The Spying Game

By the time you read this, up-and-coming Kentucky power-pop ensemble Sleeper Agent will likely be in the middle of what sounds like the strangest pleasure cruise in history – a breathless jaunt around the Caribbean in the company of Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh and Weezer. Whatever else, it should make for a fascinating cocktail-hour conga.

“It’s going to be awesome, man,” enthuses the band’s Lee Williams, brimming with the gee-shucks amiability particular to American heartlanders (even the hipsters). “We’re going to be on this cruise liner, playing to a bunch of fans. We’re on the same bill as Yuck. In fact we go straight before them. We cannot wait. From what we hear, Weezer are really great guys too. It’s so exciting to think about. The whole thing blows our mind.”
Should their popularity continue soaring at the current rate it won’t be long, you suspect, before Sleeper Agent have better things to look forward to than going on before Yuck in the middle of the afternoon. With a sound that skips lithely between Kings Of Leon, The White Stripes and Pixies – it’s rawk, but with a lot of DayGlo – and a front-woman icon in the making in the shape of 19-year-old Alex Kandel, this six-piece look to be going places in a hurry. They’re signed to the same management as The Strokes, have been championed by the American music press (such as it is) and are mentioned in the same breath as The Black Keys and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. That whooshing sound is their profile ascending towards the stratosphere. Six months from now, everyone is going to know who they are.
Which is probably just as well, considering Kandel and Williams each dropped out of school to join the band – a move their parents were not best pleased about.
“Initially there was a lot of stress between us and our parents,” says Williams. “The first couple of months after we left education, not a lot was happening. We hadn’t been signed. Sure. we’d played some great shows. That was about it. Getting a deal and knowing we’d be touring for the next two years – that was a huge relief to us. Since then our families have been nothing but supportive. We’ve all moved home – what’s the point paying rent for an apartment if you’re on the road all the time?”
Knocking around in varying guises since 2008, it wasn’t until Kandel came on board that things truly started happening for Sleeper Agent.
“The band used to have a very different sound. Initially it was about having an excuse to party and make some money and get drunk in bars. With Alex joining, the momentum started. We went in a completely new direction.”
On the fringes of the Bible Belt and with a population of around 100,000, Bowling Green, Kentucky isn’t exactly a hot bed of musical revolution. In fact, says Williams, growing up there is every bit as stifling as you might imagine. This is one of those conservative American towns, where nipping down an alleyway for a surreptitious leak will almost certainly result in you being hauled off to jail. You don’t lash out against authority there. You keep your head down and obey the rules.
“Growing up I shit-talked this place so hard,” Williams laughs. “All the way through high school I was talking about how I was going to get the fuck out of here. After school I moved immediately to Nashville to study at musical college. The irony was that I then joined the band – and moved back to Bowling Green a week later!”
Roughly the size of Cork, the way he tells it Bowling Green is something of a cultural Gobi (it is also, weirdly, the hometown of both horror legend John Carpenter and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy in the American Civil War).
“It’s so small there’s nothing to do at weekends. There’s a university so some pretty cool parties happen. There’s only one venue, a bar called Tidballs. And it’s over-21s. Plus, for the size of the town, we have a police force for a full metropolitan area. It’s unbelievable. On top of that we have university police and state troopers. You try your best not to fuck up here. You don’t go out with an open [alcohol] container – it sucks. Everything here is so frustrating. The funny thing is, when you come back after touring, you appreciate the gentler pace.”
A punishing live regime has seen the group traverse the US from coast to coast (they hope to perform in Ireland in 2012). Along the way they’ve crossed paths with several of their heroes. One get together that stands out is a backstage meet up with The Strokes, whom they’ve worshiped since high school.
“Our manager was like, ‘Have you guys ever met The Strokes – would you like to?’ We were, ‘Fuck yes!’ We share management so they’d heard about us. Man, they were super nice. Clearly heroes of ours. All of those magazine articles that made them look like a bunch of assholes – they were just so different. We bonded over ping-pong. It was a really low-key experience while it was happening. As soon as we walked out of their dressing-room we were like, ‘Holy shit’!
‘Sleeper Agent’ comes from an episode of the gritty Battlestar Galactica reboot, a show with which the band confess to be obsessed. Polite and nerdy? Are these dudes sure they’re in the right line of work?
“We’re all pretty geeky kids,” says Lee. “It goes back to what we were saying about Bowling Green. When you’re someplace you can’t get out of, you dive into the internet. That’s the way it was for us. When I first saw that episode of Battlestar Galactica I thought, ‘Wow what a great name that would be for a band!’”

Sleeper Agent’s debut album Celabrasion is out now. The band hope to play Ireland this year.