<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"   Photo: Free Energy Records Paul Sprangers is the first to admit his band, Free Energy, wasn&amp;#039;t prepared for the onslaught of positive press that followed their 2010 debut album, Stuck on Nothing. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think we were totally ready,&amp;quot; the lead singer for the Philadelphia five-piece offers. &amp;quot;The band wasn&amp;#039;t strong enough...I wasn&amp;#039;t comfortable in my own skin.&amp;quot; But now, after two years of constant touring\u2014including an opening gig for Weezer\u2014and on the heels of its forthcoming second full-length album, Love Sign (due on January 15 via their own Free Energy Records), Sprangers says he believes he and his fellow musicians have never sounded tighter. &amp;quot;Now the band is awesome!&amp;quot; he proclaims emphatically. &amp;quot;All I want is for people to see the band. We&amp;#039;ve grown a lot.&amp;quot;  This isn&amp;#039;t the first time Sprangers has found himself looking backwards: Free Energy, which includes guitarists Scott Wells and Sheridan Fox, bassist Evan Wells, and drummer Nicholas Shuminsky, has made a habit of drawing inspiration from the music of years past\u2014then filtering it through their contemporary rock machine. &amp;quot;We definitely look backwards and try to dig through what&amp;#039;s considered junk or cheesy music,&amp;quot; Sprangers explains. And where their debut offered up tunes reminiscent of big-balled seventies rock\u2014think Cheap Trick, Thin Lizzy and The Cars\u2014their newest jumps forward a decade, now embracing the mid-to-late eighties pop-rock music of artists like Def Leppard and Bruce Springsteen.  Specifically, the singer says the habit of looking to the past for inspiration emerged from his understanding that the nineties indie-rock on which he was raised revolved around deconstructing previously established pop-music norms. &amp;quot;You kind of start trying to see what all this music was that was supposedly so bad or so bloated and needed to be taken down,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s totally interesting to us.&amp;quot;  To that end, listening to Love Sign, helmed by iconic producer John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Alice Cooper), is to be blasted down a greased-up Slip &amp;#039;n Slide in a backyard on a hot summer day in the eighties: &amp;quot;Electric Fever&amp;quot; is anchored by a backing choir of drunken hooligans, with Sprangers wailing about how electric fever is in his blood as a serpentine guitar lick encircles him. On &amp;quot;Street Survivor,&amp;quot; the band blends its brash rock sensibilities with a foot-stomping, booty-shaking vibe that could only be described as rock music for unabashedly bad dancers. Combining rock and dance music is something that excites Sprangers. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve always been writing one or the other,&amp;quot; he says of the disparate genres, &amp;quot;and now we&amp;#039;re trying to connect them.&amp;quot;  2013 promises to be a busy year for Free Energy: the band is set to launch a tour in January following the release of their new album; they&amp;#039;ll also launch another season of their online sketch show, Power Hour. And, if Sprangers has his way, it won&amp;#039;t be long before the band is back to the studio cranking out another batch of new tunes. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re going to start working on the next album as soon as possible,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re kind of rolling now.&amp;quot;  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/news/a18292/paul-sprangers-of-free-energy-interview/?src=global_footer>