The New Hampshire

Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: Arts & Living

Media Credit: Courtesy Photo

Transistor Transistor are:

Nat Coghlan (UNH Junior, 24, Guitar/vocals)

Garrison Nein (24, Bass)

James Moller (25, Drums)

Brad Wallace (29, Guitar)





TNH: Describe your band using only verbs.

Garrison: Touring

Nat: Drooling, crying, fighting

Garrison: Crippling's good . . . grating is good. We grate, as if the audience was a block of cheese . . . Crumping.

TNH: Where do you guys practice, and when?

Garrison: We practice in James' mom's basement regularly.

James: like probably once every month.

Garrison: Well that's not true . . .

Nat: We don't really have any real practice regimen like most bands do. We practice whenever and play Fooseball for easily a quarter of the time that we're actually playing music.

James: And then we make butt jokes.

TNH: Your band's songs are pretty complex and varied, yet they maintain a straightforwardly rocking bent. Can you describe the band's songwriting process, or else, who in particular should I credit for pumping out the jams?

Garrison: I think it's kind of like 60/40 Nat and Brad [respectively] as far as writing the bulk of the riffs. James and I fill out a lot of the parts - we write a lot, but the general riffs come from Nat and Brad, typically.

James: I would say it's very collaborative, and Nat and Brad bring in the riffs and we all just jam for a while.

TNH: Jam?

James: Jam!

TNH: Let's be honest: no one can hear what you're singing half the time. What are the general lyrical themes of your songs?

Garrison: There's a song we have that Nat described as being about killing yourself at the mall.

Nat: Which means it's about killing yourself in front of a large, public audience of people who don't know you.

Garrison: Generally, girls.

Nat: The lyrics of the last two records are mostly about being in a band, like observations about being in a band, like kind of putting a very critical slant on your own life, for the most part. A lot of the time if there's a song, and there's that undefined "you," and a lot of venom being spewed at that "you" in the lyrics - that's about me more often, rather than about an ex-girlfriend or something. There's also a song about gas prices.

TNH: How would you describe the evolution of TT and its songs over the years?

James: I would say as soon as Brad and I joined the band it got 50 times better, and when Garrison joined it got ten percent worse.

Continued...

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