When your band names Low, Yo La Tengo and The Cure as main influences, the resulting music is bound to be a thing of beauty. All the proof of that you need is some time spent with First We Waited...Then It Started, the gorgeous debut album from the Brooklyn-born Summer Lawns. It is a sound perfectly described in their official biography: intimate vocals and songwriting amid an atmospheric backdrop of lush instrumentation, creating songs that are at once both shimmering and sparse. Vocalist/guitarist Jeremy Linzee was gracious enough to shed some light on the band, their new album and a Tron-inspired future.

Serendipity Media: How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it before?
Jeremy Linzee: We often describe it as very spare and beautiful, both haunting and cathartic with lots of space and layers. This often sounds very nebulous so another way we describe it is to liken it to other bands. Our bio says we sound like Nick Drake sitting down for drinks with Yo La Tengo in Low's palatial apartment at 3 a.m.

Why is the band called Summer Lawns?
The name arrived one day when Matt Heslinga, the first guitarist, and I were walking down the street after a rehearsal. We were thinking of a name for some new songs we were writing, which were strange and innocent and beautiful and slightly sad. Summer Lawns seemed to fit. We were playing a show early on when this other band asked us if our name was inspired by a song by the Jam called "Liza Radley." It's about a girl who is slightly strange and lives in suburbia and doesn't fit in. The second line says "Liza Radley ... see her creeping across summer lawns in the midnight." When people ask us about our name now, we usually tell them about this song. That image kind of sums it up.

Your album, First We Waited... Then It Started, have been out for a few months now. Tell us about it!
I feel like I have just gotten enough distance from it to actually just put it on and listen to it like I would other records. It is a very lush, yet spare, slow paced yet always building, full of melancholy and hope. A lot of the lyrics come from the point of view of a 16-year-old in suburbia. We ordered the tracks almost as if it was a day in the life with "Piano Song," the opener (and the single) a sort of Greek chorus-like intro. The character kinds of floats through the day and has these moments throughout where the loneliness and hope peak out in small yet powerful ways. Small cracks open where this person looks toward something transcendent. Like those moments in a Virginia Woolf novel (Mrs. Dalloway in particular) where the character is going about their everyday life and all of a sudden, wham, they get hit with an existential 2x4.

What's the process for writing songs that are that beautiful?
It’s a long process. We try to focus on listening to each other and maximizing the sounds that each person is making and then balancing those sounds with each other.

What's the story behind the album cover?
The cover depicts a very ordinary ceiling light casting a dim glow into the darkness. It could be a room anywhere. An octopus floats on top. A friend of mine described the art very well, saying it looked like pictures taken from an ordinary day and then shut inside a drawer where strange creatures started to grow on them. In keeping with this description, the songs on the record are all situated in the everyday and dream of another strange and beautiful world.

What were some of the sources of inspiration for the songs found on the album?
Being 16 in suburbia, recent relationships, wanting to understand and know the things outside of myself that are much bigger than me.

What compelled Summer Lawns to include a rendition of "This Little Light of Mine?"
I almost always write lyrics last. Matt and I were writing music one day and we wrote this piece but I didn't know what lyrics would go with it. We were playing it one day in the studio and I just thought I could sing the melody and the lyrics to "This Little Light of Mine" over the chord progression (more of a drone really). I sang this song in Sunday school when I was very young. I must say it is a weird song. It’s hard to imagine that 5-year-olds sing it. Kind of creepy to imagine a room of them chanting "don't let Satan blow it out." But it's also beautiful and hopeful. It is certainly part of situating the record in our childhood experience of suburban America which all of us were part of. It also is a useful navigational aid for me as I negotiate my own relationship to Christianity. This song reminds me that faith is not 2-dimensional, that it can and should be very strange as well as beautiful and full of hope, innocent yet perhaps sometimes creepy as well. C.S. Lewis, someone who wrote about Christianity, among other things, in a way that I often admire, was very clear in always suggesting that God wasn't "tame." I also like that our version of "This Little Light of Mine" comes right before our cover of Joy Division's "Transmission."

What is it that you hope people will walk away from your music having experienced?
Something larger than themselves.

With your CD newly released, what do the upcoming weeks have in store?
We will be playing a bunch of shows, and getting ready to record our next record.

What are your thoughts on the downloading of music?
It’s cool. I want everybody to hear our music. For bands like us, the more people that hear about us the better. We definitely want to introduce ourselves to a larger audience and downloading definitely helps. This being said, you also have to do it in a way that is intelligent. You can't give everything away for free.

Television these days: is it all garbage or are those that complain looking in the wrong places?
I don't watch much TV; my mother threw the TV out the window when I was little. When we were on tour, however, I got to watch Law and Order in our hotel room and think it is super cool.

What's the last film you watched?
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizou. Love it. And Tron. Love, love, love it. When Summer Lawns makes a video, I want it to look like a scene from Tron.

What's the last CD you listened to?
The Violet Hour by the Clientele.

What musician would you love to work with?
Yo La Tengo, Low, Sigur Rós, Broken Social Scene, The Clientele, Peter Hook, Tom Waits, Sonic Youth, Keith Jarrett. The list goes on and on.

For more Summer Lawns, visit them online at summerlawnsband.com.