Lawrence.com

With a name like Olympic Size, a band really ought to crank their amps to eleven and perform athletic feats of guitar-tapping and drum-soloing. Kansas City’s Olympic Size is quite the opposite, purveying a slow and spacious brand of so-called “sadcore” (it’s not really that depressing) that never rushes to the finish line. The six-piece group has developed over the course of the past eight years, starting as a film-scoring collaboration between Billy Smith and Wade Williamson and finding its present footing with the addition of Kirsten Paludan (vocals, keys), Chris Tolle (bass), John Bersuch (drums), and Mike Walker (trombone). Favoring a sublime blend of reverb-soaked guitars, vibes, light drums, and coed harmonies, Olympic Size is the easiest band to talk over that you might actually want to shut up for. We brought half the group into our podcast hutch to mull over their latest album “You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone” and their contribution to MTV’s The Real World: Sydney.

NO-FI HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PODCAST

lawrence.com: Even though you only made 150 copies of “You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone,” I know a lot of work went into it.

Billy Smith: Oh yeah. The music took about three months, but the vocals were the hard part. We took a long time. I didn’t want to have an oversaturated, auto-tuned album. I didn’t want to cringe whenever I heard my record.

So this was made in the pre-Kanye West “808s & Heartbreak” era.

Smith: Well, you should hear our next record (joking … we hope).

Do you have any favorite guy/girl bands that come to mind as inspirations?

Smith: Cocteau Twins are one of my favorite bands of all time. The whole 4AD catalog of This Mortal Coil and those kind of bands propelled me to make somber, slow music.

Kirsten Paludan: We call it “sadcore” (laughing).

Smith: Wade and I started Olympic Size as a duo a long time before we met Kirsten … We lived in Chicago in 2000 with some film producers that allowed us to make music for their student films. We called it Olympic Size because it was only two people making a huge wall of reverbed-out sound.

As it says on your band bio, your song “Friends” was used on MTV’s The Real World “during one of the most dramatic moments of the season, when one of the roommates is forced to move out of the house.”

Smith: I don’t have any particular distain towards putting music in movies or commercials, but I have to say I was pretty impressed by the usage (of the song) and how they edited it to fit in the scene. And because it was a pivotal, dramatic scene, I think we made a little more skrill from it being repeated, ‘cause the girls were crying.

Do you think the song had anything to do with her decision to move out of the house?

Wade Williamson: I think the spitting had something to do with it.

Between The Real World and Olympic Size, which one has more drama?

Smith: We don’t have a hot tub, but we’re working on that with our royalties.

Williamson: We do spit, though.

I’ve noticed that you guys tend to play shows the night that you think of it, or you’ll insist on playing first.

Smith: We’re really quiet and mellow … Friday nights are for rocking out and partying and trying to get laid. We were also building our fan base slowly while we were building our band … The Brick and The Record Bar gave us Mondays and Tuesdays, and we kind of built this service-industry crowd. Plus, you can hear every note on a Tuesday night.

So Billy, you’ve been handling booking for the Czar Bar in Kansas City?

Smith: Yeah. It’s a new little dark-lounge venue. We weren’t pushing a whole lot of bands through there (at first), but now as spring time is rolling in we’re gearing up to book more live music throughout the week. Any Lawrence bands that want to play can hit us up on MySpace.

How long have you been playing in bands around here?

Smith: I’ve been playing bands since I was 12, actually. I had a band called Gollywog.

I don’t know if that counts, Billy.

Smith: Yeah I know, but we played Harling’s and we played with bands like Mudhead and Sin City Disciples. I just found a flyer that Ann Winter of Recycled Sounds gave me of Gollywog opening up for Slint.

What did you think of Slint when you were 13?

Smith: I loved them. They were my favorite band of all-time. Our drummer was probably 3’ 8” and maybe 75 pounds. I just remember the Slint drummer coming up to our drummer and saying, “You need to hit your snare drum harder.” We were kind of crushed.