Magnet Magazine: Q&A With Times New Viking's Elizabeth Murphy

Back when Times New Viking released what would end up being their final album, Dancer Equired! in 2011, Elizabeth Murphy was interviewed by Magnet Magazine to discuss the record. Here's a bit of that:

Dancer Equired sounds a lot cleaner, production-value wise, than the previous Times New Viking recordings. It’s less lo-fi sounding. Why did you make that decision?
We finally thought to record in a proper studio and see if we couldn’t allow for the songs to be seen as we see them, without the guise of “lo-fi” even an option as a talking point. We went to an old studio that was a stone’s throw from where we all lived in Columbus called Musicol and had Adam Smith of CD-R engineer the recording. It was the exact change of pace we needed, process and output-wise. Dancer Equired was recorded in about a week, and we all showed up for it in full. Much like the fact that we would now allow for a studio and engineer, as long as it was in Columbus and an old friend, the album title was resurrected from the bottom of our giant cardboard box of original ideas, all captured by way of analogue workmanship: cut, paste, highlight, Xerox. First seen on the insert of that We Were High, We Were Not High CD-R as the deliberate “attendance required,” the statement had re-arranged itself in it’s paper burial, six years later claiming absurdity as our fourth member, not the audience. Like my friend Adam Elliott says, “In the midst of nuclear war, the poems will recite themselves.” 

How do you guys write songs?
As far as our songwriting process goes, we are lucky that it still follows this analogue way of thinking, as well as the democracy we posited as our first rule. And for the record, we would have more to say about being a band rooted in analog than any question leading us to absolve lo-fi.

Video: Times New Viking - "No Time, No Hope"

Columbus Alive: Good Times, Bad Times - Times New Viking bandmates recount the ups and downs of navigating national acclaim

The members of Times New Viking sat down with Joel Oliphint of the Columbus Alive in 2016 to revisit the ups and down of the band. Here is some of that:

At the top of a hill, amid the dorms of Czech Technical University, sits Klub 007 Strahov, a basement venue in Prague that has hosted rock, punk and hardcore shows since 1969. In 2010, Adam Elliott, Beth Murphy and Jared Phillips found themselves at 007, playing a gig with their band, Times New Viking. The venue is half a world away from Café Bourbon Street, which served as the band’s humble North Campus home base before and after the trio’s first show there in January 2004. 

And yet, even on the other side of the globe, the club didn’t feel too removed. It was a small space, and only about 30 people came to the show. “It felt like Bourbon Street, except we were in the Czech Republic,” Elliott said. “Afterward we did shots of absinthe in this 400-year-old bar that had taxidermied birds. I remember Jared and I looked at each other, being like, ‘This shitty little band got us here.’” 

Short, fuzz-coated, in-the-red pop songs recorded onto cassettes in the basement of North Campus rentals took Times New Viking to stages in Prague, Sweden, Munich and London. The three friends shared the stage with some of their favorite bands - underground legends like Yo La Tengo, Wire and the Clean - and eventually signed to not one but two of the most respected, storied labels in independent rock: Matador and Merge records. The highs were high.

New Additions: Dancer Equired! by Times New Viking

This should be "most recent addition" in addition to new, because I've been pickup Times New Viking releases for a while now. Although I'm not always in love with the production aesthetic, like with previous albums, Dancer Equired! has the proper level of sugary-sweet melody to go with harsh sounds that counter balance it. This was released on Merge, with the previous two released on Matador, and it's fairly amazing a band that can be as blatantly lo-fi and noisy can still manage to interest prestige indie labels that need to move units to stay afloat.

