The Besnard Lakes Fang Island Free Energy The Bright Light Social Hour
SOUNDCHECK connecting the artist and the audience
THE
FLAMING
LIPS
+ Deftones
Local Natives
ISSUE 24
Cover Feature 56 The Flaming Lips
Features 36 Fang Island 42 Local Natives 50 The Besnard Lakes 68 Free Energy 72 The Bright Light Social Hour 80 Deftones
Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips at Austin Music Hall photo by Randy Cremean
Contents
issue 24
www.soundcheckmagazine.com Publisher: Michael Marshall Director of Photography and Design: Randy Cremean Managing Editor: Tricia Marshall Director of Public Relations: Joanna Hackney
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SOUNDCHECK MAGAZINE.COM Festival Coverage Bonnaroo 2010
Associate Editor: Amy Simpson Contributing Writers: Adi Anand, Elliot Cole, Ryan Ffrench, Andy Pareti, Derek Wright Staff Photographer: Victor Yiu Contributing Photographer: Kirstie Shanley Cover Photo: Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips Photographed by Randy Cremean at Austin Music Hall in Austin, TX.
Festival Coverage SXSW 2010
“Connecting the artist and the audience.” Soundcheck is dedicated to offering artists a vehicle to promote their music to audiences, as well as providing a thorough and objective source of information for music fans. In an effort to keep the content fresh and original, Soundcheck actively seeks creative contribution from new writers, photographers and graphic artists.
Concert Coverage LCD Soundsystem at Stubb’s
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Exclusive Interviews and Photos At Soundcheck, we connect the artist to the audience. Over the last four years, we’ve had the honor of interviewing and photographing many of our favorite bands. Check out our interview archive to get inside the heads of bands like Beirut, MGMT, Vampire Weekend, Grizzly Bear, My Morning Jacket, Justice, Octopus Project, Why?, Dan Deacon, Fanfarlo, Man Man, Sondre Lerche, Justice, Ra Ra Riot, Blind Pilot, DeVotchKa, Los Campesinos!, Annuals, Fujiya & Miyagi, Tilly and the Wall, Yeasayer, The Cribs, The Faint, No Age, The Ruby Suns, Colour Revolt, Flogging Molly, Islands, Cloud Cult, Frightened Rabbit, The Raveonettes, Clinic, British Sea Power, Cut Copy, The Sword, Liars, Les Savy Fav, Architecture In Helsinki, Portugal. The Man, Dirty Projectors, Au Revoir Simone, TV on the Radio, Fleet Foxes, Glasvegas, Girl Talk, The Walkmen, Margot & The Nuclear So & So’s, The Veils, Smoking Popes, Ben Kweller, Noah & The Whale and many more!
Concert Coverage Phoenix at Stubb’s
Concert Coverage Jónsi at The Vic Theater
06 F-Stop: Concert Photography Phoenix, Elton John, The Dead Weather, Jónsi, Vampire Weekend, Julian Casablancas, LCD Soundsystem, Ray Davies, Coheed & Cambria, Yeasayer, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, The Walkmen, Freelance Whales, Frightened Rabbit, Les Savy Fav, The Antlers, and more! 32 Featured Album Review: Expo 86 - Wolf Parade 34 Featured Concert Review: The Flaming Lips at Bonnaroo
Fang Island photographed for Soundcheck Magazine at Emo’s in Austin, TX by Randy Cremean
Contents
issue 24
f-stop
SXSW - Austin, TX
Frightened Rabbit Scott Hutchison
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
The Walkmen Hamilton Leithauser
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
Sharon Jones Wednesday, March 17, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
JEFF the Brotherhood Jake Orrall
Thursday, March 18, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
Les Savy Fav Tim Harrington
Friday, March 19, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
Givers
Taylor Guarisco Thursday, March 18, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
The Antlers Darby Cicci
Friday, March 19, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
Japandroids Brian King
Friday, March 19, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
Magic Kids Bennet Foster
Thursday, March 18, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
Freelance Whales Judah Dadone
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
SXSW - Austin, TX
Plants and Animals Warren Spicer
Thursday, March 18, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
Riviera Theater - Chicago, IL
Ray Davies
Saturday, March 13, 2010 photo by Kirstie Shanley
La Zona Rosa - Austin, TX
Yeasayer
Chris Keating Sunday, April 11, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
Erwin Center - Austin, TX
Elton John
Saturday, April 10, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
Stubb’s - Austin, TX
Vampire Weekend Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio Saturday, April 10, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
Stubb’s - Austin, TX
Julian Casablancas Tuesday, April 13, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
The Vic Theater- Chicago, IL
J贸nsi
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 photo by Kirstie Shanley
Stubb’s - Austin, TX
The Dead Weather Alison Mosshart
Friday, April 30, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
Stubb’s - Austin, TX
Coheed & Cambria Claudio Sanchez
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
Stubb’s - Austin, TX
Phoenix
Thomas Mars Thursday, April 29, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
La Zona Rosa - Austin, TX
La Roux
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
Stubb’s - Austin, TX
LCD Soundsystem James Murphy
Tuesday, June 8, 2010 photo by Randy Cremean
REVIEW
H
words by Ryan Ffrench
earts were set on fire by Apologies To The Queen Mary; after the shit storm of pre- and post-release hype finally settled, this much was clear. Wolf Parade’s incendiary debut dropped at just the right moment— late 2005, the high noon of the Bush years: wars were raging, the fat cats were fat and happy, paranoia the weapon of choice. Amongst the indie set, aloof cynicism had affixed itself to each post-whatever subgenre reshuffling and become the de rigeur worldview for those in the know. As
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LES cool made its way to the strip malls of suburbia, garage revivalism further tumbled into its probably inevitable descent towards self-parody. And with Modest Mouse on the OC, Britney tearing it up at the indie dance clubs and R. Kelly and Green Day writing rock operas, no one really knew where to turn. We needed something to believe in. We were kindling in the breeze. Then, a clarion call: “Give me your eyes / I need sunshine”, wailed Spencer Krug in “I’ll Believe In Anything”, the caterwauling climax of Apologies. It was a bold en-
capsulation of the shared desire for a new perspective, a new attitude— and here was the interesting part: he really meant it. No posturing, no affectation, no irony. This was an honest to god rip at an of the moment rock record. Here was the sound of a band leveling square with a world they weren’t overly impressed with and resolutely plucking out the things still worth holding on to. If you didn’t like the sound of brakes on city buses, Wolf Parade had an answer: “pretend it’s whales / keeping their voices down.” The temperament was playful, but not silly; sincere, but not sentimental; poetic, but not portentous. And it struck a chord.
there’s probably too much to believe in.
All of this is to say— a debut album so widely acknowledged as a vital creative expression of a certain time and place is a very difficult thing to turn into continued acclaim. Just ask The Strokes. Or Interpol. Or Arcade Fire. When First Impressions of Earth came out, the general consensus was that The Strokes had just become too rich and too lazy and too busy fucking models to wrench up the sort of jittery passion that made Is This It feel so essential in 2001. Ditto with Our Love To Admire and, probably to a lesser extent, Neon Bible. Of course, everyone acknowledged that these albums were filled with some relatively good music-- but relative was the key: the songs were only taken in comparison to what came before them. And what came before them was, in each case, music that so touched people’s lives that it became kind of a generational time marker. And for them, this was something that these bands simply failed to live up to.
So, six paragraphs in— what does Expo 86 actually sound like? Short answer: very much like the Wolf Parade you know and love. Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner are continuing to grow together in their dual aesthetic, intertwining, becoming— if this is possible— more and more like themselves as they learn to enmesh songwriting approaches. The songs themselves are wildly dynamic, a complex system of collisions and counterparts, with melodies and tempos that run against each other while highlighting their individual idiosyncrasies. The arrangements have become more tangled, a little harder to unpack, with an intricate density that’s pretty exhilarating for an indie band that writes pop songs that lean a long way in the direction of punk rock. The huge visceral surface melodies are not as present, sure, but that was never going to be a surprise for anyone who first heard, or even prefers, versions of Apologies classics on their self recorded 4 Song EP.
