Profile: Bonni Evensen from Snowy (2003)

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy Sept. 22, 2003

For those looking for the surface of life to imitate art, I’m sorry to report that Bonni Evensen, the singer-songwriter behind the atmospheric pop ensemble Snowy, is anything but cold or wintry. Anyone who has a copy of Snowy’s debut CD, Lilywhite, knows that Evensen has that rare voice that, even when hanging in isolation, could melt your heart. But she also has a sense of humor and a quirky, quick wit that will catch you off-guard if you’re expecting another teary-eyed, half-reluctant indie crooner.

As proof, consider this little snippet, taken from a conversation on the cover art to Lilywhite, a collage of a headless ice skater standing on a rough, emerald green sea while a lighthouse is burning on the nearby shore:

“I love surrealism – like Magritte and Dali – [and] putting strange things together that don’t make sense. It [the cover] is a collage done in Photoshop. I found the skater girl in a 60’s painting I bought on eBay. She was one of those doe-eyed sad sacks and she was so funny and corny that I had to chop her head off. If you believe it, you can skate on very thin ice, or no ice at all. The sea image is also from an old painting and it looks very much like the rough Northern California coastline, which I love, comfortingly cold and lonely. The burning lighthouse? Who knows. I didn’t really think about all of it, I just kluged it together.”

Evensen’s music, though little of it has been released to the public, is anything but kluged together. Working with San Francisco-area musicians, she crafts densely textured, cinematic pop songs that resonate on deep emotional levels. Sure, sure, there are the ruminations on heartbreak and longing, but Evensen seems to inject an eerie snese of introspection to the proceedings. The listener, if they’re willing to come along for the ride, is seemingly rewarded for joining her in the carefully laid shadows and musical crevices.

Delusions of Adequacy recently got the chance to sit with Evensen in some of those shadows, talking via e-mail about the release of her band’s first CD, her obsession with all things musical, and her response when people ask how such a welcoming and warm person can make such sad and elegiac music.

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Delusions of Adequacy: I’m sure the Snowy record has drawn more than a few comparisons to Portishead. But while the majority of atmospheric pop floating about these days might draw comparisons to Portishead, you can actually hear a range of different musical influences on Lilywhite. This could be called a pop record, I suppose, but a good number of the songs also have a cinematic scope to them and your voice is far more emotive than what you’d hear fronting your usual pop-rock band. What sort of music were you listening to while writing the songs on the record? Do you feel this had an impact on the overall sound of the release? What, traditionally, would you say are your biggest musical influences?

Bonni Evensen: I love all sorts of music, really all sorts. I know, everyone says that, but it’s true. I’ll hear a snippet of music while watching an Alfred Hitchcock film and have it in my head for days and then a song comes out of it. I remember dancing around in circles with my little sister listening to the
Mancini soundtrack to The Pink Panther maybe 4,000 times when we were kids. I’ll go to a party and not remember a single conversation I had but will remember a song playing in the background, like Simon and Garfunkel’s “America,” and obsess on it for days until it works its way into a song. It could just be one note that I keep, or the mood or the feeling, wondering what on Earth the secret is to that song that grabs me in its paws and won’t let go. Sadly, nothing I write ever sounds anything like those gorgeous songs, but it is a reason to keep trying. A friend of mine plays me these odd Eastern European polkas on her accordion and they just amaze me. Really almost anything musical fascinates me. When I was a kid everyone in my family played music except for my dad. Trumpet, tuba, accordion, clarinet, piano, oboe, saxophone and flute. A complete oompa band! I played in jazz band through high school and I’m sure playing big band songs has influenced me in some ways that I’m embarrassed to admit. I love the great jazz vocalists like Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, and I love Chet Baker. Oh, and I secretly wish I was Colin Blunstone, the singer from The Zombies. I’d get a sex change operation if it would enable me to sound like him. In general I’d say, of course, I love 60’s pop music the most (Beatles, Brian Wilson, V.U., Love, The Byrds, Mamas and Papas, Burt Bacharach, Astrud Gilberto …) But then there’s soul, oh my. What about Al Green and Marvin
Gay and Smokey Robinson? Then, there’s a bit of country and blues: Hank
Williams, Lonnie Johnson and Lucinda Williams. Current artists, I’d have to say I really love Radiohead and Elliot Smith and, please stop me now, I could go on here forever. Because I have a hard time picking out one CD to play at a time. I mostly play a college radio station, probably 12 hours a day. I love it, KALX in Berkeley. The DJs constantly surprise me and I could hug every one of them. But let’s see, I’d say that collectively we were all listening to Radiohead and that could have had some impact on the sound of the production of the record. But there were so many influences flying in from everyone it’s hard to tell.

DOA: Aside from pointing to your own musical interests, how do you describe the record to those who haven’t heard it? Or to those who know you but don’t know about your music?

BE: I’m terrible at describing it. People ask and I’ll just say Moody Chick Music. Goth Housewife? Um, mostly I just say moody, emotional and slow. That sure weeds people out. People I know are always surprised when they hear it. They say things like “Oh honey, you’re such a happy girl. I had no idea you were so depressed!”

DOA: Tell me more about the process you go through – or have gone through in the past – as a songwriter. Lilywhite is an emotional record, but also one that feels very composed, very put together, very produced. Were the songs kind of birthed more or less as we hear them on the record, or were they smaller or more vague ideas that were expanded as the writing and recording took place?

BE: Oh no, they were very stripped-down. I have a four-track recorder and I’d just play around and put down very bad guitar tracks, and whatever else I had around. I play a keyboard or whatever until I hear something and put that down, add accordion, bongos and voila … a bizarre little recording is birthed. The songs then came into the studio and were transformed into pretty big productions, layer after layer.

DOA: While many of the songs on the record sound as if they are being performed by a full band, the title track stands in stark contrast, a ballad with an almost glacial pace that supplements a single guitar line and your voice with spare bits of strings and keyboard. On top of all of this, the song’s lyrics are more literal and straight-forward than what surrounds it: we’re bedside with you as you watch a friend undergoing treatment that is clearly tearing both of you apart. Can you tell me the story behind the song? Did the story dictate the feeling of the song? Was the decision to record the song as we hear it a conscious one?

BE: That one really stood apart. I wrote it after visiting my best friend in the hospital after having cancer surgery. She was young and lovely and it was such a strange and shocking environment to see her in. I went home that night and the song just fell out. I was so upset that I didn’t know what else to do. There was something so honest about it that it couldn’t really be covered up, so there it is. It wasn’t really a conscious decision to record it that way. The most wonderful thing about music is that I don’t have to think it all out first like I do in my work world. It’s so freeing to do things for the sake of doing them versus trying to make them marketable.

DOA: In addition to talking about your friend on “Lilywhite,” you seem to reference a lot of incidents from your personal life – either real or fictional or in between – throughout the record. How much do you find your own life working its way into your music? Do you see the songwriting process as a kind of catharsis, a way of addressing things from your personal life? Or is it more just that you tend to write what you know and your own life is fertile ground content-wise?

BE: My life always works its way into my music. I think anyone who says their music is anything but that is lying. Writing is one of the few things I can think of that truly makes me feel better. I take all of the darkness and try to make something beautiful-the old sand in the oyster story, it rips at your insides until you coat it with mother of pearl. The darkness is still there, but it’s wrapped in something beautiful and lovely to touch. I take such comfort in the sad songs of others when I’m feeling down, so I’m trying to give back. I can only hope to write songs that even slightly touch others emotionally.

