Cigarette does something rare with their music in that they do less with more. There are six members of the band, Jonathan Howard, Richard Howard, Evan Napala, Johnny Ward, Ben Brown and Drew Hagelin, all of whom may be playing, at any given time, guitar, drums, viola, trumpet, piano or Rhodes. Yet, Cigarette doesn’t sound like an overblown rock orchestra. Their songs have a minimalist, almost catatonic effect, as if the listener has stumbled into a dream or some other ethereal plane. There are hints of bands like Sigur Rós or Sonic Youth in the wistful songs of Cigarette, but mostly, the band sounds as if they’ve effectively soundtracked a nature walk or a dream. It’s powerful, yet soft-spoken.

We talked to Richard Howard about playing unorthodox spaces, naming songs based on no-longer-present lyrics and possibly the most bizarre tour arrest of all time.

Find them online: On Facebook

See them next: Saturday at 10 p.m. at The Shop, 607 New York Avenue NW, with Hume and Yeoung

It looks like your next show is in a place called The Shop.

We’re also doing a show soon in a welding studio.

How did you find this place?

Our friend lives there. He’s in the band. And Collin who does Buildings lives there too.

Didn’t you also play a show in a tire yard?

Yeah. That was cool. A bunch of bands played that. We made some cakes. It was in a tire yard. It was pretty neat, the way the tires were set up behind where the little stage was. And someone made a bunch of cookies. So, that was nice and then a bunch of nice people from the neighborhood also came by and checked it out. So, it was a neat, eclectic kind of night.

It seems like you’re making your way through all the alternative show spaces in the neighborhood.

Well, it seems like it’s more interesting to do something like that or sometimes easier to go out of your way and find — not the average space to do a show. You have more flexibility to do what it is that you want.

You have four different places of origin on your Facebook page. Is that where everyone’s from or where everyone is right now?

There are six people in the band and we’re all from Virginia. But right now, Evan goes to Hunter in New York. So, it’s kind of hard for him. He’ll come down for practice and to play shows and stuff, but Johnny is in Hawaii right now with his girlfriend, who has been a friend of mine since we were in the sixth grade. She went on tour with us this summer. But, apparently he just surfs all the time, but he’ll be back in a few weeks. We’ve been working on this record and we’re going to try to finish it when he gets back. We have a show in January so he’s going to try to be back for that.

What does he play?

We all switch around. He plays the viola, the guitar, bass, drums, some singing. The Rhodes piano also.

You guys use a lot of instrumentation considering that you have a minimalist sound.

Yeah, totally. There’s a song that has a ukulele on it. We use viola and trumpet besides standard guitar, bass, drums. We have a stage piano and a Rhodes which is kind of a pain in the ass to carry.

Do you use the Rhodes live?

Yeah. We bring it to most shows. During the month long tour we did this summer, we brought it. Some of the spaces that we went to, it looked really funny carrying it. I moved a big couch recently and that thing feels like it’s nothing compared to that.

How’d the big tour go this summer?

It was a lot of fun. It was a really good experience. It had some ups and downs. When we got to the desert it was a little crazy.

What happened in the desert?

Well, a couple of shows fell through and there were some traumatic occurrences in the van. Some people maybe didn’t know what they were getting into and acted kind of goofy. But it all worked out once we got to California.

What was your favorite place to play?

Well, there were two shows where I had the most fun. One was in Austin where there was really no one that saw us play. We played at this place called the Beauty Bar and we got booked on a show with like, three noise acts. There was this older couple that was watching us and they were heckling us in a nice way. They were like, “Are you serious?” We were like, “Yeah.” They, just, progressively throughout the set started making out more and more until they finally disappeared into the night. And it was them and the staff that watched us, but the staff really liked it. One of the bartenders even went out of his way to try to get us some more money. I guess that was also the first time that we had every single thing on the stage miked, which we usually don’t, but it was really cool to hear it all like that.

But I think the best show that we played was at The Smell in L.A. There were just a lot of people there and they were all really nice. Evan’s mom was actually around there. He has family that’s out there. My friend Jonathan, that’s in the band, has a friend that had moved out to L.A. recently and our older brother was actually in town for two weeks there. It was cool to see all these familiar faces in a completely different place. And the show was good. I thought we played really well.

What sort of response do you look for from the audiences at your live shows?

I don’t know that I expect anything. Maybe for people to listen. I guess we’re kind of a quieter act so we’ve played a lot of shows where people talk over you. Maybe it’s for people to feel something. I feel like all of our music brings out an emotion. Whatever emotion you get from it is the point.

I’m definitely interested because Cigarette appears to be a band that draws music from sources outside of whatever you may be listening to.

