Sometimes a girl needs to rock. She needs guitars that make her scream, drums that give her a danceable beat, a bass that digs so far inside her bones they vibrate in time and a sexy voice that already knows what she’s doin’ after the show.  She needs a rock band.

Cue The Amends.

Their second full length album, What We Could Be, is a meld of rock and other musical influences that come together in a cool layered sound, kind of like someone crossed INXS with Joe South and then slipped in a little punk while no one was looking.

My favorites are Come and See, for reasons I won’t mention because I really try to keep a PG rating on the blog, Big City Way for the epic clashing guitar-keyboards-drums ending and A Certain Speed for it’s awesome punk driven guitars.  I also like, oh, everything else on the album.

You all should go and buy this album.  Seriously, like right now. If you need a little more to go on, check out the full preview of What We Could Be below:

In addition to the new album, I am also stoked because Tyler and Drew (Tyler Taylor, Drew Weikart) were nice enough to take some time and answer a few of my questions.

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Kit - I hear a lot of different musical influences in your songs. What bands would you all list as your biggest influences?

DREW : In general, mostly blues and classic rock, but some newer indie stuff, too. Rolling Stones, Black Keys, RHCP, The Strokes, Chuck Berry, My Morning Jacket, Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn.

TYLER : Weirdly, in many ways my all-time favorite bands and my main influences are different. I can’t say my absolute favorites– like Radiohead and Bob Dylan for example– much influence the songs that I write. I couldn’t even begin to write songs like them. That’s a non-answer, I know. So in general, I’m influenced by indie rock and classic rock. Classic rock is where Drew and my tastes really overlap, and then he brings the blues influence and I bring the indie rock side.

Kit - You guys have been very open about your creative process with your fans – even to releasing unfinished versions of your songs and asking for feedback. Is it hard to give people outside the band input on your songs?

TYLER and DREW : It’s not hard, because we’re not beholden to take every piece of advice we hear. But it’s sometimes good to be able to step outside ourselves, and see what other people think, to get an outside perspective. Sometimes we think we have something good, but we’re too close to it, and we can’t be sure. Sometimes people tell us we’re crazy. The music industry is obviously kind of a mess these days– a lot of it due to new technology. But there are advantages that technology brings as well, one of them being the ability to connect directly with fans. Another invaluable one for us is the ability– if we want to– to record pretty much everything we do, every practice, every writing session. In some ways it makes us lazy, but in other ways it allows us to always be able to go back and find that what snippet of a song we played that we forgot.

Kit - You guys (Tyler and Drew) have two very different voices. How do you decide who will sing any given song?

TYLER : After our last album, Drew and I talked about trying to nail down an “Amends song (or sound)”. We love rock n roll of all kinds, so it was hard to focus on a certain kind of sound. But we knew that we’d have to do that at least to some extent in order for people to know what we’re about. And one thing we decided that would help that was for Drew to be the sole lead singer– keep that sound cohesive at least. I do a bit of backup still. And besides, I secretly kind of dislike singing if I’m being honest, especially in front of other people.

Kit – Which song (or songs) do you guys enjoy playing live the most?

DREW : The ones that are more Rock/Blues rock.  I feed off of higher energy live, and also when I can let loose on guitar. I sometimes find myself dreading performing the slower songs, but when we get through a few, and I know rock ones are coming up, I get a feeling of excitement and relief. I love the slower ones on our albums, but when we do them live, sometimes it feels like they can take away some of the energy. A lot of them start slow and build and we have to figure out how to work those kind in.

Kit – What do you guys do when you aren’t playing or writing songs?

DREW : I listen to music. I drink. I work. I watch movies and I play and watch sports.  It seems simple, but there is alot of excitement that comes from that. Except for work.

TYLER : Unfortunately, for the time being, we both have day jobs. But besides that, I write a lot. I write fiction in addition to music. I travel a lot– which you can kind of see in that video for A Certain Speed. Hiking, backpacking, and other typical Colorado stuff. I love scuba diving too, but I obviously don’t get to do that too much here. And I’m a huge St Louis Cardinals fan, ever since I was a kid.

Kit – It’s a brand new year and a brand new album – What are you guys looking forward to in 2013?

TYLER: We’re working on putting together our first tour right now. If that’s successful, we’ll do another. We hope to start writing some new songs again soon. And beyond that, we just want to try to get our music out to as many people as possible.

DREW: We are looking forward to taking our music career to the next level.  It’s our passion, it’s what we want to do, but we feel stuck in the circle of working our day jobs, while also trying to be musicians, and ultimately that doesn’t work. So we want to break out of that. Make the leap.

Shay, Drew, Chris and Tyler

What We Could Be releases today, January 8, 2013 and is available in digital or CD from Bandcamp or from The Amends website. You can also check out the band on their Facebook page and follow them on Twitter @TheAmendsBand

 -Kit