Summer Thieves: Cigarettes in Space

If Summer Thieves aren’t a band that festival goers across Aotearoa are already familiar with, no doubt by the end of the sunny season they will be. Reflected in their name, their tunes are made to be enjoyed in the heat of the sun, with a couple of cold ones. The band have recently released their third album “Cigarettes in Space”, a self-produced effort which is sure to cast a long shadow, well into the final days of the upcoming summer. Ben Paanakker recently caught up with Adam from the band to discuss the latest release, and the band’s upcoming plans.

First off congrats on your new album release Cigarettes In Space. It's a groovy, groovy wee number that will definitely epitomise the upcoming Kiwi summer.

Yeah, hopefully, bro. It feels like a really cohesive album, I've been looking and listening through our old stuff over the last few days and it really sort of comes together a lot more than our previous work which you don't realise at the time.

Did you guys have a plan or vision when you started working on this new project?

Jake's the main songwriter and he just found himself in a bit more of a groove than he has previously. I think he has matured a lot as a songwriter, he has always known how to run with a theme, but this time it looked like it had just become easier for him. We started recording all of these songs coming up two years ago. 

We went away too, and just got a bach and set up a studio in the lounge where we started laying down tracks. A lot of those initial tracks that we put down are actually still there. We also have a studio set up at home, so some of the guitars, basses, and vocals were recorded between that first go at it and the home setup. Over the whole process, we did two trips away and finished the final tweaks at home

Realistically, we could have had a version of it out in January or February, but I'm pretty glad that we waited while we polished off a few tracks and things.

Have you guys always found it quite easy to record? You seem like you get on very well as a cohesive group. There doesn’t seem like too much clashing of heads and ideas.

Every album is a completely different process for us. Cigarettes In Space was all produced in-house and that's the first time we've done that. Izzy and CJ from Mako Road, and another mate of ours Ali, from Sons of Zion, each mixed a bunch of tracks, around three or four each. 

Do you think in the future you will attack new albums in a similar way? 

I think we will do more in-house unless something huge pops up and Rick Rubin gives us a call or something like that. We are already working on the next one which we are going about in a similar way as to Cigarettes In Space. We are thinking about going away on a few trips as we are in a nice flow at the moment. We live in a pretty mellow part of Auckland, up over on the North Shore, and it's quite nice bush and beach around and there's no stress really.

Having started out in Dunedin did you find you were influenced by the “Dunedin sound” or did it not influence you too much and have ended up paving your own way/sound?

Not really our sound, I was always intrigued by it and listened to a lot of early Flying Nun stuff, it's good to know the history of the place that you're from. We were a little ahead of Marlins Dreaming and Mild Orange. I don’t want to go there because we always get compared to Six60, like full credit to them and I love what they do, but we are just not the same thing. 

Well then, what kind of bands have influenced your guys' sound? Where do you pull from?

When we started out we were doing covers at local venues like Ratbags, The Bog and all those sorts of places along with flat parties. We used to do full sets of Sublime, Jack Johnson, Donavon Frankenreiter, and other similar artists along with a bit of rock. I think at one point we were doing like thirteen or fourteen Sublime songs and then the next set would just be like rock covers. You could say taking all that as a package, it isn’t far off from what we are today. In the early stages, we put out real heavy reggae influenced music, especially similar to Kiwi bands like Katchafire, Kora, Shapeshifter, Ladi-6 and Home Brew. We are playing with Sublime with Rome in a couple of months so it feels like it has kind of come full circle and pretty exciting, especially for Jake as a songwriter as he was hugely influenced by them. 

We've all got very broad musical tastes, we kind of live our own musical lives and everyone's like their own instrument-focused. For me I listen to a lot of bass music, while Jarni might listen to a lot of guitar music.

Do you have a loose timeline of when your next album will come out? You just cheekily mentioned that it's already in the pipeline.

Probably the same time as we released Cigarettes In Space, next year. But don't put it in your calendar, as it’s maybe sooner or maybe later. I think it's a good time to release. For me personally, I think that during midwinter people kind of get in the groove of like comfort songs and things like that. That’s why we released when we did, as it feels like a good time to do it, things are getting warmer and people are getting a bit more excited and the general attitude of people right now is a bit more positive than it was two, three, four months ago. I don't really like the idea of putting music out in autumn and giving people three or four months to mull it over before they see us live and then that's a whole another experience for them, you know.

For people who want to know all things Summer Thieves, in terms of new releases and upcoming gigs, where can they keep their finger on the pulse? 

Instagram is probably the best along with Facebook. Although Instagram is probably the most consistent for not just releases, but content and everything else related to the band.

Thanks Adam for chatting with Ben!

You can check out Summer Thieves Instagram HERE
And check out their new album Cigarettes in Space HERE