But maybe we are the ones who failed: maybe we need to turn the criticism on the way we listen to and consume music; maybe we’re crippling artists by our own nostalgia for a time in our lives that is over. Kind of by definition, emotional catharsis and creative epiphany can’t be duplicated, right? We can’t expect to quicken our hearts with a sudden burst of urgently honest and refreshingly optimistic indie rock from Montreal right now, because that happened five years ago. Things are different. We’ve got Obama. And Glenn Beck. If anything,
Expo 86 is essential Wolf Parade. It’s rough and boozy and smart and dark and sexy and ultimately devastating. They’re not trying to imitate themselves or re-invent themselves or re-think where their boundaries are, where their style is going or what it all implies. Actually, it doesn’t sound like they are trying to do anything. They are just writing the songs that come naturally from their collective experience and creativity. And that’s why they are going to sound authentic and relevant for as long as they continue to make music.
Anyways, point being: Wolf Parade’s third LP, Expo 86, needs to be listened to on its own terms. And, moreover, it needs to be listened to closely— like you give a shit; like you used to. That means you can’t just stream the singles once or twice like you do with all the other new releases that you don’t really care about and fall into the chorus of facile rejoinders: “It just doesn’t hit me like it used to.” Or, “I miss the old Wolf Parade, hearts on fire; the Wolf Parade that gave a damn.” Well, you could, but do it in the direction of a mirror.
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REVIEW
The Flaming Lips at Bonnaroo words by Elliot Cole photo by Randy Cremean
A
charge permeated through the crowd prior to The Flaming Lips’ highly anticipated Bonnaroo set. It was an unspoken bond amongst the audience members densely packed in front of the Which stage, a sort of acknowledgment that they were all about to be a part of something special. The Flaming Lips can elicit this type of emotion on its own, but the group was also venturing into mystified territory: performing its own interpretation of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon from beginning to end.
Glowsticks danced amongst the river of heads and the occasional inflatable beach toy traverse the waiting fans. The buzz was unlike most Bonnaroo sets; there were few people sitting or napping on the grass, instead there was just eager chatter and impatient applause. At midnight, the backing video screen brightened with the image of a dancing woman, who – upon spreading her legs – introduced the Lips to an eruption of fanfare. With lights flashing, the band stepped onstage through a hidden door on the video screen, starting off a flurry of props. Orange confetti filled the air, delicately fluttering past the oversized balloons launched into the audience. Lips frontman Wayne Coyne emerged in his giant plastic bubble and rolled atop the crowd on his hands and knees through the haze of streamers. The psych indie-pop heroes opened with “The Fear” and “Worm Mountain”, then wasted no time turning to “She Don’t Use Jelly”. Thousands of fans sang along as the stage morphed into a cornucopia of lights and sounds. Comedian Margaret Cho was amongst the dancers that cluttered the sides of the stage, many of which sported fake mustaches and orange jumpsuits. The first hour and change of the set was dedicated to a proverbial “best of” Lips tracks, ranging from the soft singalong of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1” to the opaque electric haze of “See the Leaves”. The Lips pulled from its magic bag of tricks, ensuring every song was a distinct experience. Coyne popped oversized, confetti-filled balloons with the neck of his guitar, and a camera on Coyne’s mic stand gave everyone an up close view of the sweating frontman. He led the audience in singing happy birthday to Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd. Later in the set, Coyne played T.A.P.S. in reference to the Iraq war, encouraging the crowd with messages of peace and love that would appease the spirit of music festivals past. The Flaming Lips latest trick was unveiled during “See the Leaves”: Coyne wore two oversized hands that beamed la-
sers from the palms. Coyne redirected the lasers to two discoballs onstage, bathing the audience in the darting green rays. The set concluded with a goosebump-worthy rendition of “Do You Realize??” before the band took the necessary 15-minute break to set up for Dark Side of the Moon. Stardeath and Whitedwarfs accompanied the group onstage to provide the foggy moods of Dark Side, and the screen pulsed with a slowly growing display of the moon in the background. The stage was covered in layers of smoke as the ambitious soundscapes blanketed the crowd. “On the Run” soared through the sonic haze, and a display of a ticking clock appropriately supported “Time”. The songs meshed together with continuity, using a crosshatched sprawl of psych-filled ambiance, heavy guitar density, and vocal screeches. “These balloons are filled with real fucking money,” Coyne announced, holding an oversized balloon over his head prior to the band’s take on “Money”. The silhouette of cash sat on the bottom, and he propelled the balloons into the crowd. Fans held up car keys and lighters in efforts to pop the floating moneybags while singing along to an entrancing take on the track. Tackling Dark Side of the Moon was ambitious, and Coyne acknowledged the daunting element early in the day. “It’s nerve-wracking,” Coyne admitted. If the band was rattled, it didn’t show. The Lips integrated a perfect dose of foreboding darkness with its idiosyncratic mind-warping psych tendencies. As “Eclipse” washed over the crowd, it became apparent that The Flaming Lips’ ambition hadn’t just been rewarded; it had manifested itself into a new creation. The Lips’ take on Dark Side of the Moon wasn’t a rendition or a tribute. Instead, it was a band brave enough to channel a classic album through its own filter. After an expansive two and a half hour set, the band departed with Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World” playing over the PA. All that was left was orange confetti and shards of balloons caked in the drying mud along with the lingering electricity of the crowd. Still, fans called for an encore with vociferous chants of “Fla-ming Lips”. It was an attempt to sustain the event, to prolong the skyscraping emotions. But all that was left was the memory of something truly unique, an unparalleled experience championed by an unwaveringly ambitious group of artists. For two-and-a-half blissfully dreamy hours, the only place in the world to be was actually on the moon, accompanied by The Flaming Lips.
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The Lost Boys of
FANG ISLAND words by Andy Pareti photos by Randy Cremean
:~)))))))))))))))))) x infinity
I
n a time of LOLs and smiley faces, the above series of characters could read as the official Fang Island emoticon. It was created by one of the band’s legion of guitarists, Chris Georges, when asked to invent a symbol to describe the Brooklyn-based fivesome. It is decidedly accurate. The band, in both their music and personality, are the embodiment of joy and carefree youth. They are an exhortation to jump on the bed and pretend the floor is hot lava. They are an invitation to roll down your car window and surf the air currents with your hand. They are the sound of “everyone high-fiving everyone”; a reminder to uncross our arms, drop the feigned apathy, and immerse ourselves unabashedly in a spirit far more primal than the need to maintain hipster cred. No stretch of the imagination is required to envision a literal Fang Island lying off the coast of Neverland, with the band providing a soundtrack to the modern-day adventures of Peter Pan and his gang of eternally young Lost Boys. Fang Island’s self-titled second album, released this year, is like a gallon of bubble gumflavored Red Bull that elicits hallucinogenic flashbacks to hopscotch, kickball, and sparklers on the Fourth of July. Employing a wall of vocal harmonies atop a wave of guitar blitzkriegs, the band sounds like an out-of-control asteroid made from the combined particles of Andrew W.K., Bang Camaro, Boston, Electric Light Orchestra, and Thin Lizzy.
“We definitely wanted to flirt with overkill and cheesiness. One of the challenges of [Fang Island] was making silly riffs sound serious and packing in as many of these riffs as possible into the songs.” Nowhere is that more obvious than in songs such as “Sideswiper”, a fiery ball of hard-rock cheese, the perfect comfort food for nostalgic metalheads.
