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Skinny Dipping in the Spree – an interview with The Districts

By Tom Taylor . September 12, 2017

We caught up with The Districts ahead of their Berlin show next week.

Hot on the heels of their sweaty and hugely enjoyable show at Badehaus Szimplon, Pennsylvanian rockers The Districts are back at Musik & Frieden on Friday September 22nd.

These guys make the kind of loud and in-your-face indie rock we wish we heard more of. They’ve impressed the likes of legendary record label Fat Possum, who took them under their wing a few years ago. With new album Popular Manipulations out now, the band are heading to Europe to pummel our lucky eardrums.

The Districts @ Musik & Frieden. Friday 22nd September 2017
The Facebook event is here.

BERLIN LOVES YOU caught up with the band to discuss their relationship with the city, the pros and cons of touring in Europe and whether or not they’d recommend Berliners visit their hometown (spoiler: they don’t).

What is your relationship with Berlin? What’s it like playing here?

We’ve played Berlin probably about five times and it’s definitely become one of our favorite cities to be in, if not our favorite. It’s an extremely stimulating environment to be in. Everywhere you go there’s amazing art and good food smells that make you not want to leave. We’ve never had the chance to stay for more than a night on tour, but we’ve really been meaning to have a holiday to soak it in more.

You played a sold-out show at Lido a while back – what are your memories of that night?

That Lido show was the first show of our tour with the band Broncho, so that was exciting to meet them all. They’ve become great friends and are easily one of the best bands around. After that show we got some pints and ended up skinny dipping in the River Spree.

You’re playing on a Friday night in Berlin – have you got plans to dip into the city’s legendary nightlife before moving on?

We’ve heard of a David Lynch themed bar that would we’d love to see! We really want to hit a techno club and dance dance dance the night away.

What’s changed in the band in the past few years since you first came to Berlin?

We were here a few months ago, but even then it still felt fresh to come back after touring so much after our last record and taking some time off. We constantly toured and it became easy to take things for granted, so after having a lot of time at home making our new album, coming back to places we’ve been to has been very exciting.

“After the show we got some pints and ended up skinny dipping in the River Spree.”

You’re embarking on a fairly sizeable tour of Europe – what do you like about coming over here? What don’t you like about it?

We get treated so much better in Europe. We show up to the venue and there’s usually like a cheese and meat platter and a bunch of veggies and good beer. A lot of times in America you just won’t get anything. Also just being able to see cities we never thought we’d be able to actually see is great. There’s never anything too bad to say about touring Europe other than lack of cell service, which can actually be nice to unplug yourself from the constant sea of information.

Can you explain where the title of your new album, ‘Popular Manipulations’, comes from?

A lot of the album explores themes of manipulation, and how everyone does it even if they are unaware that they are.

We’ve heard great things about legendary producer John Congleton – what’s it like working with him?

He’s a fantastic man and became our band daddy for the sessions we did with him. We get pretty goofy with John and always have fun with him. He thinks about music in an exciting way, and tries to push arrangements and sounds to push the song forward in very unique ways.

What’s it like being on the legendary Fat Possum records?

They’re great and are kind of like The Bad News Bears in the sense that they’re kind of scrappy but at the end of the day they always get shit done. They have an amazing catalog and we’re very pleased to be a part of it.

Can you recommend our readers your hometown of Lititz in Pennsylvania? Can you sell the town to our readers in a sentence?

I wouldn’t personally recommend it to a Berliner unless they want to see some Amish people and get a small town kind of vibe.

The Districts @ Musik & Frieden
Friday 22nd September 2017
The Facebook event is here.

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