DOA: While Lilywhite features strong performances from Steven Roback, Tim Mooney and others, you really do seem to steal the show. Is this the debut of Snowy proper or is it more a solo work with contributions from others? As the individual credited with the vast majority of the songwriting on the record, how do your initial ideas about the songs compare to the final product?

BE: Steven was very involved in the conception of most of the songs. He helped me flesh them out, and, thank God, he also helped me to stay honest. He would call me on my bullshit. He inspired me to write in the first place. Originally, I was just singing in a little side project with him and soon after we were recording demos at his home studio. Recording the final album was a group effort. If it was just me you’d be stuck with bongo and ukelele four-track demos. I feel very lucky. It was truly inspiring to work with such talented friends. Of course, it wasn’t always easy as it can be intimidating working with experienced people. Like one day, I brought in a song in that was in 3/4 time and Tim wanted to change it to 4/4 and at first I thought, NO WAY! But it actually worked out really well. I had to let go of control. And I hate that! Ha. This is my first record so I was more than a little shy and insecure. I was a nervous wreck. The next one has to be easier, right? I’m hoping to be more courageous next time and play more of the parts and have more input on the production, even if I’m terrible. I’m going to do a lot of experimenting with ProTools in the meantime. Uh-oh.

DOA: The big question for those who own the record: What’s on the horizon for you? Are there plans to tour or perform, or will you be focusing on another record sooner than later?

BE: I wish we could perform more but the logistics have been tough. Almost everyone has big priorities: families, jobs and other musical projects. I’m planning on recording again in the fall, and I can’t wait. I want to start performing more after that, and possibly prior to that. In the meantime I’m busy throwing my nets out for horrible and depressing experiences to write about. Ah, just kidding. I’m actually trying to learn to write about the happy aspects of life as well. Why is that so hard? I’ll have to think about that and get back to you.

Profile: Vital Cog’s Steve Stone (2003)

Staring at the Workings of The Gears:
An Interview with Vital Cog Records Founder Steve Stone

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy July 13, 2003

Let’s cut through the static. Who are the voices worth listening to in indie rock? Well, push aside the soundbyte-spewing iconoclasts and the photogenic figureheads, the outspoken fanzine addicts and the record store snobs, the image-conscious lo-fi scenesters and the bands playing seedy dives just to score a cover shoot with Magnet. What are you left with? The people who really drive the vehicles that bring indie rock around the globe: the individuals who make sacrifices, both professional and personal, and run independent labels.

While the world is familiar with the Corey Rusks and the Greg Ginns and the Ian McKayes, though – and rightfully so – there are scores of lesser-known label heads doing incredible things by simply doing what they love best. Consider them among the truly unsung heroes of the underground. Case in point: Steve Stone, founder and philosophical guru behind the “anatomically correct” New Jersey indie Vital Cog Records.

Stone, who founded his label in 1997 after managing – among others – the indie pop-rock act Moped, hesitates when asked to describe himself, his history, and his background in independent music. What’s important, it seems, is the product he helps to produce. In six years, Vital Cog has put out close to 30 releases, all of them exhibiting a kind of professionalism and a trademark of innovative design rarely seen in small indies, by bands from Aviso’Hara and Black Sonny to the infamous My Dad Is Dead. Among those releases have been overlooked indie rock gems, as well as rewarding projects like the “Superheroes of Rock” 7″ series and a collaboration with Doug Allen, of “Steven” fame.

In the six years the label has been running out of central New Jersey, however, what are also among the most interesting sounds coming from it are the ruminations from Stone on the ups and downs of producing and peddling independent music.

“The label officially started in February ‘97,” remembered Stone, in a recent phone interview.

“I started the label because, after managing a couple of bands and dealing with major labels and seeing what they did to the bands, I decided I could do just as bad a job as they could at putting out records,” he said with a laugh.

The Princeton, N.J. native feels, though, that the disasters of major label marketing and commercialized cultural manipulation, strange as it may sound, are a benefit to the indie rock community in some ways.

“Independent music and bands will live on as long as there’s nothing but crap being put out by major labels,” said Stone. Point, Vital Cog.

Delusions of Adequacy recently got the opportunity to pick Stone’s brain on more than just the disasters of major label-driven music culture, conducting a short question-and-answer session via e-mail.

Delusions of Adequacy: Over the course of Vital Cog’s six years and change, you’ve put out records by a number of indie rock bands. Let’s indulge in the hyphenated-genre game: How do you describe “The Vital Cog Sound” to someone who’s never picked up one of the label’s offerings? Are there bands that, over the years, have epitomized what you see as the label’s sound or are the types of bands you hope to feature in the future?

Steve Stone: I don’t know that there is a conscious effort to have a “defining sound.” I guess part of it is just my particular taste in music. I like guitar-driven, melodic, smart songs that rock. Each band adds its own personality to those qualities. So, no, there isn’t really a particular band that epitomizes the label sound. Maybe when we start putting out hip hop records …

DOA: Are there any indie bands out there now who you would love to work with or cut a record with based on your interests in that particular sound?

SS: There are a few. No. 2 (Neil Gust, formerly of Heatmiser), The Wedding
Present, Freeheat (Jim Reid, formerly of The Jesus & Mary Chain).

DOA: While some indie labels seem to be trapped in the lo-fi black-and-white photocopying rage of decades past, Vital Cog seems to reach for more innovative designs. Do you look at the artwork and design of Vital Cog releases as a defining trait for the label?

SS: Not really, it’s more a matter of style along with substance. If a record looks interesting without knowing what it sounds like, someone is more inclined to give it a chance. I just try to keep things looking as professional as possible given the limited budgets. I also have to give much of the credit to the bands and in particular, Frank Bridges, former bass player for Duochrome. Frank has come up with a lot of the artwork ideas and he is the in-house style master.

DOA: Who’s been behind the label logo shifts? I’ve counted a few over the years you guys have been releasing music.

SS: Ah, yes, the logos. I designed all 3. The first one [a simple gear next to black text] was when I was in my graphic design infancy and it shows. The second one [a uniformed milkman] was just stupid, but the current and final logo design [an updated, 3-D version of the gear] is the one I am most happy with and the one that has been on the most releases.

DOA: Followers of the Vital Cog aesthetic will be treated to a sixth anniversary retrospective in the near future. Tell me about it.

SS: The disc, entitled Dominate The Gears – 6 Years of Vital Cog Records, will include tracks from almost all of our 26 releases, including a rare Moped song that was on a spinART split 7″. The bands on the disc include: Moped, The Diane Linkletter Experience, Aviso’Hara, Duochrome, Sonny Sixkiller, Tim, Ditch Croaker, The Bigger Lovers, Silkworm, John Strohm, My Dad is Dead, Chris Colbourn, Blacksonny, Tizzy and Doug Allen, all in chronological order.

DOA: Sounds like quite the collection. Who could you see putting on a Vital Cog anniversary disc five or ten or twenty years from now?

SS: Good question but I don’t have a good answer. I’ll just be happy if there is a reason to do another anniversary disc.

DOA: You’re fairly outspoken about the work that small labels put into independent releases, without the backing of corporate funds or power structures. If there’s one thing you’ve learned in your six years operating Vital Cog that you wish you knew from Day One, what is it?

SS: Distributors suck. Most of them, anyway.

DOA: Any advice to fledgling indie labels? It seems technology has done quite a bit to allow anyone to put their CD on the market under a label name, but what advice would you give to someone out there looking to really take the plunge and start a small label?

SS: My advice would be to spend your money on something else. Unless you have unlimited funds or an uncle in the business, it’s a tough, thankless task. Just make sure you believe in the bands you’re working with and they put as much effort into it as you do.

