Chairlift: band of 'Bruises'

Chairlift (left to right): Aaron Pfenning, Patrick Wimberly and Caroline Polachek (Credit: Ross Fraser)

Anybody with a TV knows the spot: a female voice sings “I tried to do handstands for you” over synths and an electro-indie beat, while multi-colored iPod Nanos tumble across the screen.

The song is “Bruises” from Brooklyn trio Chairlift’s debut album, “Does You Inspire You.” The voice is Chairlift singer and co-songwriter Caroline Polachek’s; backing comes courtesy Aaron Pfenning, who co-writes and plays synths and guitar, and drummer-producer Patrick Wimberly. According to group lore, the three met while attending the University of Colorado in Boulder and ended up hanging out a lot in a mostly deserted, possibly haunted jazz bar. After late nights spent watching Wimberly drum at the spooky watering hole, Pfenning would show Polachek to the shed behind his house where they’d loosely collaborate on making “music for haunted houses.”

The pair eventually took some songs Pfenning had been working on for a solo project and combined them with aspects of the fright-night electro they’d been creating in the shed. Somewhere in the process, they also moved to Brooklyn and reunited with Wimberly, adding him to the Chairlift lineup. It all resulted in iPod commercial soundtrack gold.

Pfenning called us from his adopted hometown—or, as he put it “the greatest city in the world”—just as the band was meeting to go over new music video treatments.

How did you end up in Colorado for school?
I was doing video, Patrick was there for jazz, and Caroline was doing art.

Chairlift’s sound seems like it definitely fits within a certain New York scene, but I don’t really see it working at the University of Colorado. I can't picture you guys at the same party as, say, 3OH!3.
Yeah, well, 3OH!3—they’re definitely a Boulder band. And that’s why we left Colorado, ‘cause it just wasn’t working. No one was really latching on to it. We got more into it, more focused, when we got to New York. We just felt better about ourselves.

Did the sound change in that transition?
Yeah, it went from more of like folk-twee-pop…

And then you heard that electro was cool?
[Laughs] Yeah, then we shaved off most of the twee stuff, I think, hopefully.

You guys have said how since the iPod ad, it's been really surreal; is it settling in yet for you? Is it getting more normal?
You know, like, on Valentine’s Day when you’re in school, how everyone around you that entire day is just different? Like all of the sudden you’re just getting Valentine’s cards, and people you don’t know or used to know or maybe some girl who has a crush on you is giving you something—it kinda seems like that. Otherwise, it’s a normal day, I think. Like, people on YouTube, there’s a lot of people—teenage girls and stuff, tweens—making cover songs of “Bruises.”

And you watch them?
Yeah, I watched them. They’re funny. So, I feel like people’s reactions to that song is kind of more exaggerated than what I feel like we’re going through. We’re still just focused on writing new songs and doing what we were doing before. So, really we’re just kind of doing the same thing.

Was having your song in the iPod commercial your decision to make?
Well, yeah. I mean, we didn’t seek it out or anything—they basically emailed us. We enjoy Apple; we think they’re genius.

You don’t get, like, a super-secret special Steve Jobs discount now, do you?
[Laughs] I can’t say. I can’t reveal that information.

You have the new, new iPhone, I know it!
What I get more from is, spiritually, just knowing that Steve Jobs heard a little bit of Chairlift in his life. [Laughs]

Are you working on new recordings?
Yeah, we are. We’re putting out some bonus tracks that are kind of like epilogues to the album, which will be out in April. And then we’re writing a bunch of new songs that we’re going to play on tour, and that’ll be for the next album. And we’re doing all this other stuff—we have a bunch of new music videos. We’re trying to make music videos for every song on the album.

Caroline’s becoming a well-known fashionista, but when you’re on tour, you can only bring so many suitcases; does she have a battle plan for that?
Yeah, she’s got, like, an “arsenal” is what we call it, of clothing. We keep everything in our big locked vault of closets in Brooklyn and then before every tour we’ll pick out what we think will be the best for that particular tour. We usually dress according to the space. Like, we’ll go in and sound check and check out the venue, and wear whatever clothing we think fits the space. I bring less clothes than she does, so I end up wearing a lot of the same things. But yeah, her bag’s the biggest.

Is she sneaking things into your bag at this point?
Well, I used to let her keep stuff in there, but not anymore. [Laughs]