The Black Kids are alright

(Credit: Dean Chalkley)

Black Kids are redefining the art of the overnight sensation. Vocalist/guitarist Reggie Youngblood and his Jacksonville, Fla., clan formed in 2006, but they’ve since gone supernova on the strength of their blistering live shows and, what else, the Internet. In January, the sexy, multiracial quintet had no label, debut or traction. This July, it has all that and more.

So Youngblood and crew—including his sister Ali and Dawn Watley on synths, as well as Owen Holmes on bass and Kevin Snow on drums—celebrated the release of their full-length "Partie Traumatic" with a bang, not a whimper. Now Lollapalooza beckons, interviews are piling up and stardom has arrived on the strength of hilarious pop anthems perfectly built for a summer of sex, parties and heartbreak.

We caught up with Youngblood as the band was preparing for its first string of dates since the July release of “Partie Traumatic,” including several high-profile overseas gigs and a U.S. victory lap this fall.

Your debut finally dropped. How are you feeling?
I'm excited, and relieved. But it's just beginning. I've known I wanted to play music for a living since I was 15, mostly because I had a strong averison to work. Little did I know what I was in for. I've done more work in this year than I've done in my whole life. But you just man up and get it done.

You've said that pop music is all about theft.
I kind of feel that way. Going all the way back to the blues, it's about taking what everyone knows and adding a twist. That's the pleasure of pop culture. You name it, we've stolen it.
 
Who have you stolen from? And what's your twist?
We were drawn to groups that can genre-hop effortlessly, like Blondie, Yo La Tengo, Prince, Magnetic Fields and others. I get a perverse pleasure from taking disparate elements that don't belong and juxtaposing them. There are groups doing that now, like CSS and Cut Copy, who do [it] much better than us. What inevitably makes it our own is that we do things wrong, or we do things for the wrong reasons.

Did Jacksonville do anything for you musically?
Yeah, in that there's not a goddamn thing to do there. We'd just go to dance parties, so the record is largely informed by that. It's like a night out back home.

Do the whites kids in the group still squirm when they have to tell people what band they play in?
They went through a very short period of feeling uncomfortable. But now that we're seen as a legitimate group, they have adjusted nicely. I did relish their awkwardness, especially if they had to explain it while I was around. I would purposefully climb up the tree and watch the show. That's what friends are for.

Do you dig playing with your sister?
It's enjoyable, but we're not really the type of siblings that hang out. I don't call her and ask to catch a movie, so it is nice that we get to spend time together in some capacity. We're both cut from the same cloth; we have huge hands.

"Partie Traumatic" is an apt name. Do you find your pain that funny?
The groups I latched onto from the '80s were very funny. Pet Shop Boys, the Smiths, Prefab Sprout. They got away with saying the most ludicrous things. Some people definitely don't enjoy our humor, but it's what I love. I love ludicrous lyrics. "King of Rock and Roll" from Prefab Sprout has the line, "Hot dog/Jumping frog/Albuquerque." That's the fucking chorus! I love that. Sure, there was a lot of somber, severe posturing going on back then, but I'm drawn to the fun stuff.

Could Black Kids have exploded without the Internet?
Probably not. We weren't in a position to be a full-time band. Kevin and Owen had proper careers; they couldn't go out on tour. And I couldn't either because I had to scrounge to make rent. So the way everything was hyper-celebrated helped us become a band. I wish we were Machiavellian enough to have planned it, but it kind of happened without us.