DOA: In the Vital Cog split 7″ series, various names in indie rock offered spare tracks and donned outfits that made more than a passing reference to the Marvel Comics of the 1970s. Any plans to continue the series?

SS: We had planned to do a total of 6 split 7″s in our “Super Heroes of Rock” series, but due to the expense and lack of interest in vinyl these days, I’ve decided to stop it at 3. It’s a shame because we had some great bands lined up for the next 3.

DOA: Like who?

SS: We had agreements with Crooked Fingers, No. 2, Freeheat, Cobra Verde,
The Bigger Lovers and The Minders.

DOA: The big question: can quality indie rock really be produced in a place like New Jersey? Though you’re based out of Princeton, a bit of an atypical town in the Garden State, what’s your approach to releasing music by regional/national acts? Has your focus tended to lean toward sounds pouring out of the tri-state area?

SS: The great thing about running a label is it doesn’t matter where you do it as long as the UPS truck can get there and you have a web site. I’ve never even considered making Vital Cog a regional label. We have released records from bands in Kentucky, California, Massachusetts, Alabama and beyond. It doesn’t matter to me where the bands are from. As long as the distributors get the music in stores, college radio plays it and zines review it, people will find out about it. We get orders on our web site from all over the world.

DOA: Do you find people seem to look at you as a “New Jersey” label or do most seem to share the view that zip codes don’t have much to do with the label’s character?

SS: I don’t think most people are very aware of where the label is based. My experience has been that people usually ask where we are after the fact, so I’m pretty sure it’s not an issue.

DOA: Why “Vital Cog?” And, furthermore, what exactly do you mean when you say the label’s been “anatomically correct” since 1997?

SS: Because “Starfucker” was already taken and by “anatomically correct” we mean we have normal sized genitalia, for now at least. Science has come a long way.

Profile: The Lesser Birds of Paradise (2004)

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy Oct. 18, 2004

Mark Janka may have a gift for crafting frighteningly fragile acoustic lullabies, but, when it comes to spinning tales about his band’s enigmatic name, the tender-voiced frontman for Lesser Birds of Paradise admits he’s at a loss for words.

“I thought I made up a lie that was a good story for that but I forgot the story,” said Janka during a conversation that took place after the Chicago trio recorded The Scenery, a six-song follow-up to this year’s majestic String of Bees.

The band’s moniker was pulled from a random line of poetry, Janka said, a sentiment that spoke to his love of birds as metaphors and symbols.

“That’s the best I got,” he joked. “I’m working on making up a better story than that. If you’ve got one, send me an e-mail.”

Jokes about the obscure history of the band’s name aside, this seems to be a fitting introduction to an emotive ensemble that seems to shimmer brightest when a little lack of clarity is left in the mix, when the tender stories don’t all follow clearly delineated lines and arcs, and when some references go unreferenced.

A native Midwesterner, Janka cut his teeth not on the tender folk and lush, acoustic pop that have become the Lesser Birds’ calling card, but on the alternative and indie-rock scenes of the 1980s and early 1990s. While in college, Janka said some of his biggest influences were American Music Club, Pavement, The Replacements and Magnetic Fields, bands that informed his early efforts at songwriting and performance with the rock act Pillar Box Red.

“That was what you’d expect a college band to sound like in 1993,” said Janka, who described the band — which also featured future Lesser Bird multi-instrumentalist Tim Joyce — as a hybrid of Pavement and Smashing Pumpkins. “It was power chords. I guess we didn’t know a lot of those big solos.”

After Pillar Box Red recorded a demo with John McEntire, Janka said the group disbanded and began focusing more on what he bluntly calls “real life.” While Joyce recently moved to Montana to teach music, Janka’s day job is in the classroom, teaching English courses at Proviso High School in Maywood, Ill.

Janka’s love for music, though, didn’t wane.

Since 1998, Janka, Joyce, drummer/percussionist Greg Thomas and former bassist Tony Bianchi have always made time for the Lesser Birds. The group released its full-length debut — A Suitable Frame — in 2000 and, a year later, came out with the It Isn’t The Fall EP. A four-song split EP with Illinois-based singer-songwriter Jared Grabb followed in 2003, containing a “loud,” radio-friendly version of “Josephine,” an addictive pop exercise that reared its head again on 2004’s String of Bees.

While the String of Bees version of “Josephine” — all pedal-steel weeping, finger-picked acoustic guitars and half-moaned, half-whispered vocals — feels more somber and heart-wrenching than its electric-guitar predecessor, the sentiment below the surface is more universal.

“Josephine/ I think you know just what I mean/ When I say the tank is full/ And Philadelphia’s 12 hours away,” Janka sings on the track, which sits at the intersection of a road song and a plaintive ballad about heartbreak and romantic longing. Sound like a tall order to fill? Read on.

“Romeo/ He’s a boy that lives around the way/ Romeo/ I know you think he treats you okay/ And he might take you to all the dances thrown right here in town/ But I will take you from disapproving glances thrown when you’re around/ Josephine, won’t you drive away with me?”

Janka said the hunger in the song to return to Philadelphia is tinged with autobiography. Though he grew up outside Chicago, his parents were Philly-raised and, on his journeys back to their childhood homes, he felt a connection with the neighborhoods and the landscapes there.

“I just kind of wanted to see a different view of the world,” Janka said. “I somehow felt (Philadelphia) was somehow more real life.”

Driving also plays more than just a metaphorical role in the lives of Lesser Birds’ vocalist/guitarist. Janka said he often scribbles down lyrics and threads for song ideas while making the 40- to 45-minute commute to and from work every day.

“In the true folk tradition, I’ve been kind of using a Palm Pilot lately,” said Janka, who noted that lyrics often precede music when he’s writing new material. Sometimes, he said, he’ll hear something on National Public Radio (NPR) — a topic, a phrase — that catches his ear and he’ll jot it down in his Palm while driving.

Other pieces of cultural ephemera also make their way into Lesser Birds songs. The title of one String of Bees track, “Because We Are Also What We Have Lost,” was pulled from the film Amores Perros, Janka said.

Janka’s English students, however, are only sparingly welcomed into the songwriting process.

“There’s a few select students that kind of know (about Lesser Birds),” said Janka, when asked how much his day job and his musical career blend together. “We had a little secret songwriters club.”

String of Bees almost is the opposite extreme. In addition to the band’s core four members (Janka, Joyce, Thomas and Bianchi, who left the band recently), the 11-track disc features performances by Mark Greenberg of The Coctails, Joe Murphy of Dollar Love Plus, and Max Crawford of Poi Dog Pondering. Norman Phipps (father to String of Bees recording engineer and Coctails alum Barry Phipps) even made a guest appearance on the disc when he played along on the banjolin.

While mention of the band’s “hometown” of Chicago might call to mind the punk- and indie-rock circles of labels like Touch and Go and Quarterstick, Janka said the region is increasingly kind and welcoming to folk acts, which are being viewed as more accessible than they were even five years ago.

That’s a good thing for musicians like Janka, who referred to his folksy, finger-picking style of acoustic guitar playing as something that “is starting to become a minor obsession of mine.”

“When we have to define it, I guess we realize we’re a folk band,” Janka said. “I guess we feel we’re making folk music for indie kids.”

Well, when you’re driving through the night, racing on some impulsive trip to Philadelphia, perhaps, and you need something warm and enveloping to pour out of your stereo speakers, who better than a band that’s already been down that road?

(End.)