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The band’s exuberance and complete lack of self-consciousness is liberating and refreshing to behold. They are funny without resorting to goofiness; irreverent without being disrespectful. When describing the stylistic differences between the band’s three guitarists, Georges said, “Jason [Bartell] has studied under the Jumping Spider Claw Technique. Nick [Sadler] studies the 100 Furious Fingers technique. And I try to rip off Mick Ronson.” Later, when asked if there were anything in this world that could bring them down, he replied, “Unfortunately, no. It is a blessing and curse that we are this pumped.” If you are not satisfied with a mythology that posits the origin of Fang Island as inhabitants of a far-away land where nobody works or grows up, there’s always the boring tale of three art school students from the Rhode Island School of Design. Fang Island was simply an art project and Georges is the lone founding member still with the band. “The triumphant aspect of the music was still there, but the songs were a lot more stripped down,” he recalled of the project’s origins. “Also, the packaging for the album was a lot more intense then. Every album came with a friendship bracelet we made.” The other two original members were Philip Curcuru and drummer Pete Watts. Watts is now full time into fine art, while the recently engaged Curcuru lives in Texas. Georges is now joined by fellow guitarists Bartell and Sadler as well as bassist Michael Jacober and drummer Marc St. Sauveur. This lineup makes for a formidable live show, mixing their patented guitar assault and jubilant group choruses with the occasional pop cover, such as Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby”. Their wildly broad musical tastes may offer an explanation towards the band’s sonic eccentricities. They admit to singing TLC’s “Waterfalls” in the shower, they are quick to disclose their love for Blink-182 and 1990s hip-hop, and Georges even talked about a Rush concert he attended a few summers ago. “There was not one girl at the show,” he said. Fang Island’s music is like a vessel that transports you to your childhood. It is the soundtrack to your imagination, to the games you used to play in your backyard. It’s not so much like acquiring something new, but rather like discovering a toy in your garage that you haven’t played with in a very long time – something familiar that has suddenly come dislodged from your subconscious and fallen into your lap. Music like this could only be achieved by other people who love to find old toys in dusty boxes, who aren’t afraid to be kids again (they are, after all, still kids themselves). The natives of Fang Island are an unaffected bunch, and when you pay their Neverland a visit, you become unaffected, too.
S
omewhere in the indie-rock breeding ground of Silver Lake, Calif., there sits a house. It’s a house like any house, just a few pieces of worn furniture and family portraits away from being a home. But for the five members of Local Natives, it’s more than that. Its walls hold the history of creative inspiration; its floorboards are teeming with sparkling guitar lines, clicking rhythms, and multipurpose melodies. This particular house is Gorilla Manor, the namesake of the band’s debut album and the training ground of one of the best new artists of the year. Some 1,500 miles away from Silver Lake, mustachioed guitarist/singer Taylor Rice sifts through various sandwich materials in the backstage of an Austin venue, pushing aside stray condiment bottles and grocery bags. He is articulate with a relaxed coolness, seemingly poised at all times. His band scrounges for food in much the same fashion, trying to sneak in a bite before a meetand-greet with fans at a nearby record store. Rice isn’t necessarily the frontman of Local Natives – in fact, suggesting that a band as communal as Local Natives has a frontman seems odd – but he does seem to be the most organized. He weaves together an impromptu schedule, balancing the record store appearance with a photo shoot and two interviews that need to take place in, oh, the next hour or so. He sizes up the venue: the historically bluesfilled Antone’s, with a capacity of 600 strong. It serves as a substitute from the original venue, which was quickly realized to be too small for the burgeoning band. “It was literally just over a year ago that we selfbooked a tour and we played in Austin in January of 2009 to literally, like, four people,” Rice would later quip. “And now, … this venue sold out like a week ago.” This will soon be the status quo for the quintet. They are undeniably one of the buzziest bands
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LOCAL NATIVES Open House
words by Elliot Cole photos by Randy Cremean
“We know where we’ve come from. We know what we’ve done to get here.” - Kelcey Ayer
in music, spurred by a debut album that merits all of the chatter with engrossingly austere melodies and clattering, buoyant percussion. The disc is laced with harmonizing vocals from nearly every member of the band, but the assertive rhythms – a trait the group long ago recognized as a staple – power the tracks. It’s an effort in contradiction: forceful, compelling percussion backing soft-but-urgent melodies. With the disc, the band has a chance to wedge itself into the pantheon of indie stardom, the next overnight sensation from mysterious machine that has produced MGMT, Fleet Foxes, and Vampire Weekend. It’s as though the band’s story has already been partly written: They’re slated to rise from obscurity and clutch the mantle of “next big thing” status. Except for one minor detail: Local Natives isn’t that band. While it’s easy to peg Local Natives for abrupt stardom, the band is quick to relay a different story. “I think everyone feels really confident that, like, no one is ever going to feel guilty about being that kind of band that supposedly comes out of nowhere,” said percussionist/vocalist Kelcey Ayer. Ayer is the yin to Rice’s yang. Whereas Rice is coolly collected, Ayer comes off as more excitable and carefree. Ayer fully embraces the band’s recent acclaim, but, like the rest of Local Natives, he doesn’t see it as a sudden thing. “We know where we’ve come from,” he said. “We know what we’ve done to get here.” It’s quickly obvious that this is the story of Local Natives. They are deeply tied to their roots, quick to cite the band’s long gestation period and extensive, communal-based writing efforts in Silver Lake. Gorilla Manor is the byproduct of years of songwriting, travel, and trial and error, not the result of a chance meeting with a label executive or a catchy single.
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Rice and guitarist Ryan Hahn started penning songs together in junior high, but the band was delayed by college and employment. The group would later be filled out with drummer Matt Frazier, bassist Andy Hamm, and Ayer.
“We had faith in ourselves, as cheesy as that sounds. We had a lot of faith in this thing that we had done. It really came down to the faith thing. Just that we’re going to make this work somehow. We’re going to do what it takes.” - Matt Frazier “We’ve been together for a while,” said the assertive Rice. “It’s not that the band wasn’t serious; it was. There were times Kelcey was literally flying from San Francisco every two weeks to practice. There were times where we were driving from Pepperdine and UCLA down to Orange four times a week. We were serious, but we had school. “The transition for the band came in the beginning of 2008. I graduated, actually, and we decided we were going to put the band first, before everything. Everyone kind of changed that around, and we moved in together and just started writing the record that would pretty much become the basis for Gorilla Manor.” The band moved into the house in Silver Lake, the neighborhood in Los Angeles that has served
as home for such acts as Elliott Smith, Rilo Kiley, and Silversun Pickups. The group wrote songs on a foundation of stylistics soaked in what Ayer refers to as “’60s and ’70s harmonies records, our father’s collections.” The house swelled with those harmonies, and Local Natives found its footing. “That was a very transformative … concentrated time for us,” Rice said. “Our band is very collaborative when we write, and that really clenched that spirit.” While the time spent at Gorilla Manor was creatively productive, the band acknowledges that there were risks involved. They borrowed money from friends, understanding that a lot was at stake for a group with no label and no connections. They made their own artwork and CDs and submitted the discs to blogs. “We did everything ourselves for so long,” Rice said.
“I think our band is somewhat unique in the sense that I feel so fortunate that every person in this band is very intelligent and very driven and very capable.” - Taylor Rice “To an extent, we were really confident with the music we had come up with,” said the thoughtful and talkative Frazier. “We had faith in ourselves, as cheesy as that sounds. We had a lot of faith in this thing that we had done. It really came down to the faith thing. Just that we’re go-
ing to make this work somehow. We’re going to do what it takes.” As the band perfected their multipart melodies, they survived off of one-dollar El Pollo Loco burritos. “Definitely, there was a very long time for all of us when we were super broke and everything was on the line, and we were all borrowing money from every last friend,” Rice confided. “There were certainly a lot of risks.” Those risks were put at ease when Hamm’s father decided to loan the band the funds required to record the album. Gorilla Manor would develop some European buzz before being picked up by Frenchkiss Records. Soon thereafter, it would skyrocket on the Billboard New Artist Chart. Still, it’s only the beginning for Local Natives. The group’s songs already blare over shopping mall speakers, and they have already been booked for the likes of Glastonbury, Bonnaroo, and Roskilde. However, as the bandmates sit around a smoky couch at Antone’s, they don’t seem the least bit overwhelmed by their rapid ascension or erratic responsibilities. Rice and Co. calmly finish the meet-and-greet and efficiently knock out their interviews, soundchecks, and photo shoots. “I think our band is somewhat unique in the sense that I feel so fortunate that every person in this band is very intelligent and very driven and very capable,” Rice said. You can’t help but feel that the reason Local Natives is so poised to succeed is because it never really left Gorilla Manor. All the traits that inspired the band members in Silver Lake are still present: They continuously remark on their work ethic, and they bounce ideas and sentiments off each other in a very trusted, collective fashion. Perhaps all that’s really changed is that now, Local Natives has opened the front door for everybody else to come and listen.
