• jaein lee
  • Max Kakacek, Cullen Omori, and Cameron Omori of Smith Westerns

Things always moved fast and furious for Smith Westerns. Not long after their 2009 self-titled debut—an adrenaline shot of glam rock—the three teenage Chicagoans were thrust into the indie-rock stratosphere. By 2011’s Dye It Blonde, they were a full-throttle, undeniably confident touring force that, for better or worse, ranked among the buzziest of buzz bands. That they’ve seemingly out of nowhere decided to call it quits isn’t entirely shocking—bands that burn so hard tend to flame out quickly. Judging from the seemingly tossed-off tweets that front man Cullen Omori made last week, in which he announced that the band was going on “indefinite hiatus,” the end arrived abruptly. The band, which includes bassist Cameron Omori (Cullen’s brother) and guitarist Max Kakacek, will play one final Chicago gig, sans Kakacek, on Tue 12/23 at Lincoln Hall.

Cullen Omori: In 2014 we didn’t really do anything. In 2013 we released Soft Will, and the Sky [Ferreira] tour was the last tour we did. We kind of took it easy in 2014. We hadn’t really taken it easy or stopped since we started or since the ball started rolling on our band in 2009, when we were like 19. We just toured nonstop, or if we weren’t touring we were spending a lot of time working on music and writing. So we decided we were going to take some time off with the intention that we would possibly revisit putting out more Smith Westerns music. And as the year went on it become more apparent that to get us back in the studio, to get us all on the same page, was gonna be something that was not very possible. And then recently Max came to me and Cameron and said he didn’t want to be a part creatively of Smith Westerns anymore. He thought it would be a good time to stop since we hadn’t done anything this year. And Cameron and myself were down with it. We were fine. We weren’t angry or anything. But we wanted to do one last show because we never planned any of this. This was very unplanned. He just came to us and told us and we were like, “Cool, let’s just at least do a show before we stop.” He wasn’t into that idea.

Was it inconceivable that Smith Westerns could exist without Max?

Parts of it. We spent maybe two times or three times as long in the studio on Soft Will as we did on Dye It Blonde. And I felt that we ended up . . . we overthought it a little bit. At the same time, though, we did exactly what we wanted to do on Soft Will: we went in the studio and make a fucking long-ass studio record. I think there’s parts of it that are really good—”Varsity” and other parts that touched upon the direction we would’ve gone if we had done another album. I think that’s cool, but we’ve done this for seven years technically. It was important we stopped doing it when it wasn’t as fun. It’s not like any of us were driving a BMW or something. And the people that liked the band, I’m grateful for. It was totally unexpected that anyone would even follow our band. But I don’t think that we should do it when we don’t like it. Then it becomes like something you talk about in high school: you don’t want to be your parents and have a job you hate, you know what I mean? And that’s something I lyrically talked about in Soft Will: it started to feel like work. It started to feel like a chore to do it. You were having to reconcile that with, “Well, that’s what happens when you’re a band that’s been established.” But as time went on, it was like, “Well, I don’t think we need to do it just to keep the kids together.”

You guys did have that huge Gap ad though.

Yeah, I have a record. It’s written. I just need to go to a studio and record. I’ve been recording super lo-fi like we used to do in Smith Westerns, in basements. I haven’t really tried to get a bunch of people on board and try to monetize it. I think it’s really important after what happened with Smith Westerns, where we were really at the will of the label or we were being told to go with this person or that person, that I really assess who I work with in a personal way.