— by Chris Harris
Sometimes, a creative, harmless lie can bring something that the truth can't.
A couple of years ago, the members of New Orleans quintet World Leader Pretend wrote a letter to the city's Times-Picayune that eventually duped a reporter into penning a four-page feature article on them. The band purported to be a Chicago promoter asking for the group be to banished from the local club circuit.
"We said that we were the worst band that [the promoter] had ever seen in his life and that we were a disgrace to New Orleans and we broke all of our equipment," frontman/guitarist Keith Ferguson recalled. "Oh — and that we were like throwing stuff at the audience."
Before the letter, World Leader Pretend were nothing more than a pop/rock band in a jazz-lovin' town. But it inspired a scribe to check them out, resulting in a glowing cover story that heralded the quintet as the "next big thing."
It was a long way from the situation the band had found itself in just weeks before. The vacant, ramshackle, alcohol-soaked, eight-story New Orleans hotel that serves as the quintet's rehearsal space was ransacked by a flock of destructive pigeons — who plastered the place with droppings — stalling the recording of the band's debut album, Punches.
But there wasn't enough pigeon poop in the world to keep down World Leader Pretend (yes, they misappropriated the name from an R.E.M. song). The boys, still teeming with confidence from the article, stormed into an area bank and put everything they owned on the line for a cashier's check that, some airline tickets later, landed them in Harlem.
"It was Christmastime and we all just wanted to go to New York," Ferguson explained. "It was a good excuse to go to New York and continue working [on the record]. I think the atmosphere of New York City in the middle of a blizzard really influenced our sound."
Recording commenced in Harlem's Marcata Studios (owned by New York rockers the Walkmen), and according to Ferguson, the songs just flowed. "There's a certain coldness to the record, it's really interesting," he said. "It's sort of got this sweaty, Southern sort of soulful feel to it, and at the same time, sonically, it's very cold and sort of Christmassy, and there are all these jingle bells and sparkly guitars."
A year and lots of major-label coddling later, World Leader Pretend — Ferguson, keyboardist Parker Hutchinson, guitarist Matt Martin, bassist Alex Smith and drummer Arthur Mintz, the latter of whom gave up a lucrative career in puppetry for the band — signed with Warner Bros. Records, which will release the group's languid, inventive, piano-driven debut opus on June 28. The band's first single, "Bang Theory," should surface on rock radio later this month with a video to follow; WLP are also playing Lollapalooza on July 23.
"[The album's] got a sloppy sort of soulfulness to it — you don't get much of that in rock and pop music anymore," Ferguson said. "Everything seems very programmed and sort of cleaned up nowadays. Hopefully, that [soulful sloppiness] is the element we'll bring back."
And as much as WLP might owe to generous reporters or a flock of pigeons, they're perhaps most indebted to the city that spawned them.
"The great thing about being based in New Orleans is, because it's quite an insular town, your only motivation is yourself, really," Smith said. "It's not a rock scene there, so you've got to create your own momentum. You have to do everything you can to get out there and get your music good and play your songs."
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