New Haven band creates its own sound
Don’t try defining the music of New Havenbased band Them Airs, as it’s not something that easily falls into any one musical classification. Part punk, a little rock, very experimental, the disjointed stylings the band has created have become extremely popular to those who have heard their albums “Tiger Blood,” “Echo Park Bomb City” or “Union Suit XL,” or seen them play around the state.
“Some call it atmospheric punk music,” said Cade Williams, the band’s vocalist. “But we try to avoid describing it. We like to default to ‘noise rock.’ A lot of the genres we’re influenced by was post something, so we’re kind of just post-post.”
Those influences include Sonic Youth, Them and Women.
Although the pandemic may have slowed them down a bit, Them Airs is doing what it can to ensure that their fans are able to hear new music and see them perform —even if it’s just by Zoom from a recording in their basement.
Williams first started writing music in high school, and was helped out by Adam Cohen and Evan Nork, the band’s bassist and drummer, respectively. A few years later, keyboardist Amina Rustemovic from Hartford was added to the group.
Early on, the guys were just having fun and weren’t really thinking about playing live.
“A beautiful man who I used to work for got us a gig one time and people were really enthusiastic
about it, so we thought it would be cool to do more,” Williams said. “It happened organically. We made music, we just started playing it, and no one knows you but slowly over time, more and more people become aware of you.”
Rustemovic went to a couple of Them Airs shows and was interested in the sounds she heard.
“They were just noodling about and I got really excited about the music,” she said. So, she was thrilled when the band asked her to join. “It’s never boring. It’s always
fun to get together and play some tunes.”
Back in the beginning, the band went by the name Mirror Waves, because it was more of a shoegaze band, but when the sound changed to become more “angular” and post punk, the name no longer made sense.
“We spent a couple of months bouncing potential bad names off of one other and it didn’t really stick,” Cohen said. “One day, Evan just said ‘Them Airs’ and we were like, ‘yeah, that’s it.’ That fits our sound.”
Rustemovic, whose family are Bosnia immigrants, once needed to explain the name of the band to her mom, and she had a hard time explaining what it meant because of it not being grammatically correct. Cohen had to correct his grandparents who thought it was a jazz band.
“We do have a song on the new album that you can almost call jazz, especially if you really want to anger some jazz enthusiasts,” Nork said. “There is a saxophone on one of the songs.”
The new album won’t be released until shows start up again, so it may be a while.
Over the past year, the bandmates have been meeting in basements and playing together over the internet, and assembling new music by playing things alone and then combining them all once finished.
“There’s a virtual festival that we recorded some music for,” Cohen said. “That we did altogether.”
Because the type of unconventional spaces Them Airs perform in usually are small spaces allowing for the audience to be right on top of one another, their type of performance is totally wrong for the socially-distancing COVID restrictions.
“We’re used to 40 or 50 people shoved into a sweaty basement, and that’s definitely not happening right now,” Nork said. “There are some people attempting to organize something like that but we’re avoiding anything like that right now.”
The band jokes that they hope someone will make “a big mistake” and book them for something outside, where they can be loud and “disturb a lot of people.”
When not playing music, the bandmates have normal jobs, such as an electrician, multimedia artist and a gamer. But if they get their wish, they will be full-time musicians before too long.
“We all made a blood pact when we were 18 years old, and Rustemovic isn’t part of it, but if she ever wants to join, she’s welcome,” Williams said. “We’re hoping to do another at our next in-person show.”
For 2021, Them Airs is just hoping to play shows by the summer and grow its fan base. All of the members will soon be living together, which they expect will help get those goals in motion. They just feel bad for whoever will be living next to them because of the “noise” they expect to play at all hours.
“We’re having fun and looking forward to what’s to come,” Williams said.
For more information about Them Airs, visit them-airs.bandcamp.com.
“A LOT OF THE GENRES WE’RE INFLUENCED BY WAS POST SOMETHING, SO WE’RE KIND OF JUST POST-POST.”