Armour For Sleep

"So what’s this for, NME?" A young male with an irresistibly infectious grin appears and slides into his seat with such a thick air of confidence about him that you can’t help but wonder just how many times he’s done this before. 

The strange reality for Ben Jorgensen, lead singer and guitarist of Armor For Sleep, is that he is still fresh meat. Despite having released Dream To Make Believe, the band’s first album under Equal Visions Records, in 2003, Armor For Sleep have had to work hard to gain real recognition. “With the first record, we didn’t know what we were doing - we had never really been on tour and I didn’t know how to sing,” Jorgensen explains, “We had a producer for the second album who taught me about vocal techniques and taught us how to use instruments to put our message across.” 

What To Do When You Are Dead (2005), the band’s second offering, is a concept album about the suicide of a lovelorn man. A musical movie: as the tracks unfold, so does the story of the man’s death. “We wanted to do something different, you know, it’s not all about how we can’t get girls.” Jorgensen flashes a devious smile that suggests that he has no problem himself in this field. 

The record has defined the foursome as more than “just another Jersey band” after breaking the 100,000 copies sold mark earlier this year. Not quite emo and not quite punk, Armor for Sleep’s ability to cover a mass of genres instead of appealing to one particular market works to their advantage. “Describe our music?” Jorgensen sits back and lights a cigarette, thinking, “I can’t. I don’t know how we sound to other people. It’s like... everyone smells like their own house, but you can’t smell it in yourself. I know who our influences are but I don’t know if we sound like them.” 

Amongst the band’s influences are Lifetime, Saves the Day, Thursday and Nirvana. On reminiscing childhood favourites Nirvana, he praises them for not promoting themselves the way so many rock bands do. “We make music, that’s our job – we’re not going to produce clothing [to sell the music], like other people do.” However, he does have a few solo projects in the pipeline. “I’m thinking about writing a couple of books. I was an English major in high school and if I wasn’t singing I’d probably be doing that.” He wouldn’t reveal his ideas, only to say that they would be fictional stories. 

On the same management label as friends Fall Out Boy, Armor have big plans for the future. But Jorgensen seems unfazed by the pressure to ‘make it big’. “Crush [management] has a plan for us – they say ‘we’re gonna do this and that and call up MTV and blah blah’, and I’m like whatever, just let me play shows.” Lighting a cigarette, he shakes his head. ”It makes no difference to me whether there are five or five thousand kids there.” 

The man that entered the room twenty minutes ago, brimming with confidence and spark, quickly retreated into his shell, his stare fixed to the floor and fingers fidgeting incessantly throughout. But to answer the question of what the band will be doing in 2006, he looks up with a knowing smile and a glint in his eye. “We just want to make a record that will stand the test of time.” And you get the feeling that they probably will. 

www.armorforsleep.com.