“Thursday who?” you say.

“Read on and discover,” I respond. Soon enough they will be the next big thing in our little underground, as they are about to record a new full length for Victory Records to follow up their amazing 1998 debut, Waiting. Their beautiful, lyrically profound, and gut/heart-wrenching melodic hardcore (which I’d call emo, but they said it’s not) is truly original, intelligent, and touching. I spoke with the band’s soft-spoken, cordial singer/songwriter Geoff over the phone. He resides in a mysterious warehouse somewhere in New Jersey, as I dwell here, in the dark recesses of the Generation office, only to see the breaking light of day when ‘massa Carlos sees that I’ve filled all of his empty peanut butter jars with my bodily fluids.

Generation: Can you tell me a little about your lyrical content? For the most part, what are your songs about?

Geoff: Our songs are about the light and the dark—how beautiful life can be and how much hope you can instill in people, but it’s also about the hard stuff—about death.

G: Do you see your songs as optimistic?

T: I think so. Yeah. We confront a lot of hard stuff and I’ve never given up hope. Also, in the idea that life is a transition—we’re all going to die. Everyone knows that. Taking that as a given, I look at everything else as a transitory moment that just passes over you. Out of nowhere, we were all born, so just getting this is something that I can’t help but look at as positive.

G: Death comes up quite often in the songs of Waiting. How has it affected you to make it such a dominant topic?

T: The first song, “Porcelain,” is obviously a reference to how fragile life can be. One of my best friends in the world, the kid who basically raised me since I was a little kid and got me into hardcore, moved to San Francisco two years ago. Then he bought a shotgun from Wal-Mart and he shot himself.

G: Who is Ian Kurtis [of the song entitled “Ian Kurtis”]?

T: Ian Kurtis is a singer for a band called Joy Division. Even though it may be hard to tell, that’s the one sort of love song on the record. What we [my girlfriend and I] used to listen to when we’d lay in bed together is Joy Division, and all over those songs you can hear how sad he is and how depressed, and you can kind of hear how he’s going to kill himself. He killed himself and the band became New Order—that’s the sort of lineage. I found it significant that we used to listen to songs that were about someone falling apart and killing himself, and that’s actually the girlfriend that “Dying in New Brunswick” is about. We were together for about four years. It’s about how even someone you’re totally in love with, you can have a really destructive relationship with.

“Dying in New Brunswick” is one of the songs that started the band, because I had this one year that was pretty hard, where I’d say music pretty much saved my life. That girlfriend who I was totally in love with moved to New Brunswick, and her first weekend there, she was raped. It really messed her up, and she was never able to talk to me again because she blamed herself for being in the wrong place, which I definitely wouldn’t have held against her. She couldn’t face me anymore, and it was really hard because I moved out there right after that. I spent all this time in this city that I hated because everything reminded me of the fact that I lost the girl that I loved, and that she wasn’t doing OK either. That’s what the “I’m writing you this letter to let you know that I’m not all right” is about. Even though nothing really happened to me, I definitely felt like New Brunswick was dying.

G: What made you guys decide to do an instrumental?

T: After we had the whole CD recorded, we started playing all over the place, and we opened with “Streaks in the Sky” a lot. What they started doing was actually starting the song without me and just playing for a while. We would take it for a long time and it would build up the set a lot, and I would get a chance to just watch the band and not feel like I’m a part of the band. I actually got a chance to appreciate them playing by themselves. We went back and recorded the instrumental part, and were able to do it in the exact same time signature, and we were able to put them together on the record like we did live. I love the way they play, and I don’t always get a chance to appreciate them, because I’m thinking, “What can I come up with to sing that’s not going to mess up the song?”

G: That record was recorded two years ago. How has the sound developed since then?

T: Sometimes we get heavier than we did on that record. We’re still the same people, and I really think that music has to be an extension of who you are. I think now there’s a lot more influence of the Police and U2, because those are bands that we always loved, but we didn’t think about them as being anything comparable to us. They were really great bands, and we were a bunch of kids who really don’t know how to play our instruments. On tour we listened to them so much we were just like, “We’re writing parts that are a little bit similar; we shouldn’t throw them out because they have that in them.” That’s something that has influenced me as much as Minor Threat or Bad Brains has. I don’t even know if anybody will be able to tell. There are just some parts that are faster and more upbeat. It’s not really happier, just faster. The old record I consider to be kind of slow.

G: How is the new album coming along? What’s it going to be called? What are the songs about?

T: We have like 10 songs written for the new album, but we want to be able to write 5 or 6 more because we want to pick the best ones. A lot of bands say, “Whatever we do, that’s what we should put on our record,” but a lot of music for me is helping other people to feel good about themselves. I want to make sure it’s a record that’s fulfilling for people other than just us. I think a lot of musicians are selfish by making music just for themselves. I’m not sure what it’s going to be called, but we’re working with something along the lines of, A Record With Any Name. We want it to be something sort of anonymous. We’re going in November to record.

We have one song called “Paris in Flames,” which is based on a documentary called Paris is Burning. It’s about a guy I know who would tell me that it’s hard to be a black guy in the hardcore scene. So, I’d say, “Is that the hardest thing you come up against?” He would say, “It’s really hard to be black and gay in the hardcore scene.” That movie really struck a chord with him, and he’s been a great influence on my life, so I wanted to write a song about that. There’s a song called “Concealer” about a really close friend of mine when I was five. He was one of those dirty kids that you go and play with and beat each other up, wrestle on the ground, and jump in leaf piles. It’s about the fact that his mom used to have to put make-up on him because she used to beat him so badly that she had to cover up all the bruises before he could go to school. There’s a lot of hope on the record, even though it doesn’t sound it.

G: A lot of bands in the underground are resistant to Victory Records because the label is too big for them. What are your thoughts on the issue, and why have you chosen to put your album out with them?

T: We were very unwilling at first when Victory started talking to us. The main thing that had concerned us is that Victory had put out a porno, without telling their bands that they were going to put them in it. That really has nothing to do with why any of us got into music, and it actually offended one of the members of our band really, really deeply. Our friends in [the band] Grade were in town the week that it came out, and they were so pissed. I talked to Duncan Barlow from By the Grace of God, and they were one of the bands that asked to be removed from the label. He said that for them, Victory wasn’t right because they [By the Grace of God] were blatantly political, and they felt that Victory had no political base. As far as a record label to get you out there and to get you on tour, and to make sure that kids are going to be able to find your record, he said that Victory was great for them. The fact that Duncan Barlow, someone who had such a problem with the label, didn’t try to dissuade us at all, but was very positive about the label, meant a lot, because I really respect him a lot.

As far as kids thinking Victory is too big, I really don’t like elitism in hardcore. The majority of hardcore is suburban, affluent, white kids, all preaching politics to each other, and it’s bullshit. When music meant the most to me was before I knew anything about hardcore—when it changed my life and opened my eyes. If we can be that band for any kid, I know that he might not know anything about hardcore either, and I’d like him to be able to walk into any store and be able to find it.