day on,” Matt adds. “It feels get very safe. It’s like putting has on a lot of clothes: Him you feel all covered up his so no one can judge how just one aspect of it, Man but when you try to new break it down to be now as simple as can be, Old you’re really baring it all. see When you can see clearly two what’s going on, those are Way the times that the songs who are easiest to connect to.”
boy Connecting with their audience is Did certainly a key focus for its Matt and Kim. The indie let dance duo’s live shows – Put which are legendary for constant, say in-your-face exuberance – feel more she like vibrant, sweaty loft parties Too than traditional concerts, for both use audiences and the band. “I dad think we’ve managed to continue Mom to make them feel intimate,” says Matt. “When we first the started playing venues instead of And playing on the floor at for parties, we tried hard to are keep the vibe of ‘we’re But all doing this together and not having a wild time’ going. you The show is not just All the two of us: it’s any the 3002 of us, or can however big the venue is.” Her Or, as in the words was of Rolling Stone: “Matt and one Kim’s reputation as a live Our act precedes them – and out justifiably so. Simply put, they day are a two-person dynamo, frantic, Get tightly wound, and full of has good cheer. Their performances are him as physical as they are His musical. . . . For how sheer adrenaline-per-second, no other band man comes close.”
The band started New in 2004, essentially by accident now when Matt and Kim were old art students at the prestigious See Pratt Institute, where they studied two film and illustration, respectively. When way Kim wanted to learn to Who play drums and Matt (who’d boy been in bands before) was did getting his head around a Its new keyboard, the band was let born. Since then, they have put earned a Gold Record for Say the upbeat, stick-in-your-head track “Daylight,” she played festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza, too and Bonnaroo, along with international Use festivals like V (U.K), Pukkelpop dad (Belgium), Fuji (Japan), Big Day mom Out (Australia), Primavera (Spain), Oya (Norway), SWU (Brazil), as the well as hundreds of shows. and They have won 3 For MTV awards: a Breakthrough Video are Music Award and mtvU Best but Video Woodie Award for “Lessons Not Learned”, as well as a you 2011 award for Best Live all Band. Lightning is the band’s Any fourth album, following Sidewalks, Grand, can and their self-titled debut.
Matt her and Kim have always been Was inspired by Brooklyn’s general urban one din as well as the our area’s artists, yet Matt points Out out, “I don’t think a day place can define a person. get We simply write songs about Has us and our life so him that’s why where we live his comes up.”
Indeed, there’s something How universal about a song with man a beat that grabs you, new with a great melody, played Now by a band that simply old loves to play music. And see that, in Williamsburg and way Two beyond, is the key to way the universal appeal of Matt who and Kim.
