I first became aware of Librarians With Hickeys on their excellent album Long Overdue and have enjoyed them ever since. Good pop, great jangle, wonderful lyrics. What’s not to like?

The band was kind enough to answer some questions for me.

Andrea Weiss: How does it feel to have a new album out?

Ray Carmen: It feels great! We’re really excited with how it turned out, and so far people seem to be really digging it (he said in an old 1960s hippie parlance).

Mike Crooker: Yes, after two years of writing, recording, mixing, stopping, re-evaluating, writing some more, recording, recording, mixing, mastering, making two videos – well, I gotta tell you, it does feels great!

AW: Who were you listening to when you were recording it?

Mike: Once we decided on which 12 songs were going to be on the album – that's all we listened to for the last year – I would literally fall asleep with the headphones on with the current song on a loop and then wake up at 3:30 AM with a list of tweaks to make in the morning. There really wasn't time left for recreational music listening. But, my, uh... unique process did yield results in the end, even if my sleep pattern suffered!

Ray: I was also listening to a lot of us, going back over our older material and getting psyched up for writing the new record. I was also checking out Beabadoobee, She & Him, Courtney Barnett, and The Go! Team. Then there are my go-to’s – the Beatles, the Monkees, Queen, Marshall Crenshaw, Guided By Voices, Martin Newell, R. Stevie Moore…the list goes on…and on…

AW: Which comes first for you, melodies or rhythms?

Ray: When I write with Mike, he gives me the music and I write the lyrics. I have a notebook full of lyrics and phrases, which I refer to periodically when my mind goes blank, which is often.

Mike: For me it's usually chord structures (guitar or piano), which lead to melodies, then rhythms, which lead to figuring out what words fit within that structure. For a counter example, although I had written the words for "Over You" first, long before any music, it influenced both the rhythm and the melody because of the meter and syllabic emphasis.

AW: I hear some jangle pop as well as rock here. Did you want both?

Mike: When you have a Rickenbacker guitar in a band you're legally obligated to jangle. So we do. Sometimes we break out the distortion boxes and rattle the china a bit.

Ray: Absolutely! We are most definitely a jangle pop band – everything we do is based on catchy riffs, melodies and harmonies! We like distortion too. We usually end our live sets with the distortion pedals on and the guitars cranked up. It’s a lot of fun, and it always goes over really well.

AW: The tone of some of the songs is regret. Did the lyrics just tend toward that theme?

Ray: I’m responsible for most of the lyrics for our songs. The pandemic and the planet being in such turmoil reflected in some of the lyrics, for sure. Getting older in a world that is more or less a dumpster fire will do that, I guess.

Mike: In the process of writing we ended up with about 30 songs and if the record had come out in 2021, it probably would have contained a much different song list; a song like “Stumbling Down Memory Lane” is sort of the lyrical heart of the album. There's nostalgia, regret, and sense of absence. A large part of that was the emotional mine-field we were all living through at the time.

AW: Who’s your favorite Ohio band?

Ray: Pleasure Leftists.

Mike: Yes, we just saw them in Cleveland a few months back. That's was a great show!

For me depends on what day it is. Devo, Tin Huey, Lemon Pipers, The Human Beinz, James Gang, Dead Boys, Guided By Voices...

AW: Any good Ohio bands people should be listening for?

Ray: The aforementioned Pleasure Leftists, the Tambourine People (speaking of jangle/sunshine pop!!), the Kahuna Kings, and the Rainy Day Saints. And, if you haven’t heard Pere Ubu by now, get crackin’!

Mike: The Tambourine People, The Vindys, Duo Decibel System, Operation Tomorrow.

But if you really want to take a deep dive and hear what's going on in the 330/216/440 area code (Northeast Ohio), there's some great up-and-coming bands getting played hourly on WAPS-FM (https://thesummit.fm/) based in Akron. They also have a whole sub-channel streaming area bands 24/7 called https://the330.net/

AW: Do you plan to tour?

Mike: As we have learned from living in Ohio all these years, winter is not conducive to touring in the Great Lakes area! That's one of the reasons for the two videos for "I Can't Stop Thinking About You" and "Ghost Singer" that we shot beforehand. We knew that with the timing of Handclaps & Tambourines being out in October that touring wouldn't work. So we'll probably shoot a few more videos before the end of the year to keep us busy!