Cymbals Eat Guitars are probably the only New York-based guitar-rock quartet to quote Nas on their Myspace page. Right next to their “influences” lays a quote from “Halftime” off the epochal Illmatic.

“Hip-hop doesn’t directly influence our songwriting, but it is an indirect influence,” explains bassist Matthew Whipple. “It’s a huge part of our popular culture, and it is pretty inspirational to hear someone unabashedly speaking their truth to the world. I know that when Joe was writing a lot of Why There Are Mountains he would listen to stuff like Nas and Ghostface Killah as sort of a palate-cleanser, and just relish in the ‘otherness,’ if that makes any sense.

“Sometimes it helps to try and occupy a different perspective, and try to hear something you could never be tempted to imitate, just for the sake of enjoying it.”

One year after the release of Why There Are Mountains the band has officially become a well-recognized indie rock band — their record can even be found in Urban Outfitters’ vinyl selection.

“I think we are fairly well-adjusted to the rigors of touring at this point,” continues Whipple. “We have been on tour more often than we’ve been at home since I joined the band in October, so at this point it feels as normal as home.”

Cymbals Eat Guitars are currently trekking across the United States once again, occasionally with other Pavement-indebted youngsters Los Campesinos! And they’ve got the songs to back it up — titans such as “And The Hazy Sea” and “Indiana” sound absolutely massive on tape (and even bigger live), but don’t expect them to play any stadiums soon: “It would be nice to be that huge, but stadium shows are usually terrible for the fans, unless it is Bruce Springsteen. No one wants to be a half a mile from their favorite band watching on a huge Jumbotron. I suppose that is okay at festivals, but festivals are different because it’s not about any one individual band. We heard U2 needs about 200 trucks to get from city to city. That is pretty woefully bloated.”

Regardless, Cymbals Eat Guitars are headed in that direction. The band has the balls and the talent to be huge, and that’s not easy to pull off. “We would like to be finished writing our follow-up record by sometime [this] fall, and hopefully well on our way to making that happen in a studio, but we’ll see,” says Whipple. “That is only about six months from now, and you know how time flies.”

We’ll be waiting to see what happens.