Stranded In Stereo: The Stranded Local Q&A: The Channels

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The Stranded Local Q&A: The Channels

For me, good indie pop is like a cold beer after a long day at work – instantly relaxing yet refreshing enough to give me the kick I need to keep awake long enough to make it from the bar back to my apartment. But the Channels are better than just a good indie pop band (they are the next level up from my usual Miller High Life: think Harpoon IPA). Especially fantastic is their song “The Moon” off their debut self-titled album.

The Channels formed approximately three years ago in Falmouth, MA after recording a few demos for a band called The Fine Brothers.

“We were recording for several days, first in Vermont then on the Cape, and at some point we got tired of the serious material that we’d been doing so we penned a quick ‘60’s tune called “Baby, You Make My Heart Sing” and recorded it in what seemed like a few minutes,” says guitarist/keyboardist Ben Svenson. “It was a lot of fun, and it sparked the creation of a band called the O-Rings which eventually morphed into The Channels when we discovered, after being booed and hissed at CBGBs, that it was an O-Ring malfunction that downed the Challenger.”

Read on to see Svenson answer the same five question SIS always asks.


Hailing from Boston, makes us better than all those non-Boston bands because

We namedrop the Red Sox a lot.


Name at least three bands that are still around and touring that you’d love to be on a bill with, and think it fits well

RaRaRiot, The Light, Deathbanjo


Your favorite Boston venue to perform in is
Tewksbury Methodist Church


Are there any genres that influence your music conceptually, rather than sonically? (In that you can’t hear from simply listening to the music, but from getting into the structure or mathematics of the song-writing, etc.)

No, although I do feel that, conceptually, our mathematical structuring of the material is subtly, perhaps imperceptibly, one extended tribute to Tears for Fears.


Your favorite local bar to hit up when not doing the whole band deal is

The Cellar


[Myspace] http://www.myspace.com/thechannelstheband

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