Greater Birds:
Mark Janka and Tim Joyce offer second thoughts on String of Bees

A Magnet in You
Mark Janka: This is one of several songs that has California in it. I work under the assumption that many Midwesterners have a love/hate relationship with California. California is our geographical “other.” I suppose that’s how it’s crept into so many of my songs even though, at the time of writing String of Bees, I’d only been to California once.

Tim Joyce: The “Magnet” sound was made with a cymbal and a Cole’s ribbon microphone. Since I was little, I have always put things up to my ears and put my ears up to things to see how the sounds they make will change. Same principle applied here. I liked the sound of the cymbal while listening from the side. If you move your head above the plane of the cymbal you get one sound. If you move below it, another. So I put a cymbal on my index finger and would hit it with a mallet and physically move the cymbal above and below the ribbon on the Cole’s microphone. The panning
was done later in the process.

When the Devil Does a Drive-by
MJ: When you start getting into finger-style guitar, you start listening to country blues. And, when you start listening to country blues, you generally begin with the biggies — Robert Johnson, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, et cetera. I was listening to such fellows and experimenting with open-D tuning (sometimes called “natural” tuning) when I wrote this. I wanted to incorporate some of the style of the guitarists I’d been listening to without writing a “blues.” I felt that it was not my place to write a blues song, but I think I ended up with one anyway.

This song, like “Magnet,” was written during the year and a half that we were working on String of Bees. It was new enough that when we recorded it, I never actually sang the line “When the devil does a drive-by….” I meant to sing that in the last verse, but I just forgot. We liked the take enough to feel like it wasn’t worth re-doing. We did the acoustic guitar and the drums at the same time live in the same room, so there’s lots of bleed which give it a nice “real” sound. I don’t think any of the other songs on String of Bees were recorded this way. Our recent EP The Scenery was recorded almost entirely “live.” I think this track influenced our approach to The Scenery, and gave us the confidence to record that way.

TJ: Greg’s muted drumming and Barry’s microphone placement and choice on this song really makes this song work for me. Remember: there is always room for a little reversed baritone guitar.

This Is the Song I Wrote Last Night
MJ: Played in the DADGAD tuning. The demo was recorded as a humble little folk tune, but we wanted to put more movement and drama into the song. (After all, it is basically the same part repeated five times.) Max Crawford’s string arrangement does that ten times over. We ended up toning it down a little in the last verse. There were so many great ideas in that arrangement that we could pull one out and there was still plenty of great music happening.

“This Is the Song…” was written after coming home from a summer tour in 2002. The title was originally meant to be temporary, but I decided I like the way it allowed the song to remain in present. That way it’s not always about coming home in 2002.

TJ: The noise track on this song was an idea Mark had always had about the band arrangement for the song, and at some point I decided it would be fun to be able to have noise and be able to manipulate it in real time while we played. The truth of the matter is, the most portable thing available to me was a four-track, but it always worked out. Most of the sounds in here are lap-steel and melodica manipulated with delays and cassette tape flips. I think the four-track was actually played onto one track in the
recording process. And I think if you listen really hard you can hear Greg take his headphone off and set them on his snare drum at the end of the song.

MJ: It was important to me that we leave in the sounds of the song being made (Greg taking off his headphones, et cetera). I thought it grounded the lofty arrangement and, like the title, adds to the illusion that the song is always new (or just created).

Mermaid on the Blvd.
MJ: This song was inspired by an episode of the NPR program This American Life about trans-sexual and transgender “girls” in Los Angeles. I wanted to do something with the great slang, symbols, and locales associated with this scene: bricks, being clocked, The Little Mermaid, Benito’s Tacos…. That covered the verses. The choruses came from a little Internet research. I’m still not sure if I pronounced the names of those drugs correctly.

This song uses many stable, jazz chords. That contributed to the lounge feel of the verses. The choruses were known as “the Barney Miller part” due to the walking nature of the chord progression and bass line. That left us with the refrain riff which Barry called “the ‘Jessie’s Girl’ part.” We thought that part was too square to suit the rest of the song. This is where having your record recorded by a former Coctail really pays off. If a part needs to be garage-lounged up, there’s nothing like the Coctails’ network to deliver the goods.

Where the River Meets the Sea
MJ: This song was originally written as a fast, loud song. Some recordings of our attempts at this still exist on a hard drive somewhere. Sometimes I wonder what the hell we were thinking. This was also written on the Palm IIIc while driving. I feel I should mention that writing on you Palm while driving is not the safest practice in the world. I don’t really do it much anymore. I’m a bad enough driver as it is.

It was a real treat to have Barry’s father play on it, and Mark Greenberg’s work on the choruses makes the song for me.

TJ: Mark Greenberg’s OmniChord and pump organ parts in this song give me goose bumps every time I hear them. A perfect complement to Mark’s words and overall idea for the song.

Because We Are Also What We Have Lost
MJ: I love the way Max Crawford’s string arrangement makes the song sound like it ends in a very natural way. You can almost see the fade to black. Without the strings, my guitar part is out of time and sounds rushed.

TJ: The hammer dulcimer is something I have always wanted to get into a Lesser Birds song, and this seemed like a natural choice. I don’t claim to really play that thing, but is amazing what an open tuning will accomplish. I especially like the mixing choices that went into this song. Barry did a great job of making a lot of potentially very disparate elements come together.

You Snooze, You Lose
MJ: This is one of the first songs we worked on. We were very pleased with how it built up and how naturally the odd little noises dropped in. I think I wrote these words to the tune of a different song (a Palace song, maybe). By the time I got around to using them in one of my songs, I’d forgotten the source tune. It’s not unusual for me to have words lying around in a notebook (or on the Palm) for a year or more before I get around to actually finishing the song or coming up with the right music to fit the tone of the lyrics.

For some reason, when I play this song I think of California’s Highway One and my honeymoon (which was in California) although the words were written before I was married and before I’d ever been to California.

Assorted Aphrodisiacs
MJ: I used to play in a pop band called Dollar Love Plus with Joe Murphy (who plays guitar on this song). “Aphrodisiacs” was a song I wrote for Dollar Love Plus that I thought could also work as Lesser Birds’ song. We’d never recorded it with Dollar Love Plus, but we played it at many a show. I like to think of this as my version of “Sixteen Blue.” If Tommy Stinson grew up in a place like Naperville, Ill., instead of a place like Minneapolis, this would be his song.

TJ: If you listen closely, in middle of the bridge you can hear Mark say “Ahhhhh?” like he just drank a giant glass of lemonade. There was a bit of debate about whether that should be an “Ahhhhh” or a smooth, Barry White “Damn…!” I think the “Ahhhh” won out, but I still think I hear the “Damn…!” way down there in the mix.

MJ: Actually the “Ahhhh” was the idea of Bill Murphy (Joe’s older brother) who played bass in Dollar Love Plus. He was also in an alt-country band before there was alt-country called Bucket #6. Those of you who were kids in the ‘70s in Chicagoland get the reference of the band’s name, I’m sure.

Josephine
MJ: People are dying for this to be about a real person or a real experience. In fact, the story is fictional, though I feel the impulses narrator are very real.

With “Josephine,” I was trying to emulate the songs of the Vulgar Boatmen. In the early 90s, the Vulgar Boatmen would come to Chicago about once a month, and I went to nearly all of their shows. Many of their songs are about driving, leaving, planning to leave, or deciding to stay after all. Many of their songs use girls’ names in the titles and city names in the lyrics. While the story of the song is an attempt to write a Vulgar Boatmen song, the music is not. I think of the chords as just regular old song chords — something to keep the whole project afloat.

