Cut Off Your Hands

Hype is a peculiar and elusive beast for a band. While positive press has the ability to break a band and draw in new fans, the music world is littered with artists whose hype was too much to handle, and they folded under the pressure of living up to such high expectations. Hype may come in the form of being played on a college radio station, having a glowing review on a website, or being featured on the cover of a widely-circulated music magazine. And tonight for New Zealand pop band Cut Off Your Hands, it comes in the form of their picture in the Toronto Star. The band’s bassist Phil Hadfield beams as he proudly shows me the tattered copy of the article that a female fan handed him. The article – written by music critic Ben Rayner – compares the band to The Smiths and The Cure, and is the main reason The Horseshoe Tavern is packed tonight for their Toronto debut performance. Perhaps fitting for a band that has a song called “Expectations”, the audience is here this evening to see if this little band that came out of nowhere to mass acclaim can live up to theirs.

“We played a SPIN party, a Rolling Stone party, a NME party.” Nick Johnston is listing off a string of high-profile performances that the band has recently taken part in, with an air that is part nonchalance and part self-confidence. The toast of tastemakers everywhere after their debut album You and I was released early this year in the States and Canada, on major record label Frenchkiss (home to Les Savy Fav, Passion Pit and The Dodos, among others), the Auckland quartet has seen their stocks in the indie pop world steadily rising. The band has been on an extensive North American tour, with stops from Los Angeles to Montreal. They have also gotten very little chance to breathe in-between having to face a whirlwind of media, which today alone includes stops at the MuchMusic, 101.2 The Edge, and the University of Toronto’s college radio station. While the rest of the band is lugging in their gear and checking their emails on their laptops, I had the opportunity to speak to the lead singer, about everything from life in New Zealand to the challenges of losing band members and the pressures of being considered the saviours of pop music.

“We take that stuff with a grain of salt,” said Johnson when asked about how he felt about the recent wave of attention his band has enjoyed, “It’s very nice and flattering, but at the end of the day being a buzz band doesn’t really sell records, it doesn’t necessarily change the way the four guys are as a band.” It’s hard to believe that the Johnston I’m speaking to is the same Johnston that, later that night, transforms into the energetic frontman of Cut Off Your Hands. In-person Johnston speaks quietly with his noticeably “Kiwi” (as New Zealanders call themselves) accent, and is incredibly down-to-earth. Talking to Johnston, it becomes obvious that he isn’t at all swayed by the notoriously fickle Internet and print world. “It’s important to keep your ears open, but there’s just too many opinions going around to take heed of that stuff,” he said, “For us we’ve still got to play over 100 shows a year so we’ve got to be loving our music. I’d like to think that this band would exist outside that.” Ever humble, he tells me that “I don’t ever go and search my name, my band name, or check it out. If I write a song that I feel is shit and released it, than I would like to think that if a million people said it was really good, I’d like to still think it was shit. By the same token if I write something that I think is really good and a million people say its shit than I still like to think I could believe in it.”

Ask anyone what they know about New Zealand and you’re bound to come up with at least a few stereotypes. The set of The Lord of the Rings for instance. A plethora of sheep and rolling, green hillsides. And a certain “former New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo accapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”. “Flight of the Conchords are doing their best and that’s fine, it’s funny and stuff, but it gets frustrating,” says lead Johnston, “In the middle of North America you have people asking us how long it took to drive from New Zealand.”

Though the band is doing their best to help dispel these stereotypes, the limitations of being a band from New Zealand repeatedly come up during our conversation, and Johnston can’t help compare his country’s musical scene to Australia and the rest of the world. “There’s definitely more of a market for alternative music in Australia,” he says and in the United States he says, “It’s a lot more inclusive, a lot broader at the moment anyway. America seems with this college radio thing it makes able to reach a lot of people without being commercial. Also touring is a big deal here.” Yet for a globe-trotting band that has played shows in Tokyo and was part of the Airwaves Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland, you might be surprised to learn Johnston’s favourite city to play. “One of my favourite cities to go back to and play at would be Wellington, New Zealand. It’s not our hometown, but it’s really cool and there’s a good crew of kids there who are very like-minded. Every time we play there they would make the party really cool. Auckland is cool, but it’s always quite nerve-wracking because our girlfriends and our best friends are there.”

