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 Caught somewhere between The Cure and Interpol and laced with melodies choruses and reverb lovingly borrowed from just about every genre around, 'Anti Anti' is a promising beginning from this Atlanta based project which started out like many a teenage musicians dream. For Jeffares, music isn't just a commodity; it's his life. His muse. We spoke to him about his beginnings, his achievements and how exactly a new act can hope to make it. Read on for details! So hi Jordan, please, for our readers, introduce yourself! Hi I’m Jordan Jeffries I’m singer and music writer for Snowden! ...and for those who aren't in the know, please tell us a little about you and your band Well Snowden was born in my kinda, college bedroom at the end of Uni about three years ago. I was pretty much alone trying to finish school… all I did was study and work on music and so I kind of sketched out a lot of the early music for the birth of the band, and then after I graduated I decided that I wasn’t going to go onto grad school and that I was just going to really focus on Snowden as my only project. I put everything I had into it… I wrote all the parts, and performed them and then mixed them. I wrote the drum parts and had my drummer interpret those. On stage I play guitar and sing and play some keys sometime. That’s about it.  Well this is still kind of like a solo artist thing. You know I still… I’ve always written everything. It became a band as soon as the music needed to be turned into a a live performance, there’s never really been a distinction. They are aptly one and the same. You are from Atlanta – to what extent do you feel your location influenced your sound? Well I think it matters the way that living in one single place influences anybody. A lot of my music is yearning for a change. I’ve been living in that town my entire life and I’ve been trying to get away and try something new. Being a musician it’s kind of hard sometimes so it’s like this bittersweet interaction of wanting to get away but being so poor that you can’t really do that. So for better or for worse it creates a lot of energy and is the impetus for a lot of writing. I love my home town as much as I sometimes want to take a break, and I guess that’s what the music really means to me. Your tour has led you across some of Europe and now the UK. We are nearly at the end, how has it all been? It’s er… a lot like the states. A lot like some of the earlier clubs we’ve played. The rooms are the same size, the back stage is the same. It’s a lot similar really. The audiences are different! They are very stiff in the UK. Still and quiet. In the states people would come up to us all the time and talk to us but here people are very different, it’s more… distant. We were warned though! Who warned you about us Brits!? Well before we got here we played in Belgium! They were warm and friendly but they were like “Well, it’s not gonna be like that in England”. Very fickle! But I guess you guys have had some of the best music in the world come out of this country so I guess you guys have earnt the right to be a little austeer about it all! Do you find it strange that people half way across the world know your work? I do find that odd. There are people in the States that don’t know the stuff so it’s really interesting to see people in Glasgow (Scotland) coming up to us and saying that they are so glad we played there. I never, well, even when I started this three years ago when no-one except myself knew anything about the music… I kinda knew that somehow music would take me to Europe. I’d never been before! I kept saying that I’d wait… it was so expensive with school that it was ridiculous so I kept thinking eventually it would happen and finally we have got to the UK and we’re coming back to do Europe properly in the Spring! When you get home you have an extensive run with Forward Russia, are you looking forward to that? Very much so! We’ve already done one time around the states and got in about the press, got a few people talking. Hopefully this time it will be a bit better! We slept on floors about ¾ of the time first time round and this time there is people waiting for us to come so we’re really really excited about that! You shared a stage with the Arcade Fire too! Yeah that was kinda… well, when you are a part of a scene in your home town… we actually opened for The Unicorns! The Arcade Fire were on after us. Their record wasn’t out and no-one including us knew who they were. We met them at that show and the promoter there was a big supporter of the local music so we met ‘em, I gave them some extra money because I didn’t think what they made was enough and they ended up coming to stay at my house, all seven or eight of them for two days! They did laundry and just hung out! They were in three rental cars at the time, at the end they threw us a huge barbeque, went to the grocery store and stocked up! Then the lead singer gave me a burnt CD with ‘Arcade Fire’ written on it saying that it was their new album coming out and I was like ‘uh yeah’ as you do with new bands ha! The lead singer set us a thank you card though! They are good live huh? Well, when they were touring with The Unicorns, and this is even before the record was out… people were saying this is one of the greatest live shows around right now! Right. Anti Anti. It’s been coined as ‘Dirty Pop’ – can you shed some light on that? Well you know, it kind of gives you a ball park estimate as to where the music is. It’s approachable… there are people who like Fugazi that like our music and there are people who like Beyonce. It’s just… the songs aren’t six minutes long, there’s a chorus, the pop structure holds but everything in between is dirty… distorted bass, lots of reverb, it’s kind of lush. I read that it's 12 tracks of “Post shoegaze melodies amidst a sea of reverb” What does that mean? Well the shoegaze thing is just this loose way of saying the music is lush so it’s… you know, there’s a lot of melody and all the guitars are doing different things. The guitars aren’t playing standard chords… in fact I don’t think there’s a standard chord on the record. At any different time there’s about four different melodies going. Comparisons have been drawn between you guys and bands such as Interpol, The Cure and The Editors, how do you feel about that? Well, Interpol feels good, The Editors, not really so keen on them! But people need a way to figure out a way to tie into music. I don’t really dwell on it, it’s not really a big deal for me. We’re not any of the aforementioned, we are who we are. If there was one message you’d like to convey with the album, what would it be?, Question everything. Re-assess your life every day. It’s something I do. It’s in the lyrics without a doubt. Internet filesharing seemingly played a considerable part of your success, but could you explain how?, Well especially when you are a band like us that doesn’t have millions of dollars, well, even thousands of dollars, I guess, you know with a small budget. Well, the first EP we just gave away. There was no point in trying to make costs back on it. Why should people go and buy a record of this band from Atlanta that’s not signed and no-one really knows. We’d rather that 10,000 people knew the record and we have nothing than 1000 people knew it and we had $2000. At this day and age you’ve got to give it way before you can expect people to pay attention. Okay one last final question, please suggest to us a band that we should all check out for the future. England, and in fact the world has got to wake up to The Clientel! You brits have a national treasure on your hands and you don’t appreciate it. We here at TeenSpot would like to thank Jordan for his time and wish him the best of luck for the future! Indie fans, check out Anti-Anti. It's not half bad you know! Click HERE to visit the Snowden official website where you can listen to various tracks from 'Anti Anti' as well as read up a little more about Jordan and co.
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