For a long time I tried to write a song that was exactly like a Vulgar Boatmen song. Their songs are technically simple; I thought I could do it. However, I never felt like I could capture that purity—the essence of the Vulgar Boatmen, so I gave up on it. “Josephine” is all I have to show for those efforts.

Come to the City
MJ: Tim wrote this one. I love the way this songs has strong elements of doom that run through it. (In some ways, I see it as the sister song to “When the Devil Does a Drive-by.”) The song is so solid in its mood, you hardly notice that the chords progressions could just as easily support a surf song (though most surf songs are not in waltz time). The trumpet and the strings give it a great spaghetti western vibe, but not so much that it’s being campy.

TJ: This songs idea came from two places. The verses are a drawn from a discussion I overheard a friend from Montana (Aaron Taylor) have with his mother. She had a distant friend who was psychic who had a dream that Aaron was in. There was an evil giant black cloud over Chicago and another over Charleston, S.C. The scary part is she had no idea that this guy lived in Chicago at the time and had already made the decision to move to Charleston.

Soon after all this I wrote the verses and decided myself to change locales and move out to Montana. I taught grade-schoolers out there and also have some nieces and nephews that live in a small town out there. I lived in a very small town, too, but could never decide if I could make it out there for the rest of my life. I always imagined being able to commute between Montana and Chicago and being able to show these small town kids something bigger. There is definitely a push-pull here between the city and the country. Certain parts of Max’s arrangements that are more right on the money than I could have ever heard them in my head.

MJ: That cello line, for instance.

Back There on Foot
MJ: This song was originally written for my friend Darlene Poole to sing, but the original version sounded too Indigo Girls for me. By the time I worked up a better version, it didn’t seem like there would be a proper outlet for her to use it. Fortunately, we got her to contribute some vocals to the track.

The title of the record is a misheard lyric in this song. The real line is, “Around my neck’s a string of beads.” Which is much less interesting than a string of bees. I often sing the bees line when we play it live because I like it more.

Please note the California reference.

TJ: I think Barry came up with the paddy-cake idea. I just wish I would have had a camera to film Barry and Greg sitting in the middle of the studio in front of a Neuman clapping hands like old pros. One take, folks!

(End.)

Scene Two, Take One:
Mark Janka and Barry Phipps on The Scenery

Mark Janka: The Scenery EP mentioned above is a six-song (five new Lesser Birds songs and a cover of Pavement’s “Here”), short-run recording done for Barry Phipps’ new label, Tight Ship Records. You can purchase The Scenery EP at Lesser Birds’ shows or at http://www.tightshiprecords.com.

Barry Phipps: I was really proud of the way the Lesser Birds worked on String of Bees. It was recorded off and on over a period of 18 months. Most of the ideas were developed in the studio through lots of experimentation. They would lay down tons of overdubs and we would sift through them to find the gems. They recorded many songs that didn’t fit the tone of the record and had the good sense to leave them off. Some songs were recorded several times in different ways until they developed into the matured versions on the LP. There were no compromises through tight deadlines, so it just matured until it was naturally complete.

The Scenery EP followed the completion of String of Bees.

The idea for The Scenery was to have them come in to the studio with six songs completely finished that we would record live and simultaneously mix straight to my Ampex 1/4″ two-track, which is the way all recordings were made before the invention of the first multi-track in the late ‘50s. I felt that it would be very satisfying to make a good record that was completely finished in about four hours, which is what we basically did.

They played in the same room with no separation, and no headphones. I did end up recording it to six tracks instead of going straight to the two tracks, but in the spirit of the original idea, I spent no more than ten to fifteen minutes of mixing for each song. We ended up throwing two overdubs to Naomi, “Are You Lonely?,” which was a baritone guitar and a flute, but the recording is still very sparse and open, as it was only three people playing at one time. This is my favorite-sounding record that I’ve recorded, and by far the most satisfying.

MJ: For the record, we also overdubbed the singing on “Here,” too. And with that, I still sang the words all wrong, but who really knows the words to that song anyway?

Profile: Jack Endino (2006)

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy Nov. 27, 2006

You know Jack Endino.

If you consider yourself schooled in the noisy, garage-bred strains of indie-rock that made much of the 1980s and early ’90’s bearable, you’ve shaken a few speakers with Skin Yard. If you’re among those who hasn’t caught Endino’s work with Cryptkicker Five or his studio appearances with Mark Lanegan, you’ve definitely heard a few albums he’s produced or engineered. Nirvana’s Bleach, Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff and the Sub Pop 200 compilation, that birth certificate of what later was dubbed grunge. Bruce Dickinson’s Skunkworks and several discs by the Brazilian group Titãs. Not to mention outings by The Afghan Whigs, Hot Hot Heat, Helios Creed, Tad, Supersuckers, Therapy?, The Makers, Coffin Break and Babes In Toyland. The list is epic and Endino shows no signs of slowing down.

Now, if further evidence is needed that the Pacific Northwest didn�t go dormant when the feeding frenzy over grunge left Seattle some 10 years ago, Endino has helped provide it with Permanent Fatal Error. His first solo record in more than a decade, the 15-track offering is as blistering as it is eclectic, a set where clattering, punk-fueled barn burners co-exist with acid-tinged psych-rock and a bluesy swagger that gave grunge a sense of history in the first place. In short, you should probably stop daydreaming about the glory days of pre-Singles Seattle and find yourself a copy.

Delusions of Adequacy recently had the opportunity to catch up with Endino, firing off a quick e-mail back-and-forth in between studio sessions to talk about the new record, the old Pacific Northwest and why journalists can’t resist turning him into a historian.

Delusions of Adequacy: Let’s hammer out the basics. Where were you born and when did you find yourself in Seattle? At what age did you first pick up the guitar or bang on the drums and what was your inspiration? What was your first band or studio credit?

Jack Endino: Hmmm … personal questions! Let’s see. Born in Connecticut. Family moved to Seattle in the early 70’s. Attended the U. of W., graduated with a BSEE. Lived in Bremerton for three years, working at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard as a civilian electrical engineer. It was a dumb job, so I saved most of my salary and bailed out, heading back to Seattle in 1984 with a plan to get in a band and/or find a job at a recording studio.

Started Skin Yard with Daniel House in 1985, then met Chris Hanzsek when he recorded Skin Yard for the Deep Six compilation he was putting together on his label, C/Z Records. Started working at Chris’ 8-track studio, Reciprocal Recording, in 1986. Then, Chris got tired of running C/Z Records and gave the whole thing to Daniel, who wanted to try running a label. I got more popular as an engineer, then as a producer, while Skin Yard got more popular as a band. Reciprocal got busy. Stuff started happening! That’s the nutshell version of events, pre-grunge.

What inspired me? As a teen, my friends were learning to play, and it looked like fun. I was already an obsessive music fan. I used to sit in my room listening to records on headphones so I wouldn’t wake my folks up and I would just dissect these records with my ears, already thinking like a record producer. Started as a drummer. Learned the basics in about a week; I just seemed to have the knack. But my first gig was as a bass player for a band called Food in December 1981. I played one gig with them before moving to Bremerton to work at the shipyard. The Food guitarist was a guy named Matthew Stadler, who is now a well-known writer. It took me a few more years to get confident enough to present myself as a guitar player, after I moved back to Seattle in ‘84.

DOA: A bit of a leap forward. Late 2005, you release a record that’s got to be on some short lists for best of the year, a good decade and change after your last full-length solo outing. What prompted you to return to the studio as a solo musician? How long had you been considering the new album before writing, recording or working to release it?

