No-man's land
"I don't think [Colors] is going to set the blogosphere on fire ... because I think the songs we write have more pop hooks in them," Beach says. "The arrangement we like to think is a little bit more innovative than what you're going to hear on Top 40 radio. We're in that no-man's land between we're not going to have a top 40 radio hit and we're also not necessarily going to be the next Vampire Weekend or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. But we're all really happy with how it came out because I think we were able to write the songs we like to write and the lyrics we want to convey but have it coming out sounding cool and sounding like some of the production we like to hear."
Organic records
"Chad [Clark] is our producer for this album and he's sort of a little bit of a legend in the D.C. scene, and has worked with some great punk bands ... and we kind of recorded on his home turf at Inner Ear Studios," McCarthy says. "Chad has these punk roots and he comes at it from a very organic feel and wanted to capture the live sound of the band ... and I think he did a good job of accomplishing that [by] recording us in a more of a group setting. Albums these days sometimes are made in pieces and this was a little less like that."