The Brides formed, in 2000, out of the wreckage of goth-punk masterminds, Corey Gorey teemed with Gregjaw, who had filled in on bass at a Brickbats show in Toronto.

"We sounded so much better," says Gorey. "We always kind of had it in mind after that show that we needed to start fresh. Julia Ghoulia (keys) met up with us one drunk night in New York City when we realized we needed a keyboard player and asked her if she knew anything about it. She said she knew something about it. She joined the band. Then all four of us got fat and old and died in obscurity sometime around 2010."

The fourth in the quartet, unnamed by Gorey, is drummer D.W. Friend. Everyone always overlooks the poor drummer. Gearwire spoke to Gorey, Ghoulia and Friend about recording, gear and a strange comparison made in a review.

If you were forced to do so at gunpoint how would you describe your music?

Corey Gorey: Welllllll, at gunpoint I’d say dark, dance-y rock and roll. But by knifepoint I’d have to say sloppy gothic punk. By pointed stick I’d say disco-leaning dark pop. And finally, by poisoned box of Raisinets, I’d say New Wave--regardless of what Catholic Discipline said about New Wave in Decline of Western Civilization, Part 1.

Better than Devo worse than Fischerspooner?

CG:The post-toddler set really have their opinions, don’t they? I can’t buy for a minute that we’re better than Devo--we don’t even have any hats. We do dress the same as each other, so we’ve got that covered. I’d say we’re on par with Fischerspooner--we just lack their electro-umphhhh. We’re working on that.

Tell me about one piece of gear (and everyone in the band can take a shot at answering this if they want...or not...works either way...) that you cannot live without? Live, studio, big little, old new, borrowed, stolen--whatever.

Julia Ghoulia: As long as I have a 5-octave, MIDI-capable keyboard I can use anything. That said, I’d love to use my pseudo-modern nineteen-seventies church/funeral organ (the Thomas “2001” model--hot stuff baby this evening) on stage one day when we’re rich enough to have minions to lug its 400 pounds around.

CG: I guess I kinda need my guitar. But even still, I could get by on any guitar, really. If I don’t have my amp and The Brides are doing a show, I at least need my Line 6 Pod to get the sounds for certain songs that I would normally get from my Flextone. That’s actually what I used to use anyway--my Pod into any amp I was using.

DW Friend: I just need a pair of sticks and kick pedal. If I have to, I’ll stick a soggy cardboard box in front of the kick for the boom boom, and if need be . . . trash cans for the bam bam. I’ve had to use a lot of crap kits over the years, so really -- it’s just the sticks--and the kick pedal. I’d name the brands I use, but I don’t have any endorsement, so I’m not naming names unless they pay me to or give me free stuff. Like love. I’ll play for free love.

GJ: I run my bass through a used GK 400RB head, a good old workhorse that I picked up cheap. We Frankensteined the thing to an old speaker cabinet with a newer speaker screwed into it and put wheels on it; makes it easier when it falls on you while hauling it up and down poorly designed concrete steps out the back of clubs with no lighting, slick from the bile of overindulgent bar patrons.

Tell me a little about what you used (format...tape..software) to record your CD?

CG: We recorded on to hard drive through a real big old board…at least it went through there, as well as a MOTU thingy-mabob that converted analog to digital--I think. Then it was through Nuendo, version three. Why? That’s what our producer (Jacques Cohen) uses. He didn’t really ask us about the whole thing. The two 24-track 2-inch SONY tape machines he has sat on the side, staring at us in angry silence, plotting their revenge.

GJ: I used these here metacarpi!

Generally tell me how you approach recording--philosophically--what are you trying to "do" sonically?

CG: Our philosophy doesn’t really rule the recording as we have worked with someone who must become a kind of interpreter between what our songs are trying to sound like, what he wants us to sound like, and what he is capable of eliciting from his equipment. Left to our own devices I’m sure we’d sound much more…mmm…either Mummies or Ladytron at points, meaning blown-out lo-fi, or air-tight electronic, than we do now.

Your recordings have a very clean sound. You can hear every instrument and it is also pretty subtle in a rock n roll way. Does this ever cause you issues when you "translate" the music from the studio to live?

CG: This gets back to what I was saying. We are definitely more raw live (and usually faster as we can’t control ourselves) than on our CDs. From a gear standpoint the biggest accommodations we’ve made concern the sound controllers--like I eventually moved away from my untrustworthy Fender tube 2 X 12 to a footswitch-controlled Line 6 Flextone III so that I can replicate the sounds I use on recordings and eliminate going through the Pod. Julia’s also got a separate Roland sound module, but I think we gave up on toting that around live, because we’re not big into gear for gear’s sake, so we don’t have a hard shell case for it. In fact, because we are a self-contained unit (fancy way of saying we drive our own van, roadie our own shows, and sell our own merch), we try to be as sparse as possible with equipment: two Fender basses and a GK head bass combo, two Epiphone Sheraton IIs and a Flextone amp, a Roland RS-5 keyboard and Roland keyboard amp, a four-piece drum kit, some backup mics, a tub of merch, and a tape Greg bought for $2.99 at a rest stop in Massachusetts called The Rappin’ Trucker - Buck Truck, the self-proclaimed “King of Truckabilly.”

GJ: That tape has killed many long road hours. At times it became almost like a D&D adventure, where members of the band would begin losing their minds driving and would then create different “campaigns” that Buck Truck would be involved with (usually centered around murder and truckin’).

The Brides have just finished up some shows in the Northeast and will be playing in Albany, NY, and Essex, CT. Their will be numerous giveaway parties for their new disc, Sofa City Sweetheart as well. There is also a new video on the way for their song New Shocks.