JE: I had released two previous solo records, the last (Endino’s Earthworm) in 1992, and it was always in my mind to keep doing them. Nothing satisfies me more than making music. But “life and death” got in the way and a two- or three-year delay became 10 years. I had this long period where I had to deal with a lot of terrible crap in my life and it just stopped me creatively. Too many funerals. Finally, that stuff ended and, around 2002, I was able to think musically again and got on with it.

DOA: After watching Hype, it’s fairly clear you could serve as a resident expert on the musical life of Seattle and the greater Northwest. Is this a role you’d embrace or one you approach reluctantly? Further more, if you could write the epitaph on the tombstone of grunge and/or the media-fueled frenzy to define the “Seattle sound,” what would you write?

JE: I seem to have that historian role to some extent, by default, just by being in the middle of things for 20 years. Radio people love my speaking voice and journalists like the fact that I can actually make sense most of the time. But my proper role, my calling in life, is making records!

Hmmm. Epitaph for grunge: “Rock’s not dead. It just smells funny.” (Frank Zappa)

DOA: If the curious or uninitiated wander over to your website, they’ll find massive lists of the records where you’ve appeared as a musician and/or engineer. How does your work differ, creatively speaking, in those roles and has that changed over the years?

JE: I’m wearing two “hats” really, like using two different sides of the brain. One role is analytical, objective, requiring great concentration and attention to detail. And patience! The other is more creative and uncontrollable and is based on moods and inspiration, and on state of being, state of health, state of mind.

Production work is my craft, which can be controlled consciously and approached systematically. But my musical output is more based on whim and random factors. I might not have a worthwhile musical idea for months and suddenly I will wake up one morning, grab my guitar and record half a dozen song ideas, which I might not finish for a year or more. If I was still in a band, the interactions with other people would probably inspire me more often. It’s actually pretty hard to get the analytical side of my brain out of the way so the creative side can step forward, because of course it’s the analytical side which keeps a roof over my head.

DOA: Beyond that, would you prefer to have “Skin Yard noisemaker” or “Reciprocal studio guru” scrawled immediately after your name in some imaginary encyclopedia on the American underground?

JE: Well, neither. Reciprocal, which was never “my” studio. Only lasted five years and I’ve been making records non-stop for 20. I’m much better known now for the 300-odd records I’ve recorded and produced than for six Skin Yard albums and three solo records. Much of the planet knows me for recording Bleach, period. Others know about my role in the birth of grunge, something I still have mixed feelings about, since something so fun, goofy and subversive got co-opted so fast, and blew up into tragedy and farce.

Personally, I always thought of myself as a musician first until Skin Yard ended and then the grunge thing really exploded and everyone came to know me as that Seattle producer guy. I didn’t really make peace with the idea of being a “record producer” until I became more confident in my studio abilities, which took years! And I never thought of myself as that good a musician technically. Even now, I still think that I have something to say with my own songs and playing � a musical “thing” that I know to be uniquely me, that comes out when it’s good and ready to, which it finally did on my new record. It’ll never change the world but I know it’s still there inside me when I need it.

But, mostly, the way I interact with the world now is as a record producer.

DOA: In all honesty, when did you first get tired of answering questions about recording Bleach?

JE Around 1994. But I still answer ‘em, if they’re not in the FAQ … then I add ‘em to the FAQ!

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Profile: Carrie Yury (2006)

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy

If you consider yourself prolific or a jack of all trades, you’ve never met Carrie Yury.

The California-based artist’s work is the definition of inter-disciplinary expression and feels unrivaled in underground circles. An MFA student at UC Irvine, she’s staged powerful photographic exhibits tackling subjects as seemingly disparate as love and obsession, social diseases, and ideals of perfection in a surgery-fixated society. She’s painted and worked to draw empathy to the forefront of viewer’s minds while documenting antique human medical specimens at a Pennsylvania physician’s college. And did we mention she released a six-song EP in 2005 that was one of the finest and frighteningly pristine solo debuts of the year?

But what truly separates Yury from her peers is the incredible degree of attention she lends to her work, from concept through initiation, from personal reflection through public consumption. For evidence, you don’t need to look further than Yury’s insights into projects like Mutter, which included a photographic exploration, a publicly staged exhibit and an EP featuring collaborators Will and Paul Oldham, Colin Gagon, and Richard Schuler.

“Mutter investigates the contemporary desire for and impossibility of empathy, in both senses of the word,” Yury recently wrote. “The work is really comprised of two distinct, yet related projects: a body of photographs, and a body of music. The photographs are gorgeous, glossy, specimen-like images of liminal spaces and of diseased or malformed human specimens from the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. The music is a song-cycle of poems set to music. The songs are sad-sentimental ballads or dark pop songs that attempt to invoke in the listener a sense of the loss that pervades the museum.”

“Both the photographs and the music address this sense of loss: loss of life, the recent loss of the museum’s long-time director, Gretchen Worden, loss of interest, as the museum becomes more a curiosity than a teaching museum, but most importantly, the loss of empathy, or the loss of the ability or desire to understand the feelings or experiences of other people,” she added. “The work is both a commentary on the place of emotion in the art world as well as social critique of our relationship to pathological and congenital betrayals of the body.”

And you thought your musings had depth.

Delusions of Adequacy recently welcomed the opportunity to speak with Yury by e-mail, talking as 2005 faded into 2006 about photography, independent music, and the complicated identities of multi-faceted artists.

Delusions of Adequacy: When the curious Google “Carrie Yury,” they’ll find references to your self-released solo record, Mutter, as well as images from your recent photography exhibit, “Untitled Work,” asides about your studies at UC Irvine, and an old Esquire clip in which a bartender of same name talks about alcoholic consumption. Who is Carrie Yury and what kind of artist is she?

Carrie Yury: Richard (Schuler, my husband) and I were just laughing about that the other day. He was trying to reassure me that people would think the bartender, academic, business consultant, sound artist and visual artist were all different people. But they’re all me.

More art by Yury

At one point about six or seven years ago, I was simultaneously working on a big photo project, trying to write my PhD dissertation proposal, playing in a band, and working full-time as a research consultant. I was having a fantastic time doing everything at once, having all parts of my brain and body so completely engaged. But at the same time I would look at friends of mine in each of those worlds who had really focused on just one thing � academia, art, music, or business � and they were getting so much further by focusing. It took me a long time but I finally made the decision to pare down and focus on one thing: art. That’s essentially what brought me to art school: the desire to pick just one thing and really commit myself to it.

Ironically I chose a multi-disciplinary MFA program: UC Irvine. At first I was really dogmatic about sticking to photography, but eventually I became a disciple of the practice of the medium following the idea. Now I paint, make photographs, do sound and installation work, whatever makes sense relative to the set of ideas I’m working on for any given project. So it’s worked out really well: I still get to engage in a peripatetic practice, but at the same time I’m completely involved and focused on one thing, making art.

DOA: That addressed, how does your work in one artistic or creative discipline bleed into another? I’ve read about your role in Fashion Island, the group of Orange County, Ca. musicians whose assemblage seemed more like an art installation than an organic, hammering-it-out-in-the-studio collaboration. Are multi-media/interdisciplinary projects like this, which seem to toy with notions of songwriting, audience, and performance art, the exception or the rule?

CY: You know, I don’t think of myself as a performance artist or as a multi-media artist. But I guess you are what you do, so it’s possible I need to rethink my self-conception a bit. Ultimately I think it makes more sense to think of myself simply as an artist, and let the medium follow the idea. If I do that then there are no rules or exceptions, just projects.

