There’s so much that I have to say about my time with The Criticals. 

A Nashville based rock band, who’s euphonious sound and vivacious members captivate the crowd for their entire performance. I was lucky enough to get to spend the afternoon with them. They were incredibly kind and welcoming, making me feel at ease and comfortable with them right away. It’s not often that you come across such genuine people. Putting this interview together has reminded me that I miss them.

Emily: If you guys could open for anybody, dead or alive, who would you wanna open for?

Parker: My dead would probably be the OG Alice in Chains and my alive would probably be Fontaines DC. 

Cole: Dead I would say Stone Roses and Fontaines DC or Jane’s Addiction. 

Emily: Those are good ones!

Emily: How would you describe your general music style? 

Parker: Man, we grew up listening to everything, like everything from pop, rock, soul & metal. So we try to, I mean, sometimes inevitably without us even realizing it, those all kind of make their way into the music. But if I’m just explaining it to somebody that’s never heard us, I would probably say indie rock. Or alt rock. Also with a little bit of funk in there. 

Cole: That’s a good one.

Emily: What is your guys’ favorite song to perform?

Cole: Right now I’m enjoying Belmont which is a new song that we’re putting out on our new EP that’s coming out in July. I think that song is coming out in June though. 

Parker: Yeah I like all of the new ones. I’ll say a different one though. I always love doing The Truth. 

Emily: Where’s your favorite venue that you guys have performed at?

Cole: We just played like two weekends ago at this place called The Brooklyn Maid in Bushwick, NY, and fuck it was so sick

Parker: Oh my gosh, that was a great club. 

Cole: Like every part of it was great. They had a pool in the green room. The sound was amazing. They had this beautiful catwalk that we could run on almost. It was so cool, that was my favorite of this year for sure. Also Radio Room in Greenville is one of my favorites. It’s very unassuming, but they have insane sound, good stage. The crowds are always fucking awesome. 

Parker: I love Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. 

Emily: Where are you guys from? I don’t think I’ve asked. 

Parker: Four out of the five of us are from Tennessee. Oh and there’s one from California. We, (Cole and I) met when we were super young. I was born in a small town in west Tennessee, but I moved up to Nashville when I was in fourth or fifth grade. So I pretty much grew up there. And everyone else grew up there. 

Emily: Is there one of you in particular that does most of the songwriting?

Cole: No it’s usually just me and Parker. But we also have other co-writers that come in. On this new EP we have Nick Brown & Lincoln Parrish who is one of the members of Cage the Elephant. David Kahn has been pretty instrumental in the last couple of songs that we’ve released. He’s done some help compositionally in our work, he’s a fucking wizard. He lives in NYC so we go up there after we’ve written a bunch of songs. We’ll bring them to him and he’ll work his magic on them. 

Parker: Like The Truth we wrote a year and a half ago. We just started playing it live and couldn’t figure out the studio version, just no matter how many times we tried it, it wasn’t hitting like it did live. And we were frustrated because we just wanted to put it out and it had already been a staple in our set for six or seven months. So we just took it to David after we played the Mercury Lounge last year and he just put that extra little thing on it.

Emily: What’s one of your favorite stories from being on the road? 

Cole: When you tour all the time, all of the cities kind of mesh together. I guess the weirdest thing for me is running into people that we don’t expect to be there. Like when we were in Bushwick two weeks ago and I stepped outside of the venue to get a drink with some friends, I ran into like five people that I knew from Nashville that weren’t even there to see the show. Like for example, today one of our friends Alex Hodge from middle school was playing bass for Bird & Byron. And he said on the way up, he didn’t even know it was our show. We were soundchecking earlier and when he walked in, we were like, what the fuck dude, I haven’t seen you in years!

Emily: Do you guys have any hobbies outside of playing in the band?

Cole: Yeah sure! I paint a lot and I go backpacking a lot.

Parker: I love hiking as well. And I love rockclimbing. 

Emily: What do you think is the biggest crowd that you’ve ever performed in front of?

Cole: Live on the Green.

Parker: Yeah for sure. That was probably like 5,000 probably. 

Emily: This is probably a silly question but do you have a preference performing in front of bigger or smaller crowds?

Cole:: Oh man it depends. Live on the Green was crazy. It was one of those things where you just kind of like block it out, because it’s SO many people. It was like an entire city block. Honestly, there’s nothing fucking better than just a little 250 cap. 

These guys are incredibly talented, please give them a listen!

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