Sophomore band leader looks to expand popularity while keeping sound

There’s a sophomore that walks around Syracuse University with a very definitive style about him. His pant legs are rolled up to reveal his high tops. He’s confident, with a retro flair. Hipster might even be an applicable adjective. His name is Andy Horvath.

There’s also a band that dominates the Syracuse DIY music scene. They’ve played at Spark Contemporary Art Space and Scarier Dome. Their lo-fi bedroom pop music has been released on student-run tape label Ghoul Tapes, so retro would be a fair assessment of their style. The band is called Super Defense.

Horvath, a Bandier student, is the man behind Super Defense. He records the vocal and instrumental tracks. It’s a fairly new project, approaching what will be its first birthday this summer, and it’s come a long way in one year. Two weekends back, Super Defense played in front of what Horvath estimated to be a crowd of 500 people, opening for Matt and Kim at the University of Rochester’s Dandelion Day.

Last summer Horvath, a native of suburban Cleveland, worked as an intern at a professional sound company in Ohio. It was backbreaking work, unloading tons of equipment and testing out hundreds of thousands of audio cables. At night he would sit in his room and write songs that expressed his sentiment that he was wasting his summer away while working.

From that Ohio summer came “Ghoul Summer,” a four-song tape Super Defense released in October. Originally sold through Bandcamp, it can now also be found on Run For Cover Records’ online store, a label whose roster Horvath is a big fan of, and Rough Trade NYC, a record store in Brooklyn. Horvath said seeing his tape on the shelf next to a bunch of artists he loves was one of the first moments he realized Super Defense had something going.

“Ghoul” is a term of affection that Horvath and his friends throw around to describe something goofy. So without his friends, Super Defense’s first EP would lack a title. It’s also these friends that provide live backing for Super Defense. Evan Pacheco, Andrew Idarraga and the more recent addition of Nate Currie round out the band.

Last semester, live sets from Super Defense graced a few college campuses besides SU. The guys opened up for PWR BTTM at Cornell, and played shows at the University of Hartford and Wesleyan University. Since, Horvath has released a second tape titled “Closing Ceremonies.” Next year, Horvath hopes to see the band return to its roots by playing some shows in Ohio.

This summer, the band will start things off in the studio. Once final exams are done, Super Defense is spending two days at Converse’s Rubber Tracks Studio. At the Brooklyn studio, emerging bands can record with an engineer free of charge and retain all the rights to their music.

Horvath admitted he entertained the idea of using the band’s time at Rubber Tracks to rerecord their most popular song, “New Brubeck.” Some radio stations have reached out to him saying they love the song, but it sounded a bit too lo-fi to break through on mainstream radio. Despite a plea for an updated version, Horvath said he’s happy with the original.

Instead, with all three of the band’s live members joining him, Horvath will be working on new material. He said he has a lot of ’80s new wave influence, much like bands Beach Fossils and DIIV from the label Captured Tracks. One song from that new material will be the subject of the next video Super Defense puts out with filmmaker Joel Hinojosa. They’ve teamed up with Hinojosa once already, as a music video for “New Brubeck” was released earlier this month.

In the video, Horvath and his band don the retro flair that defines Super Defense so well. They’re playing classic video games, like the legendary Star Fox 64. They’re perusing through vintage vinyl and trying on oversized clothes rack at Goodwill. At one point Idarraga is riding a skateboard while gripping onto a car zooming through a parking lot. Horvath said they were going for a vibe of reckless youth and positive energy.

With the video, opening for Matt and Kim and the upcoming session at Rubber Tracks, it’s an interesting time to be Andy Horvath. It’s this all-over-the-place college agenda that Horvath loves about what he does.

Said Horvath: “The project is cool, starting in college, we’re kind of in this incubator where we can experiment and try out different things and I’m not set in stone or tied to anything.”