Spinner

In House With Oberhofer: Letting Go of 'Complete Control' and Finding Success

Gino DePinto, AOL

In House is AOL Music's series in which we welcome artists into our offices to play some music, chat with our staffers and, generally, just hang out. For our latest visit, Spinner sat down with Brooklyn's own Oberhofer to chat about their newest album Time Capsules II, working with Steve Lillywhite and their predilection for vowel sounds.

Brad Oberhofer is a zero-to-60 kind of guy. He sits, perched atop a bar stool in Spinner's Manhattan office, hair sloping like a billowing geyser of brown curls. Despite non-stop touring since SXSW, this frontman is anything but sedentary.

"Honestly, I'm just into audio technology. You know, the closer to zero I can get, the better," he says with a serious grin. "I have an 1/8-inch jack on all my shirts."

Despite his affection for the absurd, this 21-year-old wunderkind is plugged in to a subversive "rockness" that exists at the very core of us all. And with a little bit of jangly guitar and some cat-calling, Brad can bring it to the surface.

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The band's 2011 single "Gotta Go" became one of many summer jams that Oberhofer seem to crank out on command -- it's their calling card and their mission statement. They exude a positivity that isn't often found in indie rock. So, we needed to know, why are they so damn smiley?

"Every time we play a show there is someone that talks to me or talks to us and says he and his girlfriend listen to 'Gotta Go' in the summers while they're driving around, just them two, and that they had such an amazing time."

With constant touring and a steady uptake in hype, Oberhofer landed themselves a record deal with the prestigious Glassnote label and got to work with producer Steve Lillywhite, the skipper behind hit records from U2, Peter Gabriel and Morrissey. But for Brad, working with someone else wasn't exactly easy, as he usually flies solo in the studio.

"It was really difficult at first," he says. "And after thinking about it for years, I finally took a step back and sort of let it happen. It was a huge learning experience. It was really tough for me to let go of me being in complete control, though I still was pretty much in complete control for a lot of it.

"Steve Lillywhite's really humble. He doesn't even appear to have a huge ego. He just really wants to make what's best. He never challenged my ideas. He always wanted to try them, always. If I ever challenged his ideas, he was really accepting of that."

The result is Time Capsules II, Oberhofer's most mature record to date. Symphonies of chimes resound throughout "I Could Go" while Brad howls like a child riding his scooter down the street, yelling at the kids at the bottom of the hill to get out of the way. Other tracks like "Cruising FDR" and "Landline" really bring out the best in Oberhofer by offering poignant cultural references over a surf-rock riffs.

Watch Oberhofer Perform 'Away Frm U'

"I'm not very good with words," the frontman confesses. You can sense his hesitation from Oberhofer's earlier release on Inflated Recs, the simply titled o0O0o0O0o. The mix of O's and zeros lends itself directly to the single's sound.

"Last night at our show in Philadelphia this dude in a suit came up to me and said [in affected accent] 'Man, you are so musically talented. Half of it I like, and is from zee heart. But zee other half is all deez O's and it's not from the heart."

Despite doubting Oberhofer's well-oiled song machine, the singer responded to the concertgoer with grace. "I looked at him and said, 'Melodies are separate from words and your voice is an instrument. And really the only way to use your voice like that, without convoluting melodies with words that have nothing to do with the melodies themselves is to sing vowel sounds. That's the most honest way to sing some things."

Vowel Sounds are back, ladies and gentlemen. Check out Oberhofer's Time Capsules II, out now via Glassnote Records.

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