Buzz for Sudden Silence Deafening But Are They Worth All the Noise?
By Chris Health, Rolling Stone

Sudden Silence is excited.

Their video for 'Come On' was Carson Daly's Pick of the Week yesterday on the barometer of pop success, MTV's Total Request Live. And this morning they did a charming, funny interview for Los Angeles radio station KROK. And in drive time, no less, the most coveted spot for an up and coming band looking to make a name for themselves. Well, if the good people of Los Angeles didn't know who Sudden Silence were yesterday, chances are good that they do now.

And today Rolling Stone follows them around. That sort of shadowing annoys most bands, but Sudden Silence is thrilled. They're in the studio today; they need to lay down tracks for the b-sides for their new single, 'Come On.'

I question why the single is being released after the video, but they don't know… hell, they don't even care. Twenty-five-year-old drummer Darien Green, a native of New Jersey, listens to the playback and can barely keep still, 'drumming' with his fingers on anything in reach. That is, until, band mate and lead singer Rachel Connor reaches over and snaps her hand over his, making him stop. "Damn, D, chill for two seconds." Everyone in the booth laughs as Darien proceeds to start tapping his foot against his chair instead.

They might be spending a sunny day in Los Angeles cooped up in a recording studio because one of the songs they're laying down is a cover of the Backstreet Boy's 'Get Another Boyfriend.' This is a track off the multi-platinum-selling band's latest release, "Black and Blue," that rocks harder than any Top 40 radio listener would ever expect from the kings of drippy boyband ballads.

Sudden Silence turns it into a thrashing punk tune, Connor and twenty-eight-year-old Jeremy Nolan trading vocals and guitar lines, while twenty-six-year-old James Packard rounds out the group on bass. In fact, Packard and drummer Green provide a tight rhythm that dares you not to bang your head.

The Backstreet Boys are important here. You wouldn't think so, Sudden Silence is a band influenced by David Bowie, The Pretenders and 80's super group Duran Duran. Their two albums (1999's "Crush" and their current release, "Pretend To Be Nice") are a testament to the power of post-punk pop.

But Connor is dating a Backstreet Boy. The youngest, and according to millions of teenage girls, the hottest, 21-year old Nick Carter. Two years ago, she was dating Damon Albarn, lead singer and mastermind behind the British band Blur, who she met when Sudden Silence opened for them in 1994. And before that, Connor was involved for several years with her band mate Nolan.

She won't answer questions about any of them. In fact, none of the band will, with Packard questioning once, "What is this, 'The National Enquirer'?" before laughing off my question and changing the subject.

Connor does confirm with a smile that she is indeed, dating Carter, but after that, she just shakes her head. "Listen to the next album," she teases. "It'll probably be all about him."

Does that mean this album is about Nolan or Albarn?

In the space between their two releases, she broke up with Nolan and had a year-long relationship with Albarn which saw her move to London for a while.

She laughs. "I start analyzing that and it ends in divorce. Ask me something else. Ask me about the other song we're putting down today."

So I do, and she tells me she and Nolan wrote it last week, scribbling the lyrics on a napkin. She pulls the napkin out of her guitar case as proof. They put the song in the show that night, and they're sending it to the label today, hoping it'll be on the single.

They work fast, this band. They get into the studio at 10 a.m., and they're booked for six hours, when they're supposed to sit down to a proper interview with me. Their tour manager tells me the label was hoping for a start on one song, and that they are prepared to book some studio time in Las Vegas, Sudden Silence's next stop on this, their first headlining tour, to finish recording.

By 2 o'clock that afternoon, Sudden Silence has laid down both tracks - mixed, produced and ready to be heard on a radio near you any day now. Nolan shrugs when I tell him I'm impressed. "I've never understood bands who take years to put out an album. We recorded both of ours in under a month. We like the raw sound of a live track."

Is that why you chose to record your last record in Rachel's living room?

He laughs. "Well, that and the fact that we were broke. It was good to produce it ourselves, we all learned a lot about the equipment, and I doubt we'd ever give up that control now. It's easier. We have enough personality conflicts in the band, we don't need to bring a producer in, too."

The personality conflicts he is referring to are primarily between him and Connor. They have no fear of yelling at one another, often and loudly. Packard and Green let them, up until a point, when Packard steps in with a distraction. It's always Packard, but then he and Connor have been friends for most of their lives, growing up in the same small town in northern Long Island, and it's obvious he sees himself as her protector.

I ask their tour manager about the group dynamic and she stops moving for two seconds to consider my question. Thirty-three-year-old Lola Manueli is the stereotypical rock band tour manager, frequently treating the band like wayward children to be corralled, the whole time with a cell phone at her ear or tapping away at a laptop.