Yeah, totally. I think that it’s because all six of us write and we all have different musical tastes. I was talking to my brother and Drew recently about my role in the group. I’m not the most technical player but I have an interesting artistic approach to the whole thing. I guess of all the other groups that they’ve played in, they’ve never had that, where the way I view things is different from most musicians.

How do you view things?

I always think of things on a grander aesthetic and maybe the performance being a full experience where you’re sucked into something and it takes you somewhere for that amount of time but you don’t really know how much time has passed. You’re just taken somewhere. It’s like a dream. I guess the stuff I write about, also.

What do you write about?

Some of it is from the subconscious and dreams and others are realizations about when you’re sad. There’s a song about going to the sun and there’s a line about if you get those UV rays, you feel a little better. Some of it’s almost like a story book, where we decided on a topic and then go from there but there are all kinds of metaphors.

So, I’m guessing that “Washing Machine” is not a Sonic Youth reference, like I initially thought it was.

It’s not. I think we also thought about calling it “Laundry Device” because of that. It’s funny, because the name comes from lyrics that aren’t on the song. Actually, I don’t think when we recorded it for that tape, I don’t think I’d done the vocals for it. Then when we practiced it, I didn’t like the vocals sounded on it, so it became an instrumental. I think we’ve only played it live three times. So, “Washing Machine” comes from the lyrics that don’t exist.

Did you all grow up together?

My brother and I grew up together and then Ben, I’ve known since the sixth grade. I guess Jonathan knew Drew in high school. We lived in the same town, but I wasn’t friends with him. And Evan was also a friend we made a couple of years ago. He actually was in a band with Drew and the first time we did a weekend of shows, the person that was playing drums with us decided that he didn’t want to go and Evan jumped in on it and he joined the group. Johnny’s probably five years older than all of us but I’ve also known him since I was a teenager just through occurrences like him staying at our house and we played him some of our music and he was at a couple of our first shows. He was in a band that I used to roadie for.

Which band?

Pygmy Lush. He kind of asked to play music with us. So we did that. It was originally just Jonathan and I helping him work on some solo songs.

How long were you a roadie for Pygmy Lush?

Probably for the first two years that they were a band. I don’t know if you heard that they all went to SXSW two years ago and all went to jail. I was with them when they went to jail. The funny thing is that I had been arrested four days earlier in Oklahoma City for apparently stealing string cheese. Weird experiences.

When did Cigarette start up?

About two years ago but it was always kind of sporadic because sometimes it would just be Jonathan and I playing shows. But I’d say two summers ago we recorded our first demo. We used to play a lot of shows last spring. We were playing every other weekend.

Where were you playing?

Mostly houses. But we’ve played a handful of the clubs around here and then weird things like the TIre Yard. Sometimes we’ll play some more art-centered events. But, a lot of houses.

Well, you’re playing the upcoming Sockets Showcase, right?

Yeah, I think we’re opening.

Are you releasing an upcoming recording on Sockets?

I don’t really know. We talked to Sean about it. Originally we were going to do a record with them and he said he was going to pay for it but then his car got stolen. I think a lot of things happen to him. But before we went on tour he came to a few of our shows and expressed that he’d like to release a record. But, right now we’ve got to finish the record. We have a huge catalogue of songs. We probably have something like sixty songs. So we’re trying to record as much as possible over the next couple of months.

Are you recording yourselves or are you going elsewhere to record?

All of our previous recordings were done in basements. Pretty lo-fi. But, do you know Hays?

Hays Holladay? Yeah.

We recorded seven songs with him recently and it sounds really cool. I never heard what we do with such clarity. It was really interesting to hear. Also, any time we have a chance to record as a group, it’s a really good experience because we can expand on things by adding more harmonies to vocals. I think we might record a single with Hays. We have three singles that we have kind of planned out. We know the songs we want to do for the second one.

How much of what you’re playing tomorrow will be new songs?

I know we’ll be playing some new ones. New songs are fun to play live. Especially at a house show, it’s kind of fun to experiment. It’ll probably be half and half. And those demo with “Washing Machine,” on it has four songs that we re-recorded for the seven-song thing we did. So we might play two of those, just because, all of it we don’t really like playing without everyone.

How many people will be playing on Saturday?

Five. Although we have another friend that does an additional trumpet who might play with us, too. So, we’ll probably play three older songs that everybody has heard and three songs that have only been heard in my basement. Drew’s been writing a lot of country songs recently so we might play one of those. There’s one that sounds like the Flying Burrito Brothers. It’s the first time I’ve heard him sing, too. He’s got a pretty good voice. We’re trying to get into as many of us singing as possible.