Photo By Kellty Shull

On their next album, Indianapolis' Margot and the Nuclear So and So's strip away the ´Chamber Folk´ elements in favor of Noise Pop influences

Richard Edwards, frontman for Margot & the Nuclear So and So's, seems to conduct an interview in a straightforward manner. But given his history, it's hard to know for sure.

After all, he famously revealed in an on-air interview on woxy.com that the band was named in honor of a daughter he does not have, when most sources cite Gwyneth Paltrow's character in The Royal Tennenbaums as the inspiration for the Margot reference.

And even that story might have run its course from Edwards' perspective. His previous band, Archer Avenue, was also tagged as a Tennenbaums reference, and Edwards admits that perhaps his association with the Wes Anderson film has lost its humor potential.

"We've gotten rid of all that," Edwards says from his Indianapolis home. "It kind of got blown out of proportion. I don't think anybody in the band had really seen the movie when we started. I thought it was a cute movie, but I say something stupid and all of a sudden it's more ridiculous than the serious thing I didn't want to say for fear of it being ridiculous."

Another oft-cited story claims that Edwards and fellow multi-instrumentalist Andy Fry met in a pet store three years ago, a chance encounter that led to the formation of the So and So's. Edwards doesn't tell the same tale in his recounting of the band's early history.

"It was summer of 2004, and we just knew each other from other bands," he says. "That's how we got together. We were friends."

Whatever the story, the pairing of Edwards and Fry resulted in a potent, unique and immediate musical chemistry. One by one, Edwards and Fry added a diverse and fascinating cast of characters to the So and So's to flesh out Edwards' songs, eventually assembling a band that often features upward of eight people on stage and alternately shimmers and thunders with a haunting Chamber Folk/Pop sound that suggests a summit meeting between Paul Simon and Arcade Fire.

The physical size of the band can be a challenge when they're on stage. At last year's South By Southwest, the So and So's were packed so tightly onto the wide-but-shallow stage at Nuno's that bassist Tyler Watkins began banging the neck of his guitar on drummer Chris Fry's cymbals and kit until his headstock snapped off during the band's final song.

"That was a fun show," Edwards says. "We seem to find a way to squeeze onto the stage. It's not been such a big problem now as it was before we had a booking agent who knew how big a stage we need. It's fun to play those tiny stages anyway."

The band garnered attention almost immediately and chose to tour regionally rather than grind out dates in the Indianapolis scene. They signed with local indie Standard Recording and recorded their debut, The Dust of Retreat.

"We made the record really early, but it took a long time for it to come out," Edwards says. "We worked on the record for at least seven months, just because we couldn't do it every day. We'd sneak (into the studio) after they were closed, because we didn't have permission to be there. We would sneak in at 7 p.m. and record until 5 a.m., right before they were coming for the day so they wouldn't catch us."

While Standard's distribution was limited, the So and So's were selling the album at shows and it began generating a buzz along the path of the band's self-booked tour circuit. Within months, the band was playing to successively bigger crowds in markets where they played multiple times and the national buzz ultimately scored them a contract with New York indie Artemis. With the formal release of The Dust of Retreat last spring, the So and So's fortunes rose exponentially.

"When we signed to Artemis, it took another pretty decent jump in those cities," Edwards says of the build. "It helped to have somebody responsible for those things, like letting the newspaper know that you're going to be in the city."

Somewhere along the line, the So and So's acquired the genre tag of "Sex/Folk," a funny description of the band's undulating Cowboy-Junkies-on-steroids vibe, coupled with gritty lyrics about sex, drugs and rocky relationships. The origin of the concept is lost to the ages, although it might just be another So and So's gag that's been dropped from the act.

"I think that was just something someone said when we were drunk," Edwards says, laughing. "I don't think we were serious. We've decided that we're Panic Pop now. We're cutting out a lot of the Folk and the sex and trying to become more of a Noise Pop band."

The evidence of the So and So's new direction will be found on their next album, tentatively titled Animal! After Artemis bought V2, they were absorbed by Virgin, which merged with Capitol, sending bands packing. The So and So's asked for and obtained release from their contract and signed with Epic.

"I'd like it to come out in the fall," Edwards says. "I think it would make more sense when it's not sunny outside. I don't know if they want to wait that long."

Edwards comments about Noise Pop and stripping away the band's Folk veneer beg the question of what fans can expect of the new album, which the group began working on this summer. Always a more forcefully energetic live presence, Edwards notes that Margot will definitely be taking more of that attitude into the studio with Animal! Around six tracks from the album have already worked their way into the So and So's current set list.

"I just like electric guitars all of a sudden," he says. "The music that I've listened to in the last year has been a lot different than what I listened to around college when this band was starting. I just want it to be loud and have a lot of weird harmonies. The last album felt wooden, like you could play it all in front of a campfire. This one, I don't think it's going to be like that. It's going to be more like what some of us were doing in basements in Bloomington in college in the mid-'90s."