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www.groovekorea.com / January 2014 82 Table PeoPle are Peanut butter on glass, bad beer spilt in amps, honey from the trash Drums Chance Dorland Bass Minwoo Chun Guitar/vocals Eric Davis Guitar/vocals/keys Ethan Waddell Edited by Emilee Jennings (emilee@groovekorea.com) MUsIC & ARTs ROCK N ROLL sEOUL Interview by Sophie Boladeras Photos by Shin Jae Kim T he table is set with psychedelic placemats, loud noise pop and four musicians playing experi- mental indie rock. Over a year ago, Table People released their debut EP with each disc featuring individual artwork made by the musicians and their friends. Since then, their sound has developed from their early punk days to a busier and more muscular bluesy rock. Their newly released split album with Korean band Les Sales is called “Doo Nyeon” and showcases Table People’s technically developed musicality and quirky new songs. Content-wise, lead singer Eric Davis typically steers away from writing lyrics about politics or love. That said, one of their popular songs, titled “Touch a Tiger,” was inspired by tourists who go to Thailand and visit the tiger enclosures. Eric was annoyed with all of the sightseeing pictures he would come across on Facebook of peo- ple posing with drugged-up tigers. He channeled that feeling as inspiration for one of Table People’s lyrically interesting songs. Groove Korea: How do you develop a song? Ethan Waddell: Our songwriting focuses a lot on the lyrics. Eric writes the lyrics and comes up with a chord structure, and I write the arrangements around the lyrics so they fit the mood of what he’s saying. I change the chords to make them more cohesive and to fit the feeling of the lyrics. Eric Davis: I have a long commute and listen to a lot of podcasts, especially one called “Stuff You Should Know.” One time, I was in a Dunkin’ Donuts in New York listening to it. They said something about how someone should do a cut-and-smear dance (referring to smearing fecal matter on human wounds to cause infection) and I was, like, maybe I should do a cut-and-smear song. Waddell: Eric usually finds a midpoint between being funny and sad. One of my favorite tracks is “Cut and Smear” on our first EP. It’s about a psy- chological disorder called Munchausen syndrome where people injure themselves to get pity from others. The song is about people who take their own poop and smear it on a cut in their body, so the cut gets infected. The song is like a how-to. Tell us about your recently released split al- bum with les Sales. Davis: We each have four songs on the album and we all did the cover art together. It’s called “Doo Nyeon” — in Korean doo means two and doo nyeon kind of means two bitches. We needed a title … (and) we just wanted to make an album with friends. We really dig Les Sales’ sound and we feel a lot of solidarity with them. They do all of the things you need to do to get people to the club (postering, social media, promoting) and they are good about supporting the other bands they play with. Some Table PeoPle A mishmash of loud noise pop and indie aesthetic, with a boost of bluesy rock MoRE InFo Find out more about table people at looseunion.com/ artists/view/table-People, or check out their Facebook page.