The Vinyls are a great new band in New Jersey that are quickly gaining respect after the release of their debut EP in November. PropertyOfZack had the chance to speak to the band just a few weeks ago at their show with The Dangerous Summer. The band and I spoke about the reception to their EP, a new record, future plans, and more. Read up and enjoy!

For the record, could you state your name and role in The Vinyls?
Dave: My name’s Dave, and I play guitar.
Drew: I’m Drew, and I’m the singer.
Dan: I’m Dan, I play bass.
Rick: I’m Rick, I play the drums.
Zach: I’m Zach, and I play guitar.
 
The band is opening for The Dangerous Summer and Sparks The Rescue tonight. How’d that come together?
Dan: We’ve been trying to keep an eye out for shows. We’re just trying to really push the new EP. We’re really trying to find a market to get into. We got in touch with Excess dB and we got in touch that way.
 
Will the set be all the songs off of the EP?
Drew: Yeah, we’ll be playing pretty much off of the EP and one that is an AbsolutePunk exclusive as well as a couple new ones, which will be on our future record.
 
Do you guys have any more shows in the works?
Rick: Yeah, we’ve got a bunch of stuff worked out.
Drew: April 11^th we’re playing at Angels & Kings in the City and one April 14^th we’re playing in Clifton. April 21^st we’re playing at Crossroads.
Rick: Are we playing Crossroads?
Dan: We won’t forget, hopefully [Laughs].
 
Could we see a possible run of tour dates before summer?
Drew: Hopefully. Right now the big thing is for us to write. We’re going to be recording seven songs in April. We don’t know what we don’t want to do with it yet. We’re not sure if we want to add more songs or if we’re shopping it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some east coast shows. Then hopefully we can just go by the end of the year.
 
You released an EP not too long ago, and it’s been getting a lot of comparisons to Jimmy Eat World and The Dangerous Summer. What does that feel like, considering you’re such a new band?
Drew: For us, that meant the world. AbsolutePunk is very picky, which they should be. When we heard that they liked us and that it reminded them of Jimmy Eat World, that’s all of our favorite bands.  We listened to way too much Bleed American when we were young. The Dangerous Summer is another great band. Those are two bands that can do pop-rock, but make it not totally cheesy.
 
Have listeners been into the EP has well?
Zach: Yeah, it’s been crazy.
Dave: We’ve put out a lot of music in our lives as individuals and stuff like that, and it’s hard to get people to take your band seriously. As soon as we put this out people started taking us seriously. I met Rick when I was with Drew in a bar and we just wanted to start a band. We recorded like fifteen days later. We’re happy with it.
 
How was the writing and recording process since you came together so quickly?
Drew: It’s been really good. Dave works at a studio with Rob Freeman, who’s an awesome producer. We’ve known Rob for a while. We all knew him. He wrote songs for his last band, so we kind of all collaborated. The new stuff especially, you can hear every influence. We’re excited to release some new stuff.
 
Is it easier to write at this point since you’ve been together longer?
Dave: I don’t know. I’ve been writing songs for three or four years. I feel like every band has that moment where they write a CD, and then write three or four songs after that CD and you’re writing in that same mindset. You’re not writing for the next CD just yet. I think we finally got to that point a few months ago. Everyone’s on the same page. It’s a special thing. It makes writing way easier. If someone gave us two months to write songs, we’d probably write thirty songs. It hopefully wouldn’t be crap [Laughs].
Zach: Everyone’s really comfortable and have come into their own. We’re really open-minded and work through a lot of stuff.
 
Are the seven songs done, or are you still writing?
Dave: Six are done.
Drew: Rick, Dave, and I were writing songs in the beginning for Extended Play, and the first stuff was completely different. We were like Refused. We love everything. It was really heavy and awesome. Two weeks before recording we wrote a song and we were like, “Whoa, lets scrap all of these other songs and go with this sound.” That’s what happened.
 
How has it evolved from Extended Play?
Dave: It’s got a little bit more edge. It’s a little more like grassroots.
Dan: It’s more the music that we grew up listening to as kids. Like in the 90’s sort of stuff.
Drew: All of our influences from some 90’s alternative to Alkaline Trio. Everything that we try to do we try to make positive. We want some heavy songs, but not dark.
 
When do you want to be done recording?
Dave: We’ll be done in the third week of April. Unless we get a nervous breakdown.
 
And what about release dates?
Rick: We have to decide what we’re doing with it.
Dave: We’re kind of shopping it around. We’ll see what happens.
POZ: So you’d sign with a smaller label?
Drew: If it fits. It all depends on promotion. Who has the money. Promotion is key right now. We can pay for recordings, but it’s all about who’s going to know about it. We released in the EP in November, and it’s all been word of mouth. We still have so much to grow before even going to a label. We’re just going to do it DIY to the max.
Zach: We’ve done all this before. We’ve got the grassroots to get to what we want as a band. If someone can give us an extra hand, that’s prime.