A Few Questions for The Points

Image courtesy Windian Records

We chatted with local punks The Points back in November, following the release of their excellent self-titled album, which highlights the vocal growls, guitar howls and sheer adrenaline that has always characterized their live shows. Even within the nine months since that last interview, they've kept up a high rate of productivity. In between a long list of tour dates and the relocation of singer/guitarist Geo White, the band has still managed to start work on a second full-length album. In addition, they're releasing a 7" just to keep fans from feeling the void where good and fast garage rock should be.

Two of the three songs from Beat in Hell, the self-titled track and "F. Dali," are high-speed, high-octane tunes with fuzzy guitars and ear-splitting screams from White. The release finishes off with the five and a half minute "Shout," which starts, much like "F. Dali," at breakneck Preakness speed before slowing down...but not settling down, as White keeps his vocals hysterical right through until the end. They'll be celebrating the 7"'s release tomorrow night at DC9, so we talked with drummer Travis "Cobruhhh" Jackson about their new label and what new developments we can expect to hear on Saturday.

As far as writing the new material, was that all you and Geo? Were Chad and Danny involved in any of it? I don't know if they're still touring with you guys.

Actually those recordings were done with Rebecca in the band. We've just never released them before. They've been on the cutting room floor a few times and we just thought they were some of our favorite songs that we just never released on an album, and we're still in the middle of recording our new record, so we just wanted to keep putting out records. I just started a label so I definitely wanted to start out with a Points record first.

So Windian is your label. I was wondering why you'd switch from one local label to another one.

It was more of a boredom thing. Geo moved to Chicago, so we're not doing our usual two week practice times or playing that much anymore, so, just wanted to be able to still maintain some kind of musical entity of some sort and putting out records is definitely something that I've always wanted to do. I've got some good bands coming up for that: Two Tears from New York City and Personal & the Pizzas from San Francisco later this year. I already dove head in.

Will the songs on the 7" be on the upcoming album or are they songs that you wanted to release because you had them and wanted them out there?

Oh, it's definitely going to be a release by itself. The stuff that we're going to be recording is all brand new material. I think we're going to do ten or twelve songs. But yeah, this release is certainly just wanting to put out a single. We did a single a few years back, the Rock 'n' Roll No Rules single. That did really really well. There's a lot of people out there who buy 45's and I have a passion for them, myself, so definitely wanted to keep that going and keep the listeners...still there.

Are you the one who updates the blogspot page?

Yeah, I'm the nerd, I guess. George Washington, I don't know, he doesn't really have internet, but, I'm a fan of the Google.

I just found it interesting that the track you listed as the B-side on the web page was the one that got reviewed by Aaron Leitko for Pitchfork. Was that his pick, or was that the track specifically that you sent to him?

That was his pick. I sent him all the material and that was just the one he wanted to represent, which was fine by me. I love that song.

Can we expect to see any new songs at the show tomorrow?

It's actually going to be all new songs. Geo's going to be in town in the next week or so and we're going to start rehearsing. Although we've got six new ones, so we're going to bust all of those out. I think the other four that we have that haven't been released, we'll be playing as well. So we'll probably play 15 to 18 songs, and 90 percent of them will be brand new. Which I'm pretty excited about. Getting tired of playing the same old songs.

What direction do you think you guys have taken from your self-titled material?

I think we're definitely going more poppier. Our last record was a lot poppier than anything else we had recorded before that, but we love The Nerves. We listen to that record a lot. So we're definitely getting a lot poppier. More of a songwriting aesthetic I guess. But we're still going to be very aggressive. Very up front and loud about it. But trying to write pop songs is something we've done for a long time in other bands, so we definitely wanted to incorporate that into this band as well.

The songs from the 7" sound less poppy, more raw and now that you mention it, it does sound like something that had been written previously.

They are older songs. They're not exactly old. They're new to everyone else. I don't think we've played any of those songs live. I know "F. Dali" we never played live. Plus, we had to rediscover it, sifting through old material we were like, wow, these are great songs, I don't know why they're not on a record. And instead of wasting time, I just took it upon myself to put it out.