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The
Besnard Lakes Are the Rock Nexus words by Andy Pareti photos by Randy Cremean
he Besnard Lakes, a husband-and-wife-led band from Montreal that writes songs about spies and secret codes, were facing a mystery of their own when they parked their van outside an Austin, Texas, venue, The Mohawk, in May. They had just discovered their vehicle had been broken into, and a keyboard pilfered. “We’ve been touring for seven years now and never had anything stolen,” said a perplexed Jace Lasek, the band’s cofounder/guitarist/vocalist/spy enthusiast. These kinds of unforeseen calamities, so often part of the touring life, can wreak havoc on the psyche of young bands. The Besnard Lakes, with three albums behind them, have had a while to get used to the grind of being professional musicians. They have an arresting calm about them, a shrugged stance that says they’ve been through it all. Lasek could be a lost member of The Kinks, while his wife and songwriting partner, Olga Goreas, is reminiscent of a young Patti Smith. When either of them speaks, they are warm and inviting, like neighbors welcoming a new family to the street. So when the problem of the missing keyboard was presented to the band, it was just as quickly filed away – a non-issue. Besides, they had another one anyway. The Besnard Lakes are an average rock fan’s dream band to meet. If you were to approach Lasek and engage him in conversation about music, he wouldn’t patronize you with a long list of impossibly obscure immediate influences – mostly German – before scoffing at your look of cockeyed blankness. Instead, ask him about his favorite epic song and listen to him gush about Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, which, in turn, reminds him of the second half of Abbey Road, which eventually laid the foundation for prog albums such as Yes’ Relayer. But you don’t even need to ask him. Just listen to the band’s third full-length album – The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night – which throbs with the life of vintage rock, channeling the British Invasion and 1970s psychedelic rock like a frilly, velvet-covered lightning rod. For starters, there’s the opening track, “Like the Ocean, Like the Innocence Pt. 1: The Ocean”, which materializes out of a thick digital fog and into a synth line that recalls Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon opener, “Speak to Me/Breathe”. Later, “And This Is What We Call Progress” dances atop a thumping bass balance beam while the soaring vocals reverberate like classic Genesis.
It isn’t exactly common, or at least fashionable, for a band to express their love for all things prog in today’s elitist indie crowd, but Lasek shrugs, unaffected by that four-letter word. “We throw those things out there because we like them, and we’ve always liked them,” he said. “Like [Electric Light Orchestra] and Alan Parsons Project and Yes, and even some of the dirtier words, like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Gentle Giant. … It’s still just really good music. People put prog rock on us from time to time, and I think it’s just because they don’t know what else to call us.” It is certainly tough to pin down The Besnard Lakes. They somehow marry their unmistakable adoration for classic rock with the heavy fuzz-wall of shoegaze and the ambition of modern post-rock. Always the name-dropper, Lasek is just as quick to mention more recent pioneers as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and The New Pornographers as ’70s bands with three-letter acronyms. In fact, he credits Godspeed and TNP as having had a special impact on Canadian rock music in general. “I think we just caught up,” Lasek said in response to frequent acknowledgements of Canada as a sudden hotbed of new music. “There’s still probably five times as many great American bands that people know about. I think the [attention] was a little off-skew for a long time, and all we needed was some good underground bands to prove to the rest of Canada [music] – who were very self-conscious to begin with – that they can express themselves and be bold and make good music.” Making good music, for Lasek and Goreas, involves more than just strings and amps. For The Besnard Lakes, it involves espionage. Dating to “For Spy Turned Musician”, the third track on the band’s little-heard debut album, Volume 1, there has been a lyrical tug-of-war between Goreas’ emotional, factual words and Lasek’s perpetual Tom Clancy-esque story of a spy-turnedmusician. “I’m the voice of reason,” Goreas established with a laugh. “I usually get my words all ready, kind of thrown together just from journal writings and things like that. Mine are more based on fact rather than fiction, which I think Jace is concentrating on.” Lasek’s spy is the star of his own ongoing melodrama. On “Disaster”, from the band’s second album, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, Lasek sings, “Generals have fought for spies like you / Our lady with secrets written all over her body / But I’ve heard you lie / I’ve read your file / You knew to gather your life’s work and shred it to pieces”, rousing images of a retired James Bond-type forced into the doldrums of organized society.
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A look into Lasek’s childhood reveals a fascination for secret codes as far back as his early teens, when he had a fascination for the so-called backward messages that appeared on albums such as Dark Side of the Moon and Purple Rain. He even dissected a cassette of the latter, flipping the actual tape over in an attempt to reveal a secret message at the end of “When Doves Cry”. “A friend of mine had a reel-to-reel player,” he recalled. “We’d take our tapes apart and put them on and just listen to it backward and scare the shit out of ourselves, which makes for some really good entertainment when you’re young.” Too often, bands that wear their influences on their sleeves – and especially on their tongues – are prematurely typecast as nostalgia acts. But The Besnard Lakes have avoided this in a very simple way – taking these artifacts and making them new again. Whether it’s the sporadic Beach Boys harmonies, the lush string arrangements or the Eno-esque atmospherics, the band has masterfully grown a new tree from a soil frequently tilled. Having that familiar reference point makes the band’s exploration of new sounds that much more immediately inviting. Credit Lasek for bringing a producer’s ear to the table – he runs his own studio, Breakglass, that has hosted names such as Wolf Parade, Holy Fuck, and Stars. In keeping with the band’s sonic blending of vintage and current sounds, Lasek said he “really [likes] the idea of using modern technology but also having the old stuff that is tried and true and sounds amazing, and then sort of melding it all together. I’m not a purist in any way.” Everything about The Besnard Lakes seems to contain a link to the past. Even the band name comes from Lasek and Goreas’ personal Eden, a place in Northern Saskatchewan Canada where, as Goreas says, “You can hear loons calling, ... you can hear nothing for days and days and just get lost in it.” The band’s very place in time represents a bridge in history, a logical segue both into the future and into the past. It’s a very delicate position to be in, and so far, their music has acted perfectly as that junction. When The Besnard Lakes finally took the stage at the Mohawk, a flash of light splashed against the tops of heads as a search helicopter passed overhead. Was it looking for Lasek’s spy? The band downplays the element of fantasy on display in their music, but they don’t deny it. While Lasek insists his storyline is grounded in a fascination with history and reality, his words fly, the music catches flame, and the band transforms into something more than just a rock ’n’ roll group. They don’t know how important they are to music, and they are so much better off for it.
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“A friend of mine had a reel-to-reel player. We’d take our tapes apart and put them on and just listen to it backward and scare the shit out of ourselves, which makes for some really good entertainment when you’re young.” - Jace Lasek
words by Derek Wright photos by Randy Cremean
SCENE: EXTERIOR BACKYARD A slaughterhouse employee stands on his patio, looking out toward his suburban swathe of land. In front of him, colors swirl. Large animals appear dancing alongside him. Blood drips. Distorted voices waver in the distance. The man stands motionless, reverent at the specter around him, anticipating a series of magical and tragic events. His silhouette casts a large shadow over the grass that intertwines with the characters of his hallucination so convincingly that it begs the question whether this is a fantasy at all. Maybe this is reality. It looks real. It smells real. It certainly sounds real. In fact, it feels more genuine than the punch-clock life that he’s been hacking away at for all these years. Is he dreaming, or did he just wake up? All this has to be in his head, right? His life can’t actually be like this, can it?