"There's history there, isn't there?" Emmanuelli queries. "James and Rachel are best friends and Jeremy is the evil ex. Darien's smart enough not to get dragged into the soap opera. He plays the drums and cracks jokes when things get tough. Oh, and he grocery shops."

He does what?

"Shops." Emmanuelli repeats for me. "Every other band I've ever been with has venue catering stock the tour bus. This band, Darien does that. It used to be that they pooled together their per diems and bought groceries, now his budget is tripled with the rider and he gets all excited when there's a Trader Joe's around."

Indeed. There's a break between recording and the interview, and for a moment, they discuss moving up the interview. But Connor is tired - I overhear her joking with Packard that her boyfriend has "way too much energy" and kept her up all night - and Green wants to hit the Trader Joe's a few blocks from the hotel.

He asks me to join him, so I do. Who doesn't want to know what rock stars eat? The hotel puts us in a sleek black Lincoln, and he spends the drive over writing a shopping list.

I tell him that he doesn't look like the domestic type. He's tanned and tattooed, with four piercings that I can see (three ear, one eyebrow). He also wears chunky silver rings on every finger, most of which he takes off when he plays the crashing drum lines that he's about to become famous for.

"I gotta be, man. Otherwise we'd be eating Cheetos and beer all day, and that is not healthy," he smiles at me when I tease him about spending his precious free time shopping. "Nah, when you're on the road, you gotta eat right, veggies and stuff. Trader Joe's rules. Now that we've got a kitchen on the bus, I buy all these healthy meals, so after a show, we've got something decent to eat."

Is that the secret to their energy? Trader Joe's artichoke pizza?

Maybe it's the coffee, we buy two pounds of it. Or maybe the four different kinds of cookies. Or perhaps the six bags of various flavors of potato chips.

To be fair, there are vegetables in there, and he goes on, telling me how he'll steam the green beans in the microwave with garlic and balsamic vinegar, and how good the corn is, and I feel like I'm on a cooking show. I tell him this, and he laughs. "Cooking with Sudden Silence, that would be a riot. Should be Rachel, though, she's the best cook. Put her with a live audience, she'll flirt with everyone and it'll be adorable."

Flirting is big with this band. Nolan and Green flirt with the girls, and Connor and Packard flirt with the boys, and everyone's happy.

Did I not mention that Packard is gay?

It's such a non-issue that it barely seems worth it. The band teases him about becoming a 'gay poster boy,' and sometimes they accuse him of being a 'queen.' But since Nolan calls Connor a 'diva princess' more often than not, it's difficult to see 'queen' as a gay slur in this group.

It almost seems silly to ask him about it when I find him at the bar before our group interview, but in the interests of journalistic integrity, I do. He shrugs in response. "Rachel told me once when I was still struggling with the coming out thing that if we lost fans because I was gay, we didn't want them anyway. That's pretty true. None of us are trying to be something that we're not. I can't lie about it. Not that I'm attempting to be a gay icon or anything, but it's the f**king 21st Century. Does my sexuality really need to be an issue?"

I inform him that his crush on JC Chasez, one of the members of Backstreet's rival boyband N*Sync, will probably be national news, and he laughs. Throughout their new video, Packard is holding a doll of Chasez.

"It's a marionette," he corrects me. "No Strings Attached, get it? We got the entire band for two bucks each. I saved JC from torture."

That doll is the only one that escaped torture, half the video takes place in a toy store, where Sudden Silence delights in acting like children on a spending spree. I predict it's going to be a huge hit, and Packard shakes his head, shushing me. "Don't say that too loud. You'll jinx it."

But about an hour later, the entire band is chanting "We're number eight!" and downing eight shots each of tequila like proper rock stars. Our interview is completely derailed when the aforementioned Total Request Live is on the television at the bar, and their video, which premiered just the day before, has been voted to number eight on the daily countdown show.

I want to be around when they're number one, because they're overjoyed to be on the countdown at all. They take over the bar, dancing and singing and Nolan grabs an entire bottle of tequila from the bartender. Eight shots each for four band members equal about half a bottle gone in under ten minutes.

It might be why Emmanuelli tells me after soundcheck that Connor will do her one-on-one with me after the show. It was supposed to be after soundcheck, but soundcheck was pretty terrible, and Connor's looking a bit worse for wear. It's an hour or more until we see her again, and that's at dinner backstage. She reappears with Carter in tow, and a stack of Magic 8-Balls. Carter gave them to her for being at number eight, and she's a giggly, tipsy Ms. Santa Claus, giving them to everyone in her path, even reporters from Rolling Stone.

