Rainer Maria has come a long way since their 1997 debut, Past Worn Searching, and they may just be the last tried and true emo band standing. The trio met in Madison, Wisconsin and quickly began recording some of the most hearts-on-their-sleeves tearjerkers that the underground had ever heard. Featuring the dueling vocals of guitarist Kyle Fischer and bassist Caithlin de Marrais, Rainer Maria put out an emo masterpiece with 1999’s Look Now Look Again before changing directions with 2001’s A Better Version of Me. Now, Rainer Maria has just released their latest effort, Long Knives Drawn, which solidifies their title as the best band named after a dead German poet. MUSE interviewed Kyle Fischer as a preview to the band’s show on February 2nd at the Middle East.
On the new record, your vocals are almost completely absent. Why have you guys decided to shy away from using two lead singers?
Caithlin’s performance on this album is really unparalleled. It’s clear that she doesn’t need supporting in terms of background. A Better Version of Me became less of a couples’ rock record, so it seemed that, thematically, it was less important to have that male voice piping inespecially a male voice with a lot of personality. I didn’t want people to hear the songs and then be like, ‘Who’s this guy?’
Do you think that having dueling male-female vocals became a novelty?
I don’t think so. The dueling vocals really attracted people to the band. I think that now there’s a trend of male-female fronted bands. It’s sort of like a new sub-sub-genre. I’d be flattered to know that we had something to do with that.
Your sound has changed a lot over the years. How do you guys continue to grow while other emo bands are breaking up?
An interviewer last week tried to get me to admit that we’re a smarter kind of band, and I guess it’s kind of true. We’ve stayed together out of dedication and love for what we do, which is also why I think our sound has grown. No one in the band has divorced parents, so we have no examples of walking off. We like to stick around.
Have you guys ever almost jumped to a major label?
Actually, no one has ever really seriously approached us. I always found it kind of weird, because we sell a lot of records for an indie band. I’ve been waiting for some A’R guy to take me out for free sushi dinners, but it hasn’t happened. I think our music is fairly popular and has an appeal, but we’re not quite top 40. It’s not like we’re putting out a Heart Shaped Box or anything.
You guys played at BU two years ago. Do you play a lot of college shows?
We play a lot of college shows, and they’re fun because they’re either well organized or really sketchy. BU was one of the most well organized shows we have ever played. It was the first time we had laminated all access passes that had our pictures on them. We kept those.
Since you have so much material, how do you decide what to play on tour?
We’re making the default set list. If we’re too tired to make a new one, we just fall back on that one. It’s pretty obvious what we’re going to play. We take stuff off of every album, and we try to take everyone’s favorites. I mean, if we don’t play either ‘Tinfoil’ or ‘Breakfast of Champions’ at every show, we know there’s going to be a riot. There will be kids running around yelling, ‘I paid seven dollars for this?’
What’s your favorite part of touring?
I really like the regimented daily routine. It keeps you very sane. The key to touring is you have to eat enough and sleep enough. If you eat well and sleep well, you’ll have a good time. We actually have a bus on this tour. We’re touring with our friends, Mates of State, so we’re going to share a bus. It was actually only $50 a day more than if we both rented vans.
You guys live in Brooklyn. Do you think bands from New York get more attention?
Some bands get more attention because of New York, but we really don’t. We always get lumped into categories, but there’s always a but. Like, ‘They’re an emo band, but…’ or ‘They’re from New York, but…’ We don’t fall under the curse of being labeled. I like the new wave of New York bands, but it’s a lot more dancey and garagey than anything we do.
How big do you think Rainer Maria can get?
How big we can get is controlled by factors no one can measure. You can’t tell what’s going to be a hit. It’s all coincidences that help you find a larger audience. All you can do is to make those possibilities more available to you. The first time we were in Spin, it was the result of a freelance writer stumbling into one of our shows and liking us enough to buy a bunch of our CDs and then put them on the desks of people at the magazine. You never know when something like that is going to happen.
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