Know Yer Band: Times New Viking

Band: Times New Viking

Members
Elizabeth Murphy - Keyboards, Vocals
Jared Phillips - Guitar, Vocals
Adam Elliott - Drums

Releases
2004 - We Were High We Were Not High album (300%)
2005 - Busy Making Love & War 7" single (Columbus Discount Records)
2005 - Dig Yourself album (Siltbreeze)
2005 - We Got Rocket single (300%)
2006 - Present The Paisley Reich album (Siltbreeze)
2006 - Imagine Dead John Lennon single (300%)
2006 - Split w/Psychedelic Horseshit 7" EP (300%)
2006 - Little Amps single (300%)
2007 - My Head 7" single (Matador)
2008 - Stay Awake 7" EP (Matador)
2008 - Rip It Off album (Matador)
2008 - Shred Yr Face Tour split 7" single (Shred Yr Face)
2009 - Born Again Revisited album (Matador)
2009 - Split w/Axemen 7" single (300%/Sleek Bott)
2009 - Move To California 7" single (Matador)
2010 - No Room To Live 7" single (Times New Viking)
2010 - No Time No Hope 7" single (Oslo Grammofon)
2011 - Dancer Equired! album (Merge Records)
2012 - Over & Over 7" single (Siltbreeze)

Cleveland Scene: Mad Jam Man - Raven brings his badass biker blues to the Beachland

After the reissue of Raven's lone album Back to Ohio Blues, he actually did the thing - came back to Ohio (from California) and played a show. In this case, it was in 2008 at Cleveland's Beachland Ballroom along with Times New Viking and Mike "Rep" Hummel, the man who helped resuscitate the album. Cleveland Scene wrote up a piece on it at the time:

"He made the music because it was inside of him and needed to be expressed," writes Rep in the liner notes. "Like a shark has to swim to breathe, Raven has to record his gut-wrenching creations - perhaps exorcising his demons onto wax, one could say." 

As so, many of Raven's messed-up eulogies to drugs, death and sleaze were derived straight from his outlaw biker escapades throughout the early '70s. "I was in Florida working for this guy [who] would fly his Learjet to Columbia and bring me the kilos to cut up with my musketry," recalls Raven in a phone interview. "I walked into his place, and there was nothing in the house but brown paper bags full of pot. There must have been one living room, one kitchen, three bedrooms full of dope."

Know Yer Band: Psychedelic Horseshit

Band: Psychedelic Horseshit

Members
Bass/Keys – Jason Roxas
Vocals/Guitar/Keys – Matt "Horseshit" Whitehurst
Drums – "Psychedelic" Rich Johnston
Percussion/Samples - Ryan Jewell
Bass - Michael Bray

Releases
2006 - 7" single Who Let The Dogs Out? (Columbus Discount Records)
2006 - 7" split single w/Times New Viking (300%)
2007 - Magic Flowers Droned album (Siltbreeze)
2008 - Magic Flowers Dubbed album (bumtapes)
2008 - 7" single New Wave Hippies (Half Machine Records)
2009 - 2x7" single Too Many Hits (Columbus Discount Records)
2009 - 12" EP Shitgaze Anthems (Woodsist)
2009 - Golden Oldies compilation album (Wasted Vinyl Records)
2010 - Acid Tape EP (Fan Death Records)
2011 - Laced album (FatCat Records)

614 Magazine: The Ultimate Columbus Mixtape

Back in 2014, Kevin Elliott of 614 Magazine spoke with a bunch of Columbus musicians such as Pat Dull, Paul Nini of Log and Elizabeth Murphy of Times New Viking to put together a mixtape that covers the last few decades of Columbus music. Here's a sample:

“Refried Dreams” – Cheater Slicks (1999) 

One of best things about living in this town is having the opportunity to go see one of the best punk bands on this or any other planet play in a bar about the size of your living room twice a month.  They’ve put out almost a dozen stellar records since defecting to Columbus from Boston in the mid-90’s, but if I had to pick a track to include on the next Voyager launch, it’d be the title track from 1999’s Refried Dreams.  I’ve broken my glasses twice whilst losing my shit during live performances of this song. 

— BJ Holesapple (member of Necropolis and Vile Gash as well as founder of Columbus Discount Records)