“I don’t know what position it is, but it looks good.” I’m hanging out with Hadfield at the band’s merch table, as he attempts to explain to a fan the sexually suggestive cover artwork of You and I. The fashionable one of the group, today the 28-year-old Hadfield is wearing a grey high-collared jacket, skinny jeans and a white No Age (the LA noise rock duo is a perennial favourite of the band) tee with rainbow lettering. In fact, a few years ago the bassist tried to start his own clothing line but he told me that it didn’t quite take off. He divulges that he contributed song-writing duties to the latest album and would “be happy if two or three of my songs made the next album”. With a disarming smile and drinking from a glass of red wine in his hand while texting away on his cell phone in the other, he happily poses for pictures and chats with the fans that come to the merch table where we are sitting. Most don’t recognize him and than are deeply apologetic when he tells them that, yes, he is in fact is a member of the band.

Even though their popularity has ascended so quickly, Cut Off Your Hands’ journey hasn’t been without setbacks. Before the current tour, guitarist Michael Ramirez left the band so that he could get married and get a job yet Johnston insists that they are “still good friends”. “This is the first time we’ve had to deal with something like this. For three years we’ve had the same four guys,” he said. The soft-spoken Jono Lee, who Johnston knew through a friend’s band and describes as “just a kid from Auckland wanting to be in a band”, was called on to fill the vacant position and was quickly brought up to speed with the band’s catalogue in order to make the tour a possibility. However, that wasn’t the end of the lineup changes. Recently Brent Harris announced he would be leaving the band due to extensive hearing damage that he had suffered from since he was 16, which certainly hasn’t been helped drumming in a band. “That’s really unfortunate for us, and horrible for him,” he said, adding that Harris will be taking “at least a year off.” Such personnel changes might deter lesser bands, but Cut Off Your Hands is determined to press forward while they have the momentum, and Johnston tells me that they have approximately thirty new songs. “I’m meeting up with a bunch of drummers from New Zealand and Australia and I should be able to find someone. I’ve got like a two week window to find someone and bring them up and than our first show back with the new drummer is the start of our next tour.” Johnston however wants to make it clear that Harris is to be considered very much a part of the band, and will be with them in spirit, if not physical presence. “Brent is one of the best drummers and musicians I’ve played with. It’s going to be a big challenge.”

Early that afternoon, I travelled with the band to the venue through the slowly moving downtown Toronto traffic rush in their white tour van. Even though it is the beginning of the work week for most, from the look of the four guys and one driver in the vehicle with me, it might as well be a Friday. “We actually had the day off yesterday,” the red-haired Harris informs me wearily. Lee is sitting in the passenger seat; his face and eyes obscured by sunglasses and a hoodie, listening to his MP3 player. Johnston and Hadfield also have their eyes closed in the backseat, heads bowed against the van’s windows. In fact Harris, whom appears to be at least slightly more awake, is the only one to make small talk with me; mentioning that they had been to Niagara Falls the previous day and their previous week’s stop in Austin, Texas for the massive South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival. There the band played not one, but ten shows in the span of the four day festival. The band’s North American tour began in February in Vancouver and finishes up April 4th in New York City. “It’s been tiring,” says Johnston, “We’ve had six hour drives, eight hour drives at the most and then we’d have to play a show after, and a few other longer ones.” At least for Johnston, he is soon ready to head home, if only for awhile. “We haven’t toured New Zealand since September,” he said, “but we really want to go back when we have something new.”

Back inside however, the audience that has dramatically swelled in size as the band takes to the stage. Johnston gives a bare-bones introduction (“We are Cut Off Your Hands from Auckland, New Zealand. Thank you for having us.”), and their band kicks into their infectious lead single “You and I”. The band sounds ten times louder than on record, and their set inspires spontaneous dancing and particularly enthusiastic bout of cheering from a group of heavily bearded (and likely intoxicated) men. Their songs are uncomplicated in their lyrics and musical execution, but when they are sung with such passion, that their messages of love, fear and friendship leave the audience believing that they have witnessed the future of indie pop. Johnston is eager to show off his best moves to the crowd, flailing and jumping up and down, like a five-year-old hyped up on sugared cereal and Saturday morning cartoons. And for that short-but-sweet 40 minutes, under the Horseshoe’s bright lights, he is the biggest pop star in the world.

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MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/cutoffyourhands