But, it’s easier said than done. Right now I’m working on two projects, a painting project and a photo project. It took a lot to allow myself to paint. I practically needed art psychotherapy to get to the point where I felt like I could legitimately paint, which is stupid because I’ve been painting all my life (that’s what my undergrad degree is in, along with literature). But, I hadn’t done it yet in grad school, so it was scary to come out as someone who painted. And the reaction I got was very similar to the reaction I got last year when people found out I was making music: surprise/disbelief. I don’t know why. Most people I know have lots of different skills and talents. But the academy, the music world, and the art world seem to be used to specialization. I’m lucky because my thesis committee is all very supportive of whatever I want to do, which has been very liberating, and allowed me to think about switching between different media.

DOA: Tell me a little about Mutter. What prompted you to write the songs on the EP or consider assembling musicians from the Palace stable and beyond for the project?

CY: Mutter was written about the Mutter Museum at the Philadelphia College of Physicians in Pennsylvania. I’d heard about the museum’s collection of 19th-century human medical specimens. I wanted to take photographs of the collection because I was interested in the idea or possibility of an artwork producing empathy in the viewer. I was hoping if I took pictures of dead things, it would make people think about mortality, war, and hopefully make people feel something about it rather than being so cut-off and complacent. I was allowed to photograph at the museum by Gretchen Worden, the museum’s long-time director and a real supporter of the arts. I took several hundred photographs in June of 2004.

After working with the photographs for about six months I decided I wanted to go back and re-shoot, focusing more on the spaces of the museum than on the specimens themselves. I realized that pictures of dead things actually distance viewers from an empathic response, making them desensitized. The photographs that really pulled at the heartstrings for me were the photos of the kind of sad and institutionally neglected spaces of the offices where the museum employees worked, in a kind of sub-basement off the museum. I wrote to Gretchen and Margaret Lyman, her assistant director, to ask permission to go back to the museum. But I got an e-mail back from Margaret informing me that Gretchen had died shortly after my first visit to the museum.

I had already been thinking about what I perceived as a lack of place for emotion in visual art, and had therefore started writing (hopefully) emotive songs about the museum. In fact, I wrote two of the songs in Mads Lynnerup’s Fashion Island band, which you mention above. I think music is the last place in art where eliciting an emotional response to the work is not just sanctioned but actually lauded. Since my initial idea with the Mutter project was to think about empathy, I followed the idea to its logical conclusion by writing music. Hearing about Gretchen Worden’s death just took the project to another level emotionally. She was such an amazing woman who did so much for the arts, particularly photographers, granting full access to the museum’s collection, putting out calendars and even a book of photographic work on the museum. She died way too young. So I didn’t have to manufacture emotion when I was writing the rest of the songs. It was already there.

As far as why I asked Colin, Will, Paul, and Rich to play on the album, I wanted the music to be as bitter-sweet as possible, to really go as far as it could in evoking emotion. Every time I hear Will sing or Colin’s keyboards, I feel that kind of almost unbearable pulling in my chest, that painful sweetness that I was hoping to evoke on the album. I was thrilled when they agreed. I asked Colin to produce because I really love his EZ-T stuff, and I love the work he did on Sara Beth Tucek’s album, so I knew he would know what to do with me. Paul and Richard were obvious choices because they’ve played a lot with Colin and Will, and they’re both kick-ass musicians. The fact that they’re all friends of mine and incredibly nice people was obviously a factor, too.

DOA: Did the writing or recording of Mutter differ from other musical projects in which you’ve been involved? While you’ve been involved in collaborative projects under various monikers and banners, did having your name on the CD face change your approach to the project?

CY: Absolutely. I loved the intensely collaborative nature of Dolce Volante, but had wanted to do a project that was self-directed for a long time. I write, sing, and play music, but I’m not a musician, I’m an artist, so it was a little scary stepping out on my own. But it was so fantastic to have a vision of what I wanted the music to be like and to have those guys be there to make it happen. I wrote most of the music at home on an old organ, and even though I sent the guys demos, when we got into the studio all they really had was my voice, chord progressions, and my verbal descriptions of how I wanted the songs to feel. But they’ve all worked together so much that it was easy.

Colin was the perfect producer, and an out-of-this-world keyboard player, Will’s voice and guitar were sublime, Paul’s bass and recording/mixing inspired, and Rich’s drumming fantastic. It was the most incredible high to have this idea of these songs floating around in my head for six months, and then in one weekend to have them embodied by these fabulous musicians. It was pure joy. I don’t feel unequivocal love for all of my work, but with the Mutter EP, I absolutely do. Sometimes I can’t listen to it because it hurts in just the right place in my chest. The experience was kind of addictive, actually. I can’t wait to make another album.

DOA: Was the decision to record Mutter outside southern California, home to a good deal of your work, a conscious one? If so, what role did location play in the tone of the record or the overall project?

CY: Before Will had signed on, Colin and I had talked briefly of recording up in northern California where his sister and brother’s band The Heavenly States has recorded. But after Will said he’d do it, it made so much sense to go to Kentucky. Richard and I could see family and friends, including a newborn nephew. Paul could record and play bass. It was relatively cheap to fly Colin in from New Orleans. It just worked. Plus we love Paul and his wife Krista and their dogs, and relished the idea of a bucolic weekend recording on the farm in Shelbyville. The mood out there was perfect. It was cold and kind of creepy/foggy at times, with an ominously dark sky. Other times it was clear, beautiful and crisp. We all huddled in the recording studio next to the enormous old gas heater. The only downside to the whole thing was that I got attacked by a rooster. (Don’t wear red sneakers around roosters. It ticks them off.)

DOA: Tell me about the exhibit timed with the release of Mutter. Was the disc an element or aesthetic detail of the exhibit, or was the exhibit more a way to showcase the musical work itself?

CY: Definitely the latter. In fact, I wanted to do a kind of take-away piece with just the CDs on the floor. I had already had an exhibit of the photographs in late winter, so I figured that I would use Supersonic to show the EP. But my thesis advisor, Catherine Lord, and my husband convinced me that I should use the photographs somehow. So I came up with the idea of the equalizer-bar-like light boxes that would hold the CDs, only revealing the photos underneath as the CDs were taken away. Richard then designed and built the light boxes. Ultimately I think Catherine and Richard were right to push me into thinking about a more sculptural presentation for the CDs. It kind of finished the piece and brought everything together nicely. And it gave the installation a presence and gravity it wouldn’t have had if the CDs were just on the floor.

DOA: For a disc that you describe as being cast in such emotionally resonant terms, Mutter’s cover art and packaging � the minimalist approach, the slate-gray foundations � can feel cold and distant, far removed from the Kentucky scenes you describe of its recording. Was this a conscious decision regarding visual aesthetics? And, if so, how do you think these elements in general interact with the sounds contained within?

CY: Oh yes, it was definitely a conscious decision. I laughed when I read that question, only because every single element of the design of the CD was so incredibly belabored and loaded with meaning.

Overall the cold, distant feeling of the CD was meant to be a commentary on the fact that I think that emotion is really denigrated and/or mocked in contemporary visual art. So the idea was to make the CDs look like little monochrome paintings, or little conceptual sculptures, to cloak the CDs in a veneer of what’s been lauded in contemporary art: thought before emotion, brain before body. Dan Macadam at Crosshair in Chicago designed and silk-screened the inside of the CD, which uses the arc as a metaphor for light, playing with the luminosity of the silver paper, and referencing the integral part that light played in the project, both literally because photographs are made from light, as well as metaphorically, referencing death, both Gretchen Worden’s as well as that of the specimens themselves.

As far as how the design interacts with the music, it’s meant to be a process of initial contrast (front cover) and then illumination (inside cover). The CDs are cold little modernist paintings/sculptures/specimens when you first pick them up. But when you open them up, you understand that it’s music, you see who’s playing on it, you see the dedication, and hopefully that begins to set the mood for the music.

