Phantogram is just fine rocking out in Saratoga Springs

Front woman Sarah Barthel doesn’t need the big city or blogs to get street cred

By Dana Raidt
Published: April 1st, 2010 | 2:30pm

In a world where any band with a computer can easily share its music with the rest of the world, the market has become oversaturated with new artists. As more and more music blogs serve as a hipster Mecca and sites like Twitter and Facebook become required press outlets, the way musicians position and promote themselves will be forever changed. Even yesteryear’s necessary move to the big city for more exposure has been eliminated from the equation.

For their part, electronic duo Phantogram is a perfect case study of this trend. Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter’s innovative hip-hop-meets-psych-pop recipe has taken the online music community (and even ABC News) by storm in their brief time on the scene—and in the process, the duo has put its sleepy college hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York on the radar.

“Twitter and blogs were the way that we were recognized in the first place,” Barthel says. “There are about 13 billion bands out there now, so there’s even more competition. But it doesn’t matter because with the Internet, you’re able to get your music out to people who are ‘cool,’ and ‘not cool’.”

As we catch up on the phone, Barthel is on a “well-deserved” weeklong break from touring before she and Carter head back out on the road—a schedule that has become more busy after they signed with Barsuk Records in 2009. It may seem like a whirlwind, but Phantogram has worked hard in order to become the Internet’s darlings. In their three short years together as a band, Barthel and Carter have toured tirelessly (with the likes of Zero 7 and Yeasayer), released two EPs and a full-length (2009’s Eyelid Movies), and in the process have challenged assumptions both about electronic music and the people who make it.

Carter and Barthel are junior high friends but only started collaborating musically in 2007, when both moved back to Saratoga Springs—she after studying photography and video at Champlain College, and he after playing with Grand Habit in New York City. Once reunited, Carter offered to play Barthel some of his music. She was enamored with the beats he’d created (“I loved them instantly”) and Phantogram (initially called Charlie Everywhere) was born.

Barthel says the band’s plan did originally include a move to New York City, but “luckily we didn’t have to because of people finding us online instead.” Rather than use a warehouse or loft space in some hip Brooklyn enclave, Phantogram rehearses and records in a barn in the country. Barthel says Saratoga Springs is not only home but, “it’s our escape.” The town may already be known as the home of pastoral landscapes and horse racing, but thanks to Barthel and Carter (and fellow Saratoga Springs natives Ratatat), it can now claim a burgeoning music scene among its prominent landmarks.

Phantogram, a true collaborative effort, steers clear of the “guy plays the instruments and the girl is there to sing” concept that so often pervades electronic music. Barthel is not only a visual artist (she’s designed some of the band’s posters and did the artwork for one of the EPs), but also an accomplished (and self-taught) musician in her own right with a background in musical theater.

“It seems like women usually go toward the keyboard or piano and men want to rock out on the guitar. That’s a shitty stereotype, unfortunately,” she says, adding that she’d like to broaden her own and Phantogram’s musical horizons by remixing and DJ’ing, and by switching up the band’s instrumentation.

“For women, when they see another girl rock out…I know it inspires me. It makes me think, ‘I want to do that’,” she says. “There’s nothing cooler.”

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Phantogram MySpace page

Barsuk Records