Guidance from the Magic 8-Ball does not get me closer to Carter, however. Every time I approach him, he disappears. He doesn't ignore me, he just is simply never in my space, no matter how hard I try. This is a polished pop star, he's got disappearing down to a science, even without an entourage. He's got no one - not a bodyguard, not a publicist - no one.

If I didn't know that he was one of the biggest pop stars in the world, I'd just assume that Carter was Connor's most devoted groupie. He carries the Magic 8-Balls for her as she distributes them, and fixes her coffee and dinner to help sober her up. They don't seem like the rivals to challenge Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears for title of 'Cutest Couple in Pop Music'. They just seem like an average couple, newly in love and rather fond of one another.

Once Sudden Silence takes the stage, I think I might get my opportunity to talk to Carter in the VIP area, maybe ask him about this summer's biggest headline, the fact that the halo has fallen of pop's squeaky clean image when his band mate and friend, AJ McLean, went into rehab. But Carter is surrounded by Tsar, Sudden Silence's opening act. Within moments, I forget about him. Romance or rehab is not the story. One of the best pop bands in years is the story.

On stage, Sudden Silence is tight, professional and still somehow their goofy selves. They like to talk to the audience between songs, even Green has a microphone behind his drum kit. Their banter is laced with in-jokes and a couple of times they have entire conversations with lucky fans in the front rows. The aforementioned N*Sync marionette has a place of honor on Packard's amp, and more than once Nolan threatens to destroy it. One can't help but be charmed by their chemistry, and blown away by their music. Every song is effortlessly note-perfect, and Nolan is a great front man.

But Connor is a front woman in the league of No Doubt's Gwen Stefani or Garbage's Shirley Manson. Girls want to be her and boys want to be with her. She's sexy and funny and she can rock. She radiates energy and intelligence and the crowd devours it. They sing along with every song and scream for three encores. The band has two ready and finally closes the set with Duran Duran's 'Planet Earth.' Halfway through the song, the audience has picked up on the catchy, repetitive 'bop bop bop' of the chorus, and Connor tells me after the show that she feels they did a public service, "bringing Duran to a new generation."

I ask if 'Sudden Silence' is from 'Secret Oktober,' an obscure Duran Duran b-side from the single for The Reflex, released when Connor could not have been more than nine or ten. She grins at me in pure joy, leaning against the counter on their tour bus, where she is heating up one of the artichoke pizzas Green had bought earlier. Standing there with her hair wet from the quick shower she'd taken after the show, in shorts and an old t-shirt, she's not the wanton sex goddess of stage and screen, she's just an old school Duranie, delighted to find another one.

She pumps me for details on every interview I've done with Duran Duran, and I indulge her with a few stories before asking about her history with the band. "James and I were both in love with Nick Rhodes in junior high," she admits. "It was the basis of a beautiful friendship. When we went to college, Darien had the room next to James in the dorm, and he would blast 'Liberty' every night. Yeah, 'Liberty'. The album that everyone forgets? That's Darien's favorite, even today. Freak. But we had to have him in the band."

And Nolan? I question.

She answers reluctantly, nibbling on a piece of pizza. "He hates to admit it, but he wanted to be John Taylor growing up, only he wasn't any good at bass, so he picked up guitar. Jeremy is not good at being the rhythm section, much more important to him to have the opportunity for long guitar solos."

Not that he has any. This is a band with quick, sharp pop hooks, not rambling guitar musings. Connor giggles. "Yeah, come by when we're writing sometime. Jeremy is going to put out the world's most boring solo album someday."

And Connor's solo album?

"Would probably be boring, whiney chick rock. I write some very depressing songs when left to my own devices."

Which brings me back to the question I've been trying to ask her all day. In the time between their first and second releases, Connor survived both tabloid gossip concerning her relationship with Albarn, and also losing her father who was killed suddenly when hit by a drunk driver not a mile from her family's Long Island home. How could this album possibly be the catchy, upbeat pop that it is?

Connor smiles, but doesn't meet my eyes, instead glancing out the window, looking at the parking lot of the venue. "I wrote the sad songs you'd expect. Some of the lyrics that made it to the album are a little dark. But by the time we were recording, I was sick of being depressed. I went through a really horrible time after my dad died, and I didn't see any reason to wallow in that. Besides, daddy liked our pop songs."

That's all I'm getting, because the band has joined us, helping themselves to pizza and telling stories of the fans outside the stage door. This band loves their fans, they love headlining for the first time, and they particularly like the tour bus. After years driving themselves from gig to gig in a second hand van, a tour bus is the ultimate luxury.

I imagine in a few years, they'll be headlining stadiums, and insist upon private buses for each of them. Or maybe not. Whatever happens, I'm looking forward to the ride.

Go to the Sudden Silence website.