MOMS rocks out in space suits

The Musicians

Josh Hirshfeld '08 - mandolin, vocals

Tina Kim '11 - cello

Kieran Ledwidge '08 - violin

Tyler Pines '09 - drums

Evan Younger '08 - bass, vocals

So what's with the name MOMS? How did you come up with that?

Josh: The full name of the band is Miracles of Modern Science. I don't actually remember how we thought of it. We were just throwing around ideas, and this one seemed catchy, and we liked the acronym. The whole "modern science" thing is ironic since we use such old-fashioned instruments.

When was the band formed? How did it come about?

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Evan: Josh and I lived next door to each other freshman year. We met and discovered we had similar music taste and a similar sense of humor, so we started playing as an acoustic country/comedy duo. We played all kinds of different instruments and at the beginning played mostly in Forbes for small audiences. At one of these early concerts we heard Kieran playing with his band The Friendship, and we said, "We have to steal him!" Back then our big "hit" was a rendition of "Shout" by Tears for Fears as a drunken sea shanty. It was very theatrical and included a serialized story about two lonely pirates' adventures on the high seas.

Josh: At our second or third show, we pulled Kieran out of the audience for "Shout's" big finale. He ripped out an epic violin solo, and we knew he had to stay.

Evan: So then we became an acoustic trio. But soon we started thinking about expanding into a "real" band and finding a drummer and so on.

Josh: We had always planned on eventually being a full band, with an amplified, electric sound, but we had no idea it would turn out like it did. Some of our demos from freshman year had electric guitar, synthesizer and the like.

Evan: We didn't end up finding a drummer freshman year. But in the beginning of sophomore year, we heard about Tyler, and that's how he got involved. For a while we had Josh switch back and forth between electric guitar and mandolin. But we found that the electric guitar dominated the other instruments, whereas the mandolin blended organically with the other string sounds. So soon we settled on the mandolin, violin, cello, double bass and drums combination, and we dropped the guitar altogether.

Josh: We liked that we could combine all these normally wussy instruments to create a rockin' sound.

So what kind of music do you play? How would you describe it?

Tyler: Acoustic space-rock?

Josh: Yeah, my stock answer for that one is that we're a bluegrass band sent into outer space on a disco ball spaceship.

Tyler: A disco ball spaceship of rock! We only really have one disco song...

Kieran: Yeah, and we don't have any bluegrass either...

Josh: Sometimes I say "orchestral indie rock." But I think that's misleading, as it's not like the strings are just background, augmenting the sound. The band is the string section.

Evan: We'd like to think we don't fit into a genre.

What about influences? Are there any bands or musicians that have really influenced your sound?

Tyler: What about Arcade Fire?

Evan: Ehh ... some people have compared us to Arcade Fire, but we've been trying to shake that tag. Arcade Fire [is] more of a traditional rock band with strings laid on top. With us, the strings are the driving force. Hey, but they're still a great band.

Josh: Broken Social Scene [has] always been an influence too, I guess. And Tears for Fears!

What do you all listen to, then? What are you into at the moment?

Tyler: I listen to all kinds of music: rock, a lot of jazz, some Brazilian music too.

Josh: Yeah, we've been integrating a lot of bossa nova into our sound recently...

Kieran: For the moment, I've been listening to a lot of post-rock. Not that rock's over, but for these people it is! Stuff like Menomena or Mogwai.

Josh: Now that you bring up post-rock, bands like Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky are definitely influences, in terms of that epic sound we're trying to get. We have a lot of big build-ups in our songs, too, and post-rock's an influence there. We're just doing a poppier version of post-rock, I guess.

Evan: Lately I've been listening to a lot of country, like Hank Williams and Dolly Parton.

Tyler: You're fired from the band!

Evan: Well, I listen to a whole lot of everything. Anyone can look through my music library and find something they hate ... and love. Lately, I've also been really into Talk Talk. They started out in the early '80s as another cookie-cutter New Wave band, but then they decided to throw away their synths for real instruments, kind of inventing post-rock in the process ... it's beautiful stuff.

