The Morning Benders: Live at Rolling Stone

Bay Area dream-pop band the Morning Benders used some unconventional spaces like hangars and churches while recording their latest album, Big Echo, but frontman Chris Chu is actually a bit of a studio freak. "There has been a trend in modern recording to try to erase the sound of the studio," he says, "which to me sounds kind of sterile." Though the band's Sixties-obsessed sound reveals their admiration of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, Chu reports they were listening to My Bloody Valentine while making the record, too. (Check out the band's live performance of three new tracks — "All Day Day Light," "Cold War" and "Promises" — in the RS studio above.)

Chu also lists Blur's Think Tank and Kate Bush's Hounds of Love as inspirations, and isn't shy about his affinity for R&B. "R. Kelly's raw talent is so obvious to me," he says. "What he does with the melody is something that not many people can do and keep interesting. And that's just something that I relate to and think is really inspiring as a singer and songwriter."

The Morning Benders recently wrapped a tour supporting Broken Bells, which they're following up with European dates and a two-night stand with the Black Keys in Central Park. And when they head back into the studio next, Chu says he'll be starting with a blank slate. "With every song I write I want to try to do something I haven't done," he says. "I don't really want to settle on a sound, you know? I think some bands are good at that, but it's not for us, we want to keep changing."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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