Pinback talk hoagies, heroes and Information Retrieved

While out on tour with his band Pinback, Rob Crow is disputing my (admittedly half-informed) claim that Philadelphia is the home of the hoagie.

“I’ll go ahead and assume it’s the home of the hoagie,” he says. “I also enjoy hoagies from New Jersey. It’s called many things. A grinder, perhaps a submarine. Some might even call it a hero but as we all know, a hero ain’t nothin’ but a sandwich.”

After a prolific decade that saw Pinback release a new LP almost every year since 1998, the group has slowed down somewhat, as Crow and Zach Smith have concentrated on their respective and numerous other projects. The San Diego-bred band plays Toronto’s Lee’s Palace on Nov. 21 in support of the just-released Information Retrieved, which Crow says unfolded rather organically.

“Every once in a while we’d attempt a conversation to try to discuss what we would like everything to be like or sound like but it’s just a fool’s errand,” he says. “It just ends up being the way we both actually are. Not the way we’d like to be or think we might like to be. It just ends [up] being the most honest representation of where our heads are at the time, which is what it should be."

“A lot of people think that everything we do sounds the same but we don’t follow any patterns,” Crow adds. “It gets pretty abstract, the way we work together sometimes, and somehow a record comes out of it. But there’s no one way of doing anything.”

There’s something about the title, Information Retrieved, which seems very clinical or cold. It sounds like a response you’d receive from a robot or computer from the 1970s.

“It does relate thematically to the album and the artwork but in a way that I’m not even gonna discuss with people for another year or so,” Crow says by way of not explaining. “The term could be robotic or something that’s completely natural as well. The easiest way to get something from something.”

When asked why I need to get back to him in a year for an answer to my question, Crow says he hopes some processing time will enable both fans and Pinback to mull over what’s going on with Information Retrieved.

“It was purposely made in a way that people could involve themselves in,” he says. “I really enjoy it when people come up to me with their idea of what the song’s about, even when those songs have a definite idea. So, we try to leave it a bit nebulous so people can have their own thing. That way we can all create together. It sounds like it’s a way of being exclusive but it’s actually a way to be more inclusive.”

Ironically enough, my attempt to gather information about Information Retrieved failed to retrieve the information I desired. “It’s too easy for people to retrieve all of the information at once these days,” Crow opines. “It’s more fun to go on a journey, a hero’s journey.”

Wait, is that the same as a hoagie’s journey?

“You did it!” Crow laughs uproariously. “You made it all come around and it was all worth it!”

RCTo hear the full conversation, you can download an MP3 if you right-click this highlighted text and “Save target as.” Or to stream it, press play.

See Pinback at Lee’s Palace on Wednesday, Nov. 21, and pick up Information Retrieved now.