Matthew Turner (My America – guitar/vocals)
SPB: What is the strangest trend you see in modern music (or in the industry)?
Turner: This actually came up very recently when we were in the studio recording our new album with Kevin Bernsten. We were pretty aligned in terms of musical taste with Kevin. We liked a lot of the same stuff. So naturally we would get into a lot of stuff we both DIDN'T like and the recording technique that goes into making those bands sound the way they do. I just don't understand when, I guess what you would now call "pop-punk" bands, became so far off base from anything punk at all. You know, all the fake drum sounds, triggers, auto tune, whatever else. Kevin actually told us a gem of a story where he was in another studio and heard a guy in there tracking and jokingly told whoever it was behind the board to turn off the auto-tune. The guy was like "uhh... there is no auto-tune?" The guy was just emulating what he hears on the records he likes. So much that it's basically warping his brain and has him thinking this actually sounds good. It was an incredible story that, to me, is like the pinnacle of this not-so-great trend.