Cut to Wayne Coyne’s home: Oklahoma City, Okla. “At the moment, it’s just called The Backyard,” said Coyne of the movie idea rattling around his brain beneath that familiar saltand-pepper mane. “Things happen in [the character’s] backyard, and he doesn’t know if they’re real or not, but they affect everything that he does. They affect the way he works and the way he starts to believe his life is.” The Flaming Lips front man rambles through conversations tangentially, hopping between ideas until he stumbles upon answers as though he just figured them out at that very moment. The paradox within Coyne’s southern drawl is part of what makes him both endearing and perplexing. His answers are abstractly concrete. Scientifically nonsensical. In some instances, the singer speaks with the conviction of a person who most certainly has thought of all of this – regardless of what this might be – many times before, cautiously precise in his opinions and with a clear agenda. At other times, his voice hits an excited pitch, sounding like a man surprised by his new revelations. Is he absolutely uncertain? Positively unsure? Definitely, … maybe. When Coyne talks, it’s as though he’s solving a crossword puzzle by running through a series of synonyms before deciding on one. The wrong verbiage means systematic failure. The right phrase means everything perpendicularly makes sense. But it’s his trial by fire – or try all by fire – way of responding that gives the singer such a personable demeanor. For a man with such thorough beliefs, he sure isn’t bashful about letting perfect strangers listen in as he figures them out. And once he has, he shares them with a sort of reckless verbal abandon that raises the same question as so much of Coyne’s public persona. Is this for real? His life can’t actually be like this, can it? Coyne, one of only two remaining original member of The Flaming Lips (Michael Ivins), is preparing for his band’s upcoming summer tour while sitting in his Oklahoma City kitchen – in the house he remodeled like a 1950s sci-fi film, resembling something out of Disneyland’s Tomorrowland. While discussing The Backyard, he takes a rare pause and sighs slightly as his tone drops to an almost apologetic pace. “It’s probably just a movie about me again,” he said sheepishly. “All these dumb things are really just about the way I see the world.”
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It’s hard to blame him for drawing comparisons between the film’s lead and his own life. After all, Flaming Lips concerts are chock-full of dancing animals, flashing lights, and psychedelic revelry. There’s confetti and fake blood. There are experimental soundscapes, balloons and billowing smoke.
“Creating another world – or creating your version of the world – I think that is our job. I’m hoping it’s not coming from the way you’re aware that you’re seeing a forest or a mountain. I hope that my music is coming from the way you’re sleepwalking, that you’re not aware of what is real or imagined or what’s possible. … ” To take Coyne at his word is to believe that the Flaming Lips’ entire output – 12 proper albums during the past 27 years, including last year’s double-LP Embryonic – is simply his window on the universe, not a window into him. “[It’s] my version of what the world is,” Coyne said of his music. “Creating another world – or creating your version of the world – I think that is our job. I’m hoping it’s not coming from the way you’re aware that you’re seeing a forest or a mountain. I hope that my music is coming from the way you’re sleepwalking, that you’re not aware of what is real or imagined or what’s possible. … It comes from a place in your mind that you don’t really have control of. … Creating is using another part of your brain than observing.” Thus, with each new album – or movie, or longwinded diatribe – it’s Coyne who learns a bit more about us, not the other way around. Although he might find answers through his work, ev-
eryone else is left wondering: Is this for real? His life can’t actually be like this, can it? What we have learned over the years about the verbose front man is that he’s a hybrid of many of rock ‘n’ roll’s landmark visionaries. On stage, he twirls lights above his head the way Roger Daltry swung a microphone, yet sings in a fragile tenor more like Neil Young. His recognizable curly locks invoke memories of Bob Dylan’s iconic 1960s figure, and his trademark, designer white suits recall Abbey Road John Lennon. That is, until he covers himself in fake blood like he’s imitating Gene Simmons, although he’ll tell you the look was inspired by a Civil Rights-era photo of Miles Davis. As a filmmaker, what he doesn’t take from David Lynch’s bizarre plots and fill-in-your-own-blank style of storytelling, he draws from Ed Wood’s flair for do-it-yourself science fiction. The Backyard is poised to be his second venture into full-length cinema. His first, 2008’s Christmas On Mars, told a story of a suicidal Santa Claus in outer space. The film took almost a decade to complete and found The Flaming Lips members cast alongside celebrity friends such as Fred Armisen, Adam Goldberg, and Steve Burns, with Coyne writing, directing, and starring as a benevolent Martian named the Alien Super-Being. The notoriously DIY Coyne also built the film’s sets – fittingly, in his backyard. At one point, he talked a local gas station into giving up its old underground tanks so they could become the film’s spaceships. As an artist, he’s part Frank R. Paul, with many of the Lips’ album covers resembling the pulp novels of the 1920s had they been reworked by psychedelic painter Edvard Munch.
“If you gravitate toward this music and you embrace it, and you give it the meaning you want, it’s you doing it. It’s not necessarily the music. … Whatever the mystery is of what music does to our minds, it’s phenomenal. It’s even more pronounced or more powerful, when it’s done in front of people, in a big group of people, all sort of seeing this thing together, all having this experience together.”
But it’s as a conversationalist when he’s at his most raw, staying on target as well as an arrow without its fletching. It would be maddening, if he weren’t as engaging as a fellow southerner with a knack for persuasion, Bill Clinton. After all, Coyne is the man who once convinced a parking garage full of strangers to play customized audiocassettes simultaneously on his cue, conducting their car stereos like an automobile orchestra. He’s the same bandleader who later passed out 40 boom boxes with corresponding cassettes, and effortlessly talked people into following his audio experiment. This, all before he persuaded Warner Bros. Records in 1997 to release the virtually unmarketable Zaireeka, which requires four individual CDs to be played simultaneously. He’s the same guy who once talked Justin Timberlake into joining his band on stage, … to play the bass, … dressed as a dolphin. This is the man who can be seen on Google Earth, … taking a bath, … in his backyard. This is the person who crowd surfs during his concerts, … standing up, … walking over the outstretched hands of the audience, … from inside a human-size hamster ball. He’s the guy who wrote the poetic retrospective about love and life, “Do You Realize??”, … put it on a concept album in 2002 about space robots seeking intergalactic supremacy, … then had it sell more than 500,000 copies – before it became the official Oklahoma state song. And Coyne is the same guy who followed a pair of Grammy Awards in 2005 by releasing this year’s challenging double-LP with 18 distorted and messy songs about sex, reproduction, and violent death, … only to have it debut at No. 8 on the Billboard Top 200. But his life can’t actually be like this, can it? “If you gravitate toward this music and you embrace it, and you give it the meaning you want, it’s you doing it. It’s not necessarily the music. … Whatever the mystery is of what music does to our minds, it’s phenomenal. It’s even more pronounced or more powerful, when it’s done in front of people, in a big group of people, all sort of seeing this thing together, all having this experience together,” Coyne said of the persuasive power he yields as one of the most iconic performers of his generation. The Flaming Lips have built a reputation since the early 1980s for ambitious rock ‘n’ roll with equally eccentric stage shows. What began as ear-splitting prog-punk – accompanied by motorcyclefueled fog machines and fiery drum kits – has aged into a celebratory symphony of painstakingly coordinated madness. “And I don’t really know what music is; I suppose that’s why I’m drawn to it. … I don’t really know how it works, or why it works, but occasionally, it works very well,” Coyne mused. “We know that it’s something that we’re hearing; it goes in through our ears. But besides that, we don’t really know. Why do notes in a series evoke emotions? We don’t know why it may evoke these emotions from me but evoke it for you. Why music might appeal to you and not to me. Why sometimes music makes you seem like you want to kill yourself, while other music makes you save yourself from killing yourself. “It’s the power of music that I guess I don’t understand,” he continued. “Certainly, I understand the idea of music and where it