Tina: Right now I'm in a huge indie/electronica phase. We have this song called "Dance Dance Dance" - that's my favourite MOMS song, by far! That's our more synth-y style coming through ... I guess you can kind of tell from the name what it's like.

Evan: That started out as an electronic song Josh and I wrote, but then we adapted it to our sound. It doesn't really fit with the style of our other songs, but it's still fun to play. And Tina gets to scream in it.

Tell me about the space suits you wear! Where did that idea come from?

Evan: Well, we decided we wanted something theatrical and weird for our first show. So we thought, "What about space suits?" Then we looked online and they had these "one size fits all" space invader costumes. They're actually way too small for us - except maybe for Tina - but I guess that's part of their charm. So we had to choose between blue and silver-colored space suits, and ended up going for all silver. You know, we didn't want a front man or anyone to be singled out. But then they sent us four silver suits and one blue one anyway. So we called the company back to ask for another silver one, and it turned out there were no more silver ones in existence. They were the last ones ever! So Tyler got to be special, he got the blue suit. He's kind of like the goalie.

Josh: So the whole space suit thing stuck I guess. The audience wants the space suits! Some audience members actually told us they came more for the space suits than for the music, which hurt a bit. Once when we came on to set up in normal clothes all the audience started shouting at us for not wearing the space suits!

Tyler: We don't wear them at every show, but it unifies the band and looks all shiny.

Kieran: Yeah, and we're wearing each other's sweaty costumes, which is pretty disgusting, I guess. We only put our names on them recently.

Josh: They've actually only been washed once, by hand, and it didn't really work. They lost a bit of their shine.

Tyler: Now we use Febreze.

Who writes the songs?

Tyler: Josh and Evan.

Evan: Yeah, usually one of us will come in with a riff, and then we'll build off of that. We'll go back and forth contributing stuff until the whole thing is done.

Tyler: They usually bring in a partially done version of the song. Then we'll play around with it, and we'll all contribute stuff.

Evan: Even the other three who aren't the main songwriters, they're great musicians and they each add a lot of their own style - it's not like we just write parts for them. Oh hey, I forgot to mention: We won Battle of the Bands at Princeton [in] 2006!

Josh: Yeah, and on that note, we want a formal apology from the ‘Prince' for writing an article about Battle of the Bands after it happened but not saying we won!

Kieran: We don't actually want that, but a mention would have been nice...

Where have you played in the past?

Josh: Most often we play at Terrace [Club].

Evan: We started out at Cafe [Vivian], then Colonial, then Terrace. We've played there like five times.

Kieran: Not that there's a hierarchy of clubs or anything!

Evan: We also got to open for Beirut at [Terrace's] Lawnparties.

Josh: We've also played the Lion's Den in New York, which is now called Sullivan's Hall, and various basement shows around here.

Evan: This semester it's been tough because three of us have theses. But we're celebrating our theses being over with a show at Wesleyan on the 18th and one at Terrace on May 1.

Where do you see yourselves going? What's the future of the band?

Josh: We're planning to keep things going in New York next year. But in terms of the specifics, we'll have to see what happens.

Evan: Yeah, as far as day jobs and stuff, we haven't figured that out.

Josh: We've also been slowly working on a new demo. If the quality's good enough, hopefully it'll be an EP. We've released one song from that so far: It's called "Luminol." You can listen to it on our MySpace! When we're done with our theses in a few days, then we'll get right back into recording, and we hope to release some stuff before the summer.

Are there any other campus bands you want to mention? Any other good ones to look out for?

Tina: DJ Altitude Sickness is [great].

Evan: And Ania Jakubek '08, Ellen Adams '10 and Michael Hammond '09 - more singer-songwriter-y stuff.

Kieran: And then there's The Friendship, a side project I'm working on. We're very influenced by Eastern European folk music at the moment, but the band's got lots of people from different backgrounds, so there are lots of different influences. It hasn't been very active as of late, but it will be!

Myspace.com/miraclesofmodernscience