Band Interview: Figure Eight

There’s times where an outfit creates a sound that just resonates with you while feeling wholly unique. Combining the emotional sincerity of 90s emo with a hard hitting, visceral punk edge is one way of describing Long Island’s Figure Eight. Sincere is the perfect description really as we got to chat with multi-instrumentalist and producer Ryan Meyers about the band, their upcoming EP, future album and more. Also, be sure to pre-order a copy of their upcoming EP Forever.

At the beginning of our interviews we like to start out with a simple, but fun question for every artist. For you guys, what is a song that you really love that most people probably wouldn’t expect?

>> Recently, as of literally like new years day, I’ve been jamming to some counting crows haha. But specifically Rain King is a jam.

Diving into more serious questions about your music, most bands tend to release an EP then take a break and on that break write a full-length. You guys on the other hand wrote an EP in 2015 and are now releasing another EP which comes out next month along with plans to release a full-length later this year. What made you decide to release another EP instead of just releasing the songs on the EP with the full-length?

>> Well, I felt like I wasn’t ready to release a full length project just yet. Some of the songs on this upcoming EP are fairly old and were written awhile ago, so I couldn’t see them being part of an album. Also our first EP was kind of released out of the blue and didn’t have much promotion or nothing surrounding it, so this kind of feels like a debut EP for me. I also wanted something short and sweet with only 4 songs to be a nice set up for a full length to follow.

Artists/Musicians/Bands alike always like to say that their upcoming material is the best work they’ve done, but most of the time they never explain how or why it’s better. Is that how you feel about your upcoming EP or even your full-length that’s releasing later this year? If so, why do you feel that way?

>> Like i said some of the songs were written a while ago for this EP so its hard to say that this is currently as of 2017 the best songs i can make, given that the recording process was finished back in the summer of 2016 for this EP. There are some songs for the upcoming LP that i really like, but I’m still in the writing process for that. Things are always changing so its hard to say when its the best you can do, if that makes sense.

Let’s specifically talk about your upcoming EP that comes out next month, along with it, the title track, “Forever”, which premiered on New Noise Magazine and was also the first single from the record. You said that the song set the tone for the album which is “Be concise and to the point.” Could you elaborate on that and what does ‘being concise and to the point’ mean to you as an artist?

>> It pertains to my writing, in the way that I wanted to cut out all the fluff and filler from the songs. On the last EP i felt like some of the tracks were just to drawn out and lacking a purpose. For the new EP i wanted to make shorter songs that had more of a punch in less time. Im a fan of songs were you don’t realize there’s only a few lines of lyrics in the song until you read them, and that happens a few times on this new EP. It also makes sense to me to use less words that mean more rather than a bunch of poetic words that nobody can remember anyway, haha.

Talking more about your upcoming EP, Forever, it’s a 4 track record and most artists like to have a ‘complete overall sound’ for the duration of the EP or full-length. Can we expect more of the same sound as the title track or can we expect to hear you guys experiment with different sounds with the other three songs?

>> I definitely had that ‘overall sound’ in mind for this record. The title track is definitely the most brash and loud of the 4, but the whole EP kind of has a similar vibe throughout. With the exception of the last song October, which kind of a slower more thoughtful track.

Moving on to your full-length record you guys are planning to drop later this year. Sometimes bands/artists tend to bring songs on EP’s to their full-length which might upset some as fans normally like to hear completely new music. Can we expect to see songs from past EPs on this full-length or will it be strictly new material?

>> I dont like old songs being on new records either haha. But 1 old song might make the album but it’s still up in the air.

Still on the subject of your full-length, I want to give you guys a chance to tell us anything about it that you want/can say to give fans an idea of what we can expect to hear.

>> There’s not much to say yet but it’s gonna be wild. I’m really going to take time with it to make sure I love every song as much as a person is able like there own music haha. Hopefully I can get into the studio by the end of the year and maybe have an early 2018 release.

You guys are currently on a winter tour until Jan. 14th. It’s been said that being on tour can be hard to balance your personal life with your band life. How do you guys keep balance between the two and does being on tour make that balance a little difficult?

>> This was our first tour so it was interesting to see how that would pan out. It wasn’t that bad though because we were excited for it so we didn’t mind the short lived escape from our personal lives.

One more question before we end with another fun one; you guys have got a chance to tour with bands like Such Gold, Broadside, Koji, and Light Years just to name a few. How does it make you feel that you have gotten to travel with so many other great bands and have you ever expected Figure Eight to kick off that much?

>> Well actually we’ve only played one of shows with those bands! But it definitely feels awesome to have shared the stage with them thus far and we can only thank our local Long Island scene for being so great and bringing acts like that through town!

Lastly, everyone says this is a simple yet hard question for them to answer, but we love asking it. What is your favorite album of all time?  We would also like to thank you for taking time out of your day to do this interview!

>> Thank you for having me! And thats always a hard one!! I would say maybe not my favorite of all time but Say Anything’s Menorah/Mejora is an old classic for me Ive liked ever since the 9th grade 🙂