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comes from. But a lot of music is still very strange. There are sounds and combinations of rhythms and things that you just don’t know why it has such a hold on you. … I understand that we can define what [music] is, but I don’t know if that is really what we mean. What we mean, is that it’s magic. When music is saying something to you, it’s an invisible friend that is only alive in your mind.” As Coyne debated – in part, with himself – what sort of power music has on listeners, his voice again began to slow. His familiar drawl began to waver, and his tone reached a pitch as though something had just clicked. “It’s a muthafucker, that’s what I think,” he said relieved by his conclusion. “It’s a muthafucker.” For some, he’s a salesman, convincing his minions before they realize what they’ve agreed to. For others, he’s a feverishly hardworker whose hands-on approach to everything attracts even the most skeptical observers. After all, he did work at Long John Silver’s for 11 years, some of which were after he had a major-label recording contract. He’s the guy who fashioned the original rigging for the Flaming Lips’ massive LCD projection screens himself – again, in his backyard. He built the air pump that he uses onstage to fill the dozens of oversized balloons that bounce among concert-goers out of a leaf blower and funnel. (He publicly has estimated that he spends more than $10,000 a year on Duct Tape for similar Flaming Lips projects.) He sets up and soundchecks his equipment before each gig in plain sight, casually talking with fans from the stage as he tunes. By and large, the Lips are a family-run organization with more than just Coyne’s hand in everything from the band’s album artwork to their music videos. His wife, Michelle Coyne, takes most of the band’s photos, and the two still live in the low-income Oklahoma City neighborhood where Wayne grew up, only blocks away from his childhood home. His brother, Kenny Coyne, had a starring role in Christmas on Mars, while Michelle and his nephew, Rayce Coyne, have been featured throughout the band’s music video catalog. Another nephew, Dennis Coyne, is the band’s former roadie who now fronts Lips-like outfit Stardeath and White Dwarfs, which recorded this year alongside Uncle Wayne on a remake of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. “We didn’t have a lot of time to even consider what it would be,” said Wayne Coyne of his band’s 2010 remake of Pink Floyd’s seminal album. “We knew we didn’t want to do what Pink Floyd did. By that, I mean we knew we didn’t want to make a meticulous space-rock record. We took their songs and their themes and their arrangements and said, ‘Why don’t we try and do this like we were a punk-rock group and just see what happens?’ ” Released originally in 1973, the psychedelic milestone stayed on the Billboard Top 200 charts for a record 741 weeks, finally dropping off the list in 1988 – just about the time the Flaming Lips were kicking around the ideas for the band’s sophomore LP, Telepathic Surgery. Over the years, Coyne and Co. made a habit of
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performing Pink Floyd songs in concerts, including during a radio performance in 1999 when the band performed a combination of David Gilmour-era Floyd alongside music from The Wizard of Oz (the film that forever is linked to Dark Side of the Moon over speculation that the LP can substitute for the film’s audio track).
“We knew we didn’t want to do what Pink Floyd did. By that, I mean we knew we didn’t want to make a meticulous space-rock record. We took their songs and their themes and their arrangements and said, ‘Why don’t we try and do this like we were a punkrock group and just see wha t happens?’ ” That affection toward Floyd – as well as Coyne’s sarcastic tongue – lead to this year’s output. When pushed by Internet giant iTunes to provide exclusive B-sides for Embryonic, Coyne quipped that his band didn’t have a stockpile of recordings and that they should just cover Dark Side in its entirety. A few days later, the band’s lawyers, who had taken Coyne seriously and inquired about the legality of doing such a recording, informed the singer that the proper calls had been made and he was free to launch The Dark Side of the Moon project. “If you’re a band, you do stuff like this. You don’t think, ‘Oh, this is going to change the world.’ You think, ‘Well, this will be fun,’ and you do it,” said Coyne of the no-win situation that he entered by rerecording such an influential LP. Succeed, and critics could cite working with Pink Floyd’s raw material as the reason. Fail, and the Flaming Lips could be remembered as the guys who ruined a classic. “And sometimes I think that’s the only way you could ever make music that probably can be world-changing. You’re really just doing it because you like it. You don’t really need anybody to tell you it’s great, and you don’t really care if people tell you that it’s not great. A lot of times, frankly, you’re making these things because you want to, anyway. A lot of times, I’m only doing it because I want to.” The Lips’ version, which clocks in at 1 minute, 59 seconds shorter than the original, features spoken-word parts by Henry Rollins and electro-trash diva Peaches filling in the female vocals. It’s an elaborate undertaking that has swelled from a knee-jerk comment into a full-on concert tour, with Coyne reworking the album into a live production, including a high-profile performance at
Bonnaroo. It’s a tour, however, that saw a portion halted and the rest hang in jeopardy over multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd’s admittance to rehab. When news broke that Coyne, bassist Michael Ivins and longtime drummer Kliph Scurlock had canceled a portion of the 2010 road show, many skeptics rushed to connect the move to Drozd’s history of drug abuse as documented openly in the film The Fearless Freaks. According to representatives from the band’s label, Warner Bros., Drozd actually attended rehab for alcohol, not drug use. This latest setback left Coyne wondering about his time after The Flaming Lips, debating whether this was for real, if his life actually could be like this. “For the longest time, I never considered the life of The Flaming Lips. I thought, ‘Of course we’re in The Flaming Lips, and we make records, and we play shows. That’s what we do.’ And over this past month, it’s been very strange for me,” Coyne said of the realization that his surreal fairytale might not last forever. “I’ve thought, ‘Well, I don’t know if The Flaming Lips will always ex-
ist.’ Obviously, I should have thought of that all along. But this has been … weird. And I think, ‘Wow, maybe The Flaming Lips won’t always exist. What the fuck do I do now?’ ” For the time being, that answer is on hold. Drozd ended his rehab stint in June. According to Coyne, Drozd is on the uptick, and his successful recovery has left plenty of time for the bulk of his band’s summer gigs For now, all is back to normal for Coyne, Drozd, Scurlock and Ivins. It’s back to the flashing lights, confetti, dripping blood, dancing animals, oversized balloons, and even-bigger hamster balls. It’s back to movies about aliens, songs about robots, and albums about the other side of the cosmos. But life can’t actually be like this, can it? Yes, it can, and much of it begins in Wayne Coyne’s backyard.
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words by Andy Pareti photos by Randy Cremean
FREE ENERGY Lets the Good Times Roll
words by Elliot Cole photos by Randy Cremean
T
he fizzy, zeitgeist-riddled pop rock of Free Energy is, to put it simply, fun. This is both the band’s foremost strength and its most significant obstacle. After all, we as music fans think music more than ever, dissecting every song with endless deliberation and banal analysis. As more musicians delve into hyperbolic literary metaphors about sea creatures or 13/4 time structures, Free Energy does just the opposite. Instead, they ignore the proving ground of cool. They just aim – unapologetically, shamelessly, and charmingly – for fun. In doing so, the band could remind us why we love music in the first place.
“I think that there’s this idea now that real music or worthwhile music is experimental, or somehow it can’t be big and fun and bright,” said Paul Sprangers, singer of Free Energy. “But obviously it can be [fun] because it’s blasting on classic rock radio all the time. You can hear it; it’s happened before. And there’s no reason it shouldn’t happen now.” Maybe Sprangers and his group – featuring cassette tape-loving guitarist Scott Wells, his bassist brother Evan Wells, guitarist Geoff Bucknum, and drummer Nick Shuminsky – can spearhead that notion. The appropriately named Free Energy is every bit of big and fun and bright. Their hazy, 1970s guitars shimmer through an array of pop hooks and na na nas. It’s the heart of classic rock before the ridiculous codpieces and overdone glitz, from the lighthearted spirit to the big, bubbling choruses. The group is paradoxically energetic and relaxed
at the same time; a trait Sprangers says matches the bandmates’ personalities. They don’t walk among the modern indie crowd; instead they lie with the likes of past institutions such as Thin Lizzy.