DOA: What’s next for you, both in terms of your academic studies and photographic/artistic work? And, also, do you plan on acting any time soon on that urge to record another disc? If so, do you think it will be another project- or concept-driven affair or a collection of songs with less-defined contexts?

CY: What’s next is my MFA thesis show. The thesis show is May 25, and then I’ll be in the SOCASS LA MFA show sometime this summer. I’m working on two projects right now. One is a photo project, and another is a painting project. The photos will probably be the MFA show, and the paintings will be in the SOCASS show.

I would really like to do another album. I have some ideas and some people in mind. It will probably be another concept album. I’ll start working on the album full-force after the SOCASS show is up.

DOA: Let’s end where we began. Google has that fancy “I’m feeling lucky” function on its search engine. If someone wanted the low-down on Carrie Yury, and you had your druthers about controlling what they’d learn first, what do you want them to know about you as a person, a musician or an artist?

CY: I actually just tried it, and it came up with my website (www.carrieyury.com). I think that’s perfect, because it shows all my recent work, tells people how to buy Mutter, and has my cv. That kind of says it all.

Profile: Adam Gnade (2006)

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy July 10, 2006

You don’t just ask Adam Gnade a question or plot a sure-footed route into the familiar territory of the Q&A back-and-forth, that sometimes-fluid, sometimes-stilted dance between the interviewer and the interviewed.

Speaking with Gnade – the traveling indie-musician and wordsmith whose Run Hide Retreat Surrender was one of 2005�s unanticipated gems – is more like opening a door or unfolding a scrap of hand-pressed paper to discover an encrypted novel tucked within it.

Even the most casual asides suggest deeper truths are lurking around the corner, the wandering tangent instead transformed into a subconscious narrative arc.

Gnade’s casual conversations, then, are much like his music: stream-of-consciousness story-songs that unfurl like photographic sequences, like a panoramic landscape seen in passing from a passenger window. Delusions of Adequacy recently spoke with Gnade by e-mail, over the span of several weeks, about his knack for storytelling, “experimental-folk,” and the deconstruction (and reconstruction) of American music.

Delusions of Adequacy: Your narratives differ a great deal from your contemporaries, in form and tone and initiation. Tell me, what came first for you when you started working as a spoken-word artist/musician – the texts or the ideas for the music that accompanies them? Did you develop in both forms and disciplines simultaneously, or did the written word come first?

Adam Gnade: Before I say anything, I should mention that I don’t consider this stuff spoken-word, a genre I’ve never had much love for. I’ve always just been a fan of non-traditional vocals. “Singing” for me never meant what singing is traditionally thought of as. I think of my vocals as normal vocals. I call this music “talking songs” and think it fits into the experimental-folk a lot of my friends are making right now. I spent last week in Texas with Ray from Castanets, Jana Hunter (who’s got an incredible record on Devendra’s label), and Red Hunter from Peter and the Wolf. (The thought of it hurts and makes me miss them and makes me nostalgic, something I’ve never been before. Always considered nostalgia a dead emotion and a waste of time.)

Talking and wandering and drinking with them reaffirmed for me that things like singing and folk music and music in general don’t have to sound a certain way. Doing something different always polarizes people (look at the great love/hate divide people have for Devendra or Joanna Newsom’s music), and I get a lot of people that really hate what I do, which hurts me pretty intensely. But the rewards are so much greater, the rewards being the feeling that you’ve got a process ahead of you, something to try to attain.

I don’t know where this music is going, but my idea of what it is and what it needs to be changes every day. The new EP will be closer to standard song structures since I’ll be playing guitar on most of it, and since the songs don’t connect in a linear narrative like Run Hide Retreat Surrender. (I see this new EP as deconstructed American music: rock ‘n’ roll, old blues, folk, noise, everything pasted together and then knocked down again and set back up and stuck together with scotch tape and pieces of shoelace.)

I have a month to do it (for Drowned in Sound in the UK, who just signed me and that band Metric, crazy), but I’m already terrified of what lies ahead and absolutely paralyzed about taking the first step and laying down the first tracks. (Without many reference points on making music like this, I’m more or less adrift and held together only with confidence in my ideas, which comes and goes. A big daily battle. Some days everything seems hopeless and I want to die. But others the sun shines and I feel light inside me. Those days it comes right out your eyes and it’s blazing and apparent to everyone.)

So, most of the EP is written. The lyrics and music come at the same time, at least acoustic versions, anyway. But there’s a lot I need to do with it before it’s done. I want the record to have the feeling of organic decay, of being lost in a wine bottle, of celebrations, and of ice melting and cracking in spring and the raw, empty feeling you get when you wake up in a new town and aren’t sure where you are or why you’re there. I’m writing this novel and the EP at the same time. They share characters, so I’m neck-deep in this story, and in the character’s lives. Sometimes it feels like being at the bottom of a well. Sometimes it feels like being surrounded by friends that love you and understand you and believe in you unquestioningly.

DOA: Writing and recording that new EP sounds like a tall order. Tell me more about how you’ve developed these ideas about deconstructing and reconstructing American music. Do these sorts of structural approaches come from writing experience and exercises like the novel?

Don’t mean to keep trying to blur the lines between disciplines if you see them as wholly separate, but it’s interesting to hear you speak in sometimes-interchangeable terms about your musical texts and your written texts.

AG: Yeah, I definitely see the writing and music as interchangeable, which was a big problem when I was first starting out. I wanted to do music and writing, but the things I was writing about – my themes and characters – were so different from each other I felt like I had two separate people inside me, two separate voices, that I had to get “into character” to do either one, and that if I wasn’t ready to make the switch, everything would come out awkward, phony, and skewed. It made me feel crazy and horrible and I thought for the longest time that I was losing it, that I was finally going off the deep end.

But I realized quick that wasn’t an honest way of making art and that anything I’d do would be forced and fictionalized and too thought-out. So, I quit music. For a long time. Actually up until we recorded this record and a little while afterward, when the thing was done and I was sitting around in Kansas thinking, “What the fuck am I going to do with this?”

Getting signed to Loud + Clear gave me some faith, because before that I’d just made records for friends. I didn’t think anyone would ever give a shit. As soon as they got a hold of me last year and we talked about me signing with them and doing a US tour, it all made sense. I realized that I could do music and writing and do them both prolifically, if I just let them intermingle as much as possible, let the stories cross over and let the characters mix, and not try to define myself as a “writer” or “musician” or “artist.” Art is so much about being a spectator, but I can’t live that way. I’d rather just be a “guy” that lives out in the world, lives as unconsciously as possible, doesn’t intellectualize anything, puts myself out there, and doesn’t worry about “the story.” The story will come later. It always does. And when it doesn’t, it’s time to move onto something else.

My ideas about deconstructing American music came because I was dissatisfied with genres. I didn’t think my stuff was spoken-word, and, just the same, I didn’t want to make traditional vocal/instruments music. But still I wanted all the normal things too: a band, regular ol’ instruments, elements of all the American music I grew up loving: folk, blues, ’50s rock ‘n roll, jazz, punk rock, mountain music, bluegrass. So a rewriting of the model was in order. It needed to be familiar but also off-putting. My newer stuff, the singles and the EP are getting there. They’re close. The sound that exists in my head, the proverbial “in-my-head” thing most music makers have, hasn’t come out in reality yet, but I think it will soon. God, I hope it will. If it doesn’t, I dunno. Shit. It’s scary. I don’t want to fