There were giants in the earth in those days; and also afterwards. — Moses, Genesis 6:4

The ‘89 Cubs — the biggest surprise to come out of Omaha’s burgeoning music scene this year — have hit the ground running. Take two parts Fugazi, one part Pavement, a shot of Weezer and a liberal dash of The Pixies and early Superchunk, and you have the latest Midwest offering sure to extend their reign across the country.

Ryan Fox, Matt Baum and Dan Brennan are all familiar to the Omaha haunts — all are currently or formerly part of various Saddle Creek bands (Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Good Life, Desparicidos). But their musical pedigree shined when their decade-long friendship combined for their debut album, “There Are Giants in the Earth.” Compared to The Good Life, Ryan Fox’s other band, this newest endeavor yields up-tempo, no-nonsense rock music that’s surprisingly refreshing compared to overproduced, over-publicized records from other debut groups this year.

Recorded over a few months in many locations (including a women’s bathroom in a small North Carolina town where Fox worked as a camp counselor for a month), “There Are Giants in the Earth” features 10 diverse songs with a distinct underdog theme that refuses to quit.

The first track, “Candid Flames,” is a wall of guitar, distortion and a writing pattern that sets the tone for the whole album. At a minute-and-a-half into “Unpopular Meals,” I’m reminded of the simple riffing genius of early Nirvana. Is the world ready for more pedal-heavy guitar and a bass player that isn’t afraid of melody? Time will tell.

Monkeycube caught up with The ‘89 Cubs’ Ryan Fox (on the East Coast en route to Canada) as they round-out their nationwide tour. He gave us the skinny on band politics, “Short Guy Syndrome,” why the Yankees and Quakers suck and what it’s like to be in the opening and headlining band for an entire tour.

MONKEYCUBE: You are all from different Saddle Creek groups, right?

RYAN FOX: We’ve all played in a bunch of bands, to varying levels of interest or acclaim or whatever you want to call it. Dan Brennan (bass guitar) runs live sound for Cursive and The Good Life. Matt Baum (drums) played in Desaparecidos and Bright Eyes. I play in the Good Life and did a tour with Bright Eyes. But I think more important to the history and future of our band is that the three of us have been friends and band mates in various forms for years. Matt and Dan played together for five years in the Red Menace Band; Matt and I have played in four or five bands together; and Dan and I have known each other forever.

MONKEYCUBE: How did the band come about?

RYAN FOX: We met as twerpy 10-year-olds when we were on the same baseball team. We sat next to each other in the batting order and our dads, both musicians, knew each other. The band came about when I moved back to Omaha after college and started playing two-chord, marathonic drone rock with Dan and our drummer friend, who was about to move out of town. We weren’t very serious about it until a couple years ago when we decided to write some real songs and recruit a drummer.

MONKEYCUBE: How are The ‘89 Cubs different than The Good Life and other projects you’ve been in musically and cohesively and how do those two things come together on stage?

RYAN FOX: Musically, we’re probably the most selfish band in which I’ve played. By that, I mean that we’re mostly concerned with keeping ourselves interested and entertained. If anybody else appreciates it, then it’s a bonus. That attitude more than likely leads to some sections of songs that are more fun to play than to hear. But we are conscious that there is, hopefully, an audience. Does art-music require an audience? We don’t restrict ourselves much and we take liberties to write two-minute noisy, rowdy rants and seven-minute, slow-building space-outs. We indulge our whims.

The three of us are a relatively well-functioning democracy. We seem to have found a good understanding of one another as friends and as musicians, which makes for a chemistry and comfort that can’t be replaced by any amount of technical expertise. Our friendships and aesthetic approaches make the Cubs really feel like a band. That’s not to say we don’t argue on occasion and call each other “motherfucker” and mean it. But we get over it quickly.

On stage, sometimes I feel like we’re a bit of an oddity. Matt Baum, who doesn’t have a microphone, acts as our MC from behind the drum set. He’s the loudmouth and, as a short person, needs the attention. It’s usually all right with me, and I get a kick out of playing with these guys. Dan and I grew up together and it’s funny that this is our first band. Speaking about a show of ours, a friend of mine remarked that he felt like the audience was more incidental than essential to what we do on stage — like they just happened to peer into our little world. It’s fun to make a bunch of noise with friends.

MONKEYCUBE: I heard Baum likes to shout at the crowd during the set. What’s he like during a show?

RYAN FOX: Matt Baum has “Short Guy Syndrome.” He plays hard and talks loud. We love him.

MONKEYCUBE: It’s not the size that counts, after all — so we’re told. Where was the album recorded?

RYAN FOX: The album was recorded in a bunch of different places. We started at the Artery, where we did the basic tracking of guitar, bass and drums. Dan works at the studio and the owners cut us a hefty deal. Because of our schedules, it was rare for the three of us to be in the studio at the same time after the first week. It was a really time-intensive, trouble shooting-laden, arduous process. Dan departed to run sound for Cursive and I did a lot of the additional guitars and vocals on my own. I spent a lot of time screaming at machines and pulling out what little hair I have left. It was a weird couple of weeks for me because I’d wake up at noon, go to the studio and spend all day and night there by myself and not really have much in the way of social interaction. After the basic tracks, we made everything portable and worked on my laptop. We recorded at a friend’s house, my parents’ house, and Presto! (where we mixed). We also recorded a little after midnight in a women’s bathroom in a library-turned-music building in a small North Carolina town where I worked as a camp counselor for a month.

MONKEYCUBE: We always get kicked out of women’s restrooms. Damn. What was the recording process like?

RYAN FOX: The process was disjointed and done in fits and spurts and stops and starts. It was pretty fucking frustrating and I kind of hated it at times but ultimately, I like the variety it adds to the record. We learned a lot but we’ll never do it again the way we did on purpose.

MONKEYCUBE: Where did the title come from?

RYAN FOX: We kicked around all kinds of ideas for titles for the record. Matt Baum suggested something about giants in the earth, among the probably one hundred other potential titles on our list. I was in the car a few days later reading one of my favorite collections of stories, “Labyrinths” by Jorge Luis Borges. There was a passage that referred to the giants in the earth from Genesis in the Bible. It sealed the deal.

MONKEYCUBE: So level with us, are there really giants on the Earth? Are we doomed?

RYAN FOX: Oh, sure. The title can mean all kinds of things. I like the connotation of dinosaurs and time and history. Also, death is somewhat of a theme. We bury our giants, both literally and figuratively.

MONKEYCUBE: Are those samples of Nebraskan crows in that first track?

RYAN FOX: The BBC put out an amazing set of recordings of all kinds of things in the world — farm animals, children on bicycles, boats approaching a harbor, footsteps, etc. I used to check them out at the library and we’ve used them as sample material a couple times. So I’d venture to guess that maybe those are British crows, if the Brits are unfortunate enough to have crows.

MONKEYCUBE: What’s your favorite song on the album?

RYAN FOX: I like the pre-roll the best. You have to rewind from 0:00 on the first track and there’s about thirty seconds of us yelling at each other. I can’t really pick a favorite. The last song was probably the most fun to make. Our friends stomped and clapped and yelled at the end. Also, Dan’s dad and my dad played lead guitars on the last song. It was pretty fun to set up and have them trade licks over our song.

MONKEYCUBE: There’s a minor league baseball player named Ryan Fox and you named your band after the 1989 Chicago Cubs. The former never made it to the majors and the latter choked right before they could have been legendary. Do you feel a connection with being an underdog?

RYAN FOX: I suppose there’s an appeal in the struggle. For instance, to keep with the baseball analogies, it was more interesting to me to be a Yankees fan when they had a few good players (Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield) and didn’t win all the time. But once they bought their way to the top, I got bored with them. The process of starting at a low point and reaching some sort of plateau is much more dynamic and interesting than the final attainment or reaching some goal, being at the top. But I don’t identify all that strongly with being an underdog, though it’s almost always a good story. We all root for the underdog, right?

MONKEYCUBE: We hate it when the underdogs sell out, too, but we’re never afraid to give hand jobs for a raise. Is there any conflict being from Omaha, not being on Saddle Creek and touring with/being in other Saddle Creek bands?

RYAN FOX: The only conflict we encounter is in trying to schedule our lives. Most of the musicians in our group of friends and acquaintances are really supportive. Lots of the bigger bands make a habit of bringing out their friends’ bands. On this current tour, The Good Life is taking out Neva Dinova and the Cubs. We’re grateful for the exposure and couldn’t hope for a better first tour — we get to hang out with our friends, have some drinks, and play some songs all over the country.

MONKEYCUBE: What’s it like playing two sets a night while headlining and being the opener?

RYAN FOX: It’s exhausting, but great. I’m worn out at the end of the night. On past tours, I usually have time to get dinner and a couple hours to hang out with friends. But since I have two sound checks and two sets to play, I’m pretty well anchored to the clubs on this tour. It’s a drag when I don’t get to eat dinner or only have 30 minutes to spend with a friend I haven’t seen in a year. But it saves me a trip around the country since I get to play twice per night.

MONKEYCUBE: A dream come true. What’s the most kick-ass thing that has every happened to you while you were on stage?

RYAN FOX: There isn’t one singular kick-ass incident that stands out in my mind. Here are a couple off the top of my head: The other night, during the Cubs set, Dan Brennan did this big jump, which is slightly uncharacteristic, and he wiped out on his landing and ended up on his back at my feet. It might not sound that funny, but I only saw his botched landing and thought, “how the fuck did you end up here?” Also, during my first tour with The Good Life, we played two weeks with Superchunk. They had been covering Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and wanted me to learn the saxophone solo. So I bought the CD, figured out the solo on guitar in the van, transposed the key to saxophone at the club and played it at the Metro in Chicago during their encore. It was kind of a rock and roll thrill for my first real tour.

MONKEYCUBE: Holy shit. The Boss would be so impressed. And the worst?

RYAN FOX: One of my least favorite moments happened earlier this year while I was playing with Statistics. We were in the middle of a ten-week tour and were playing Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It’s a depressing place; the roads are all fucked up and a bunch of the storefronts are closed. It’s a place that seems dilapidated and past its prime with no real plan to recover. As we drove into the city the conversation in the van was about the cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and if they have a rivalry like Springfield and Shelbyville on “The Simpsons.” On stage that night, I asked, “So, do you guys hate Scranton?” to Wilkes-Barre, thinking that it’d be like asking Springfield if they hated Shelbyville. But instead, it came across as “Hey, don’t you guys hate your dilapidated, broken-down city?” Denver, the guitarist and singer in Statistics, bailed me out and explained our conversation in the van earlier that night. I felt like a jackass.

MONKEYCUBE: Stupid Quakers. Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten?

RYAN FOX: I know a bunch of things I’d like to do with my life but I don’t know when. I’ll play music as my principal pursuit until it doesn’t make sense any more. I’ll always play and write but at some point, I envision wanting to settle into having a family and some sort of steady income. Touring takes its toll on my health and my sanity sometimes. I don’t feel balanced or like I have a home right now. But for all that, I love what I do and it’s the right thing at this moment. Eventually, I’d like to be a teacher of some sort and then retire from that to be a farmer. And I’ll always have music, writing, photography, etc. I want to live to be 100 years old.

The ‘89 Cubs’ debut album “There Are Giants In The Earth” hits stores October 26th from Slowdance Records. If you’re not too late, catch them opening for The Good Life and Neva Dinova on their nationwide tour.