Beloved Cincinnati band The Sundresses are back with a new album, This Machine Kills! The album release party is set for Saturday, September 5th at MOTR Pub! We sat down with Brad Schnittger prior to the release to talk about the new album and what is next for The Sundresses.
Tell us about the recording of the new album, This Machine Kills…
This new album is the result of 5 years of perseverance, life-changing events, and dedication. It contains songs that were written as much as 7 years ago, and songs that were written not but 2 or 3 years ago. We recorded it first with Brian Niesz at Ultrasuede Studio here in Cincinnati, then we almost called it quits were it not for Dave Ried accepting the position as drummer so that Jeremy & I would not kill each other. At that point the record was already a couple/few years in the making, but we then re-recorded it with Dave on drums up in Detroit at Chris Lazlo Koltay's High Bias Studio. The record has tracks from both sessions. So it's been a long time coming, and when you add having two children and about 3 or 4 lost jobs, plus the sudden and pretty recent award of a huge grant to one member...things can delay the making of a rock & roll record. So it's been fun, and I think we're all really happy it's finally out.
What does this album mean to the band?
It means we can move forward, creatively. It means our fans can listen to it and enjoy it. We've been stuck on this record for years, and I think we're just glad people finally get to hear it because it really is our best work to date. If we were any other normal band, this record would have been canned, we'd all hate each other, and it would never get released. Instead we canned it, un-canned it, re-recorded it, thought we were gonna release it, then didn't, then we hated each other, then didn't, and just decided we should just have fun making music again and get this thing out. Overall, we took our sound and really polished it in a good way. It's still dirty, but's polished with rocks. Still weird, but my mom can listen to it. Maybe not so many cuss words, nor the aggression against "the man", but it's still usdresses and I think we made this album a lot more approachable. So I think it means we've made it. I think a lot of people thought we were done, but we weren't, we aren't, we were just busy with life things.
What is next for The Sundresses? Tour plans, big shows lined up etc…
That's a really good question. No plans. I think we'd like to tour again, so maybe we'll see about that. Mostly, things have returned to where they started for us. We're gonna have fun playing music. Forget the rest. That's really what it's all about. It's also easy to forget when you've been doing this as long as we have.
