Carry on Enon

Its not often a band releases an album only to say they don't really mind if people like it or not. When the Skinny meets Enon's John Schmersal, however, that's exactly what follows. "I wasn't concerned with whether people liked it or not cause I felt we'd been successful in what we'd tried to do," he says.

The album in question, Glass Geysers…Carbon Clouds, is Enon's fourth album proper, and Schmersal is of the opinion that it's unlikely to be the record that launches them into the upper echelons.

"I would be very surprised if all of a sudden people were bowled over and got really into us," he concedes. Far from being demoralised by this, however, he says he's liberated by it. "We're doing things at our own pace to make the music we want to make. I can work on music whenever I want to in my basement. For me that's more valuable than worrying about being successful. I don't want that to be a condition of why I'm making music."

For those familiar with Enon's own brand of alternative indie rock, this won't come as a surprise. Completed by drummer Matt Schultz and bassist Toko Yasuda, who shares vocal duties with Schmersal, their sound is one that meshes together a whole variety of styles; punk, electronica and pop, to name a few. When you also consider that in their time they've used the sound of smashing crockery as percussion, it would be fair to say that Enon are an unconventional lot.

This latest release, however, could well be the record that forces them into the wider collective consciousness, despite Schmersal's denial. Ironically, far from being a deliberate push for recognition, this is simply a result of their new laid-back approach. Recorded in Schmersal's own basement studio in Philadelphia, Glass Geysers, released last October, is certainly Enon's most palatable effort to date. "We really tried to work out the songs beforehand by jamming them out and spending as little time as possible recording them," he says. "We weren't fussing too much with overdubbing, so it's raw - more of a rock album."

To illustrate this point, Schmersal tells the Skinny that fans coming to see them on their current European tour will be presented with a more straightforward live performance than previously given. "Well the new record is a bit more stripped down, and so we're following that cue for the touring," he says. "It will have electronic elements but we're not doing a lot of the more keyboardy jams for this tour. The live show is going to be very fast-paced dancey rock'n'roll."

Currently attached to the legendary Touch and Go Records, the original home of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio and The Butthole Surfers, Enon are being given room to develop into a devastatingly dynamic group. For a band that is old fashioned in method - they still think in terms of sides A and B when writing an LP - but progressive in sound, their's is an experiment which is sure to continue to yield explosive results.