After giving away a pair of tickets to their concert, UrbanWire had the opportunity to interview members of Anberlin and Copeland during their Secret Show the day following the Anberlin and Copeland concert by Wake Me Up Music on Jun 3 at the Glass Pavillion, Far East Square.

Check out what Aaron Marsh (vocals, guitar) and Jonathan Bucklew (drums) from Copeland, and what Anberlin’s Stephen Christian (vocals), Nathan Young (drums) and Christian McAlhaney (guitar) had to say about their music, each other, and performing in Singapore.

Copeland

UrbanWire: How would you describe your music?

Aaron: Melodic, pop music, apparently good music, yeah.

UrbanWire: This being your 2nd time here, how do you find Singapore?

Jonathan: We love to perform in Singapore, it’s great.
Aaron: Yeah, yeah, we had a great time. We had been walking around town, getting into cable car rides… Yeah, we’re just having a good time.

UrbanWire: Is there anything different from the last time you were here?

Jonathan: I don’t know, it seems pretty similar, it’s the same, it’s good, we had fun. We had serious fun.

UrbanWire: You’re touring with Anberlin this time round, and I heard y’all have known each other since way back?

Aaron: Yeah, we kind of grew up in the same town, like, for 12 years.

Jonathan: Yeah, we all grew up in the same area together; we came from the same part of town.

UrbanWire: Where will your next stop be?

Aaron: That will be Australia, good ol’ Australia.

UrbanWire: Making music is very hard work and offers little pay, especially in the indie scene. Do y’all have any other jobs besides making music?

Jonathan: Well yeah. Well, I mean like everyone’s so involved in music, like producing records and Bryan likes to mix records. Everyone still stay involved in music, but just doing different projects.

UrbanWire: What’s your favourite song off Eat, Sleep, Repeat?

Aaron: Probably the title track, “Eat, Sleep, Repeat”, the second song of the record.

Jonathan: Probably the second song, I think that’s everyone’s favourite song.

UrbanWire: Any reason why?

Jonathan: I think we just sort of like it musically, we love how it’s freeing. So it’s really good.

UrbanWire: How is Eat, Sleep, Repeat different from your previous albums?

Jonathan: It’s a lot different, musically, a little bit mellower, and the progression, kind of the direction we aim for in the beginning.

Aaron: It’s more laidback, a little bit more subtle, instrumentation are a little bit more sleek.

UrbanWire: Why should we buy a Copeland record?

Jonathan: We enjoy music, this is what we love to do, and we like to share it.

Aaron: If you like melodic music, good songwriting, and yeah, probably just good melody.

Anberlin

UrbanWire: How would you describe your music?

Stephen: I guess it’s somewhere between indie rock, rock and roll and new wave. So somewhere between Jimmy Eat World and The Cure. Somewhere between those two.

UrbanWire: How is it like touring with Copeland?

Stephen: Oh it’s really amazing. We’ve been really big fans of their music, and then on top of that, we grew up close, about 15 miles away, which is around 20km, I guess. And so we’ve grown up together and they are just such great guys and some of our best friends out of any band, so we really, really love them.

UrbanWire: What are your favourite songs on Cities?

Nathan: Probably our last song, “Fin”. It’s my favourite one. We got to spend a lot of time on it, and it’s like 10 minutes, so it’s like fun to like add a lot of stuff. Normally our songs are like 3 or 4 minutes long. So it’s just fun to make a song and not really hold back, and we had like a boy’s choir. And for me, personally, playing drums, I was able to do like as much stuff as I want, so that’s my favourite.

Stephen:Yeah, that’s my favourite song too, and for live, I like “Godspeed” and “Dismantle Repair”, just because everybody seems to sing along, and so we really love that.

UrbanWire: Is this the first time you’ve been to Singapore? How do you find it so far?

Nathan: … we’ve been here 4 days? And it’s been amazing so far, just being able to walk around and see many different places, and we’re really excited to come back too, hopefully. And hopefully have more time to go around visit some more places.

Stephen: But a highlight for us is last night’s show, it was just amazing. There’s so much [many???]people and so much fun. We had such a good time; I couldn’t stop smiling the entire time.

Christian: I find it very hot. Really hot, but I like it. Really heaty compared to where I’m from.

UrbanWire: Any words for our Singaporean fans?

Christian: Last night’s show was completely unexpected for us. We didn’t know what to expect cuz’ we’ve never been here before. After the show, we were talking about how this was one of the best shows we’ve ever played. The kids here were awesome. It means a lot to us to come all the way from the other side of the world and have kids know all your songs, so it’s awesome.

Stephen: Thank you, thank you so much for the support. I mean it’s our first time here and for last night to like, sell out and for everybody to be singing along was huge for us, you know. So a huge thank you. Thank you very, very much for all your support.

And that’s not all, Fans of Anberlin, check out what Anberlin has to say to UW readers out there by clicking here!