Recently New Noise Magazine streamed a single by New Jerseys Out of Service. The band began playing in 2003, back in high school. Now the group has reconnected and reentered the D.I.Y. music scene, releasing their EP What We Bring With Us today. Since it has been about a decade, the band gave their thoughts on how the community and overall scene has changed in certain areas. Listen to What We Bring With Us below. Enjoy every ounce of the soaring music found on the EP, and read what Out of Service have to say about coming back into the scene.
To be honest, what works for this interview and band is the creeping bits of nostalgia that Out of Service manage to string together on their EP. A song like “Hear The Sound” is exactly what that early bit of pop-emo sounded like, and it’s by a group of individuals looking back on their lives. This is more than just a revitalization, it’s a reimagining and shedding of a skin that needed to come off. Welcome back Out of Service.
Purchase What We Bring With Us here
Changes to Recording Process
The biggest change we see between the mid-2000s when we first began playing together and now is how much power has really shifted to the artists. Back then any time we wanted to record a new EP or a new song, we had to book studio time, negotiate prices, and watch the clock to make sure we did not run out of cash. For “What We Bring with Us” we recorded everything ourselves on our bass player’s laptop and shipped it off to Nathan Hussey (All Get Out) for mixing and mastering when we were ready.
This is obviously not unique to our band, but it is so much different than what we had to deal with before. We were able to spend as much time as we needed testing different parts, different sounds, and even entire sections of songs. We did almost all of our demoing by email or text message. That would have been impossible when we were teenagers. Smartphones didn’t even exist the last time we put out a song. Technology gave us the power to be more creative by spreading the writing process over months and into the actual recording phase. We were able to be flexible with our time, which was a true necessity since half of us have kids and we all have full time jobs.
Changes in Distribution
The same goes for how easy it is now to get these songs in the hands of virtually anyone who wants to hear them. Back when OOS first started playing together, the only people who had our music were people who came to a show and bought a CD that we either had to have pressed or burn ourselves. What We Bring with Us is going to be available on close to thirty music streaming services on day one of release and will be for sale in every major online music store. Its accessible to people who have never heard us play or even heard of us at all. That potential reach is what makes the time we spent putting this record together worth it. Had the industry not evolved in this way, recording this EP and getting it out there for people to hear would have been impossible.
Change in our music
Out of Service was first formed in 2002 when we were all in high school. Our foundation was that pop-punk and emo sound that was so prevalent at the time. Almost every song we wrote was a variation on some breakup cliché. We were teenagers, we wrote about what we knew and what we lived. When we decided to bring the band back together we wanted our music to maintain some of those foundations, but also take on a more dynamic style and tone. We wanted the songs to be straightforward and accessible to fans of this type of music, but also to have some subtle characteristics blended in the background for those who take the time to notice. The lyrical themes to go deeper than complaining about a broken heart. Of course, What We Bring with Us is still about human relationships, but not in the same way. These songs focus on forgiveness, redemption, regret, nostalgia, and a little bit of revenge. This is an EP we could not have written at any other point in our lives so far.