“I think that there’s this idea now that real music or worthwhile music is experimental, or somehow it can’t be big and fun and bright. But obviously it can be [fun] because it’s blasting on classic rock radio all the time. You can hear it; it’s happened before. And there’s no reason it shouldn’t happen now.” “I would feel bad if we’re being compared to typical indie rock bands that won’t be around very long,” Sprangers said. “But to be compared to bands that have lasted so long and are really substantial is a good thing.” With the band’s debut full-length Stuck On Nothing, Free Energy explores everything that is honest and unpresumptuous in pop music. The band tackles the genre of classic rock with a childlike zeal, showing no signs of the irony of, say, The
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Darkness. According to Sprangers, that honesty is what allows the band to approach such a wellworn genre.
ally streamline it, and put it out there. And that’s a scary thing. Then you get in the habit of doing it, and it becomes very liberating.”
“Everything is made with love, and we aim to do right by our heroes. We have really high standards for ourselves, and we’re always trying to reach maybe impossible standards. There’s no trick or secret. If people think we’re like dopey hicks, that’s awesome.”
Liberating is apropos for the group. There is something invigorating about the carefree, resonating chords and forthright lyrics. “This is all we got tonight / We are young and still alive / And now the time is on our side” sings Sprangers on the title track, “Free Energy”. The busting-out spirit of classic rock – think “The Boys Are Back In Town” – is well-represented in every ounce of Stuck On Nothing.
It’s remarks like this that make Sprangers demanding to dislike. With his skin-and-bones frame, old-school high-tops, and immediate friendliness, Sprangers comes off more like a pleasant neighbor than a classic rock frontman. He’s also noticeably articulate but hides it beneath a casual, disarming tone. When confronted with a difficult question, he allows for long silences before coming up with a response, even if that response is remarkably simple. “I think music and art should be enjoyable. I don’t think it should be painful. I think it should be challenging, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyable,” Sprangers said after laboring on the subject. Sprangers and the Evans brothers set out to form Free Energy after their previous group, Minnesota-based indie group Hockey Night, dissolved. “Scott and I didn’t have a clear enough vision to be able to dictate to the other guys what needed to happen,” Sprangers admitted concerning Hockey Night’s end. The trio would relocate to Philadelphia while penning songs that were far removed from their previous outfit. In a match that transcends genre, their demos were presented to James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, who decided to produce the band’s selftitled EP for the normally dance-based DFA records. With what Sprangers describes as an “intense focus,” Murphy pushed them to find the vision that was lacking in Hockey Night. “He really pushed us to refine every single part of what we did … you know, figure out what [I’m] going to say, stick to it, and sing it confidently,” Sprangers said. “Try to move all affectation, re-
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Such lofty comparisons suit Sprangers just fine. “When I say that we’re competing with the Rolling Stones, we obviously have high aspirations,” he said. “We go day by day, but we also want to be the best band in the world.” Ultimately, Free Energy will be defined by its unassuming, feel-good authenticity. The band is an absolute, but the audience faces the risk of overanalyzing it. Or, worse yet, feeling as though they have to defend such brazen candor. Free Energy relies on something we shouldn’t have to work to understand: instinct. “When you intellectualize your music when you’re making it, that’s what kills it,” he said. “You really need to kind of respond to your intuition.” Sprangers acknowledges that people always want more than what is given to them at face value. However, that’s a tricky proposition for Free Energy. It’s not that the band lacks depth; it’s that the band hides nothing. The influences are obvious; the intentions are served up from the very first chords. “The music is good, but it follows this fun [tradition]; … it pulls out all these threads of old music that aren’t necessarily cool right now – and certainly not very intellectual,” Sprangers said. He’s hit the nail on the head; the group doesn’t emanate any hipster cool, nor does it hope to. Free Energy is just fun, and that’s all it needs to be.
THE
BRIGHT LIGHT SOCIAL HOUR words by Adi Anand photos by Randy Cremean
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he goal was always pretty simple – to concoct a fresh sound that incorporates their influences and allows for ample experimentation. And based on the reception their music and their scintillating live sets have received since they broke into the Austin music circuit, it’s safe to say that The Bright Light Social Hour is well on their way to securing a solid career in the name of rock ‘n’ roll.
you settle on the name?
The band formed in 2004, in a little town north of Austin called Georgetown. But it took a few years to get to where they stand now. The core members relocated to Austin, adjusted the lineup, and took care of necessities such as master’s degrees. Nothing they couldn’t take in their stride. By 2009, they were ready to unveil their exhilarating sound to the unsuspecting masses.
The band took a hiatus while I spent a year studying abroad in Madrid [Spain], during which time the original drummer had moved away. In late 2006, we found 17-year-old drumming ninja Jo Mirasole, and when the bass player left in late 2007, I was elated to take over bass duties. The current lineup was completed with the addition of longtime friend singer/songwriter/ keyboardist A.J. Vincent. After cementing the lineup, [Roush] and I finished up our graduate degrees at [University of Texas] and committed ourselves fully to turning our band into a profession.
The band’s early years could be graphed as a steady, ascending line. That slope spiked suddenly late last year when they entered and won the third-annual Dell Lounge-sponsored The Sound and the Jury contest. It garnered them a spot at the Austin City Limits Music Festival and was a landmark moment for this emerging act. Fortunately for us, they didn’t rest on those initial laurels. Instead, they have continued to grow and evolve, churning out thumping indie-rock of the highest caliber all along. The band is hard at work on their debut full-length, tentatively scheduled for release in October. To raise money for their time in the studio, they have recruited bassist Jack O’Brien’s moustache for assistance. Say what? Yes, the band released a hilarious promo video in May, offering assorted goods (cookies, merchandise) and services (car washes, Spanish lessons) to their fans in exchange for some funds for the cause. A novel approach, but then again, we’re dealing with a pretty unique band here. Soundcheck Magazine caught up with The Bright Light Social Hour recently to learn more about their past, their process in the recording studio, and of course, O’Brien’s moustache. Soundcheck Magazine: Take us back to the beginning: When and where did the band form? How did
Jack O’Brien: Curtis [Roush, guitar/vocals] and I met at Southwestern University, a small liberal arts school in Georgetown in late 2004. [Roush] sent out a campuswide email looking for musicians with whom to start an experimental art-rock collective citing influences such as The Blood Brothers, …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Refused, and The Mars Volta. I jumped at the opportunity, as both of us had recently left metal/hard rock bands and were looking for something much more expressive with room for limitless experimentation. [Roush] had already found a bass player, so I was originally brought on as a vocalist (screaming, mainly), and our eccentric mix of post-hardcore and post-rock fared well in Georgetown’s surprisingly healthy hardcore scene.
