Oh No Oh My 'Deal With Life' on 'People Problems' Album

Posted on Jan 20th 2011 1:00PM by Mike Ayers
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Davey Wilson

This week marks the return of Austin, Texas-based band Oh No Oh My, who released their self-titled debut way back in 2006. Since then, they've settled down as a four-piece, toured relentlessly with big rock bands like Mew and even removed those pesky exclamation points that cluttered up their name initially as Oh No! Oh My! But just because they're a hot-to-trot indie band, it doesn't mean they're devoid of problems, which they tackle on their sophomore set, 'People Problems.'

"We were throwing around a whole bunch of titles and thought, 'You know, everyone has people problems,'" multi-instrumentalist Tim Regan tells Spinner. "That's pretty much the reason people do have problems. The songs deal with life that's made up with people problems. We're not trying to be depressing by any means, but this is why we make music. Otherwise, we'd just lie around."

Of the most obvious odes to problems is the album's second track, 'You Were Right,' which Regan describes as the band's "rock song." Aside from the title's obvious nod to Built to Spill, the song finds Oh No Oh My tackling exactly what their album says it does.

"Those are words you don't hear very much," Regan says. "Rarely [do they] come out of people's mouth. Some of the songs that are a downer or a serious nature, they're still upbeat."

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2011 should be a rather busy year for Oh No Oh My. They'll spend the rest of January and February touring Europe, where they've amassed enough of a following to headline clubs throughout France, Belgium and Italy. They'll return stateside this spring, with a bevy of dates in their hometown during SXSW.

"We had a big talk about a year and a half ago, where we said we want these songs to stand on their own in their instrumentation," Regan says of 'People Problems.' "We want it to work if someone could play it on just the piano or guitar. Outside of the obvious people problems, we became very collaborative as a group. Everybody worked at the lyrics as a group. That's one of those things where I don't think a lot of people do that."

Oh No Oh My Perform 'Summerdays'