Our name was given to us by a gypsy woman when we were babies. Soundcheck: How do you classify your music? Most bands don’t like genre tags, but they usually have some idea of what umbrella they might fall under. Curtis Roush: If we could get away with just calling our music simply “rock ‘n’ roll,” I would love that. But 60 years into rock music as a cultural form, it’s probably impossible to describe much with such an expansive label. To get more specific, we are attempting to bridge the classic rock of the [1970s] and the soul and funk music of Motown and Stax with more contemporary developments in indie music, e.g. electronic/dance, experimental. For the quick and dirty, we like ”hard, funky indie rock.” Soundcheck: Where do you guys record in town? Can you give us an update on the full-length? Roush: After a few years worth of EPs, we’ve been itching to make our first full-length record. We’ve been writing, planning, and saving over the past year, and we
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are now in the early stages of recording. We’re also really excited to be working with Austin-based producer and engineer, Danny Reisch. I’ve been a fan of Danny’s recordings for a while now, and we have a shared love of the fat, warm production of the ’70s; he also has a great moustache. We are recording drums and bass to 2-inch analog tape at Cacophony Recorders, a beautiful open-room studio on the banks of the Colorado River. After that, the recording will continue with guitars, keys, and vocals at [Reisch’s] own studio, Good Danny’s. This approach allows us to reap the benefits of both analog and digital recording, as well as the gear and atmosphere of the two studios. I’m really excited about how the record is taking shape. Personally, I went into the process aiming for a sort of Led Zeppelin 1 aesthetic: raw, primal, crunchy rock ‘n’ roll. However, it’s already evolving into something deeper, funkier, and more spacious, like a roadhouse Dark Side of the Moon made in the American South instead of London. [Reisch] is also proving to be a great choice. In addition to his technical facility, he has been remarkably savvy about getting the right takes and keeping studio morale high. Tentatively, the record will be self-titled. Soundcheck: Is there a certain process you guys end up following when recording, or is it unique to each situation and song? What not-so-ordinary instruments, if any, have you used in the studio? Roush: We write songs and develop our aesthetic/production approach as a group. There are pros and cons to this democratic approach. For one, it takes a long time. Essentially every part in every song requires unanimous consent. We’ll try different iterations and debate ideas until we are all on board. For this record, we have been writing and honing these songs for nearly two years. Fortunately, this long development process is making the actual recording process quicker and easier because we know what we’re going for. We can now spend time with [Reisch] on the technical decisions – microphones, signal processing, drum tuning, etc. – and not have to worry about tweaking the songs themselves. As for instruments, we use pretty standard rock ‘n’ roll fare: Tele, P-Bass, old Ludwig drums, tube amps, vintage keyboards and synths. The keys are proving most difficult to track down. We need a Hohner Clavinet on “Back and Forth”, and those are pretty hard to find in good shape. There don’t seem to be very many around
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Austin. Soundcheck: The Bright Light Social Hour won Dell Lounge’s The Sound and the Jury contest in 2009. What was playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival like, and what did it mean to you that so many local fans were able to boost you to victory in that contest? A.J. Vincent: It was pretty mind-blowing at the time. Playing the festival happened very fast because we played the final battle of the bands at Antone’s on Wednesday night, then we played a late Beauty Bar show Thursday night, and [we] were at the festival early Friday morning. I remember playing the first half of the first song thinking, “Oh my god, we’re playing ACL,” and the next thing I remember was during the last song thinking, “Oh my god, this is the last song. It’s over soon!” So much adrenaline, it’s just a blur in between. … Great experience. Soundcheck: What do you make of the Austin music scene at the moment – fertile and blooming, or oversaturated and diluted? Roush: The Austin music scene is definitely fertile and blooming. We are all privileged to live in such a creative, verdant city that’s so supportive of local music. The Parish is our local home base. With the beautiful open room and the best live sound in Austin, it’s a pretty inspiring place to play. Soundcheck: And finally, what’s all this stuff about Jack’s Moustache that we have been seeing on the blogs? O’Brien: We’re funding the album entirely ourselves, and [although] we’ve saved every penny we could, we’ve found that the costs of studio rent, engineering fees, equipment rentals, 2-inch tape, album artwork/ design, packaging, duplication, distribution, promotion, etc. definitely exceed what we’ve been able to raise on our own. My moustache, being the renegade entrepreneur that it is, has been put in charge of raising additional funds and has come up with an excellent donations campaign at www.jacksmoustache.com. Basically, depending on how much you donate, you can receive all sorts of personalized services from the band, ranging from T-shirts and signed pre-release CDs to car washes, home-cooked meals, jam sessions, personalized love songs, and even shaving my dear moustache. The response has been amazing, and we’re well on our way to meeting our needs, but we’ll be taking donations through the album’s release in October and still have a long way to go.
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Band of Brothers words by Andy Pareti
How Deftones rose from the wreckage of a personal tragedy
or those of us who might have washed it from our memories, the turn of the 21st century and the months preceding it were not the best of times for rock music. There was 1999’s Woodstock disaster, which turned a legacy of peace, love and music into three days of piss, rape and pyromania. There was the Columbine tragedy and the subsequent witch hunt against everything black, goth and heavy metal. And between 1999 and 2000, the world saw bands such as Limp Bizkit (Significant Other), Disturbed (The Sickness), Insane Clown Posse (The Amazing Jeckel Brothers) and Marilyn Manson (Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)) enjoy the most worldwide commercial success of their careers. In short, it seemed that rock music was turning mean, nasty, and even evil, almost overnight. Amid this smoldering wreckage was the strange case of Sacramento, Calif.’s Deftones, who seemed guilty by association and yet somehow different from the flock. With two decidedly heavy-hitting releases under their belt, the band found themselves stung with the poison dart of being labeled nu metal, a term that Deftones engineer/DJ/keyboardist Frank Delgado doesn’t dare repeat. “It was not hard to see how they coined this term and decided to start calling it that. People took to it,” Delgado remembered. “Whoever was trying to ride the wave, we weren’t trying to ride the wave. If you want to call us that, OK, you can call us that, but at least listen to this.” By “this,” Delgado was referring to the band’s groundbreaking third album, White Pony, released in 2000 as an almost life-saving breath of fresh air for a genre stuck on life support. With the electronic glow of “Digital Bath”, the shoegaze trip-hop hybrid “Teenager” and the masterfully lush “Change (In the House of Flies)”, White Pony was a statement album to the rest of the rock music world, a permanent differentiator and legitimizer. Ten years later, Deftones find themselves older, wiser, and facing the task of another statement album, this one of a very different kind. Rounding the home stretch two years ago on the band’s anticipated sixth album, Eros, Deftones
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were hit with a deeper, much more personal catastrophe when, on Nov. 4, 2008, original bassist Chi Cheng was involved in a near-fatal car accident in Santa Clara, Calif. The accident left him in a minimal state of consciousness that he remains in today. As for Eros, the band shelved it, turning their attention to their downed brother, and the future of Deftones quickly became a hazy question mark.
“I think all of us in our minds were like, ‘What’s happening? What are we gonna do with the band? Could this be it? What the hell do we do?’ ” Delgado recalled. What they did was write a song … then another … then another. Over the course of a few short weeks, an album materialized in the aftermath. “The most tragic thing can happen to our band and for the many weekends together, we’re turning out songs like we never have before,” Delgado said. With long-time friend Sergio Vega playing bass in Cheng’s place, the band found themselves experiencing what Delgado repeatedly referred to as a “creative stride,” putting together a record quicker than anything they’ve done since 1997’s Around the Fur. As for Eros, the band optimistically pins its release on the recovery of Cheng. “We’ll put it out right,” Delgado said, “when things maybe change for him.” This new, therapeutic outburst of creativity became the material for Diamond Eyes, an album that the band looks at as optimistic, largely because the songs aren’t all about Cheng. In a way, Diamond Eyes was a collective outlet for the
band – in light of Cheng’s accident, it served as a punching bag, a security blanket, a blank canvas – whatever the band needed it to be.
long, sadistic trance”. Moreno gives the songs a provocative edge, his words igniting a fiery passion atop the blaze of guitar attacks.
“It’s about life,” Delgado bluntly said.
The band might have surprised themselves with both the speed and ease that Diamond Eyes came to them, but it’s clear that Cheng’s accident sparked them into action. That is why Diamond Eyes is a statement album. They scrapped a record that was all but finished to start again from scratch. Perhaps the reason the songs came so quickly was out of desperation to release, to relieve. Delgado is right: the songs are about life – something so precious to these friends in light of what has happened to them. But that has been the key to Deftones’ success all along. It’s the reason why they persevered after all these years while many of their peers since have perished. Creation, not destruction. Life, not death. Now, more than ever, that mantra means everything to Deftones.
It’s certainly lively. It bursts into existence on the opening title track and burns bright all the way through. Some songs, such as “Cmnd/Ctrl” and “Rocket Skates”, provide the most direct blunt assault in the band’s repertoire since the 1990s, and departures like the cool, drifting “Sextape” and marching, bluesy “You’ve Seen the Butcher” further reinforce the band’s reputation as experimenters unafraid to branch out of a comfort zone. “When I put the rough [tracks] on my iPod and I put it on shuffle, it flowed no matter what way it was coming at me,” Delgado said. “That doesn’t happen a lot.” All the while, singer/songwriter Chino Moreno leads the songs with images of dark sexuality, straddling the line (if one such exists) between aggression and romance. This duality reaches a peak on “Rocket Skates”, in which Moreno howls, “Let’s writhe / Let me see you trip / Let’s fall in a
••• Editor’s note: To make a donation for Chi Cheng’s medical care or to receive updates on his condition, visit http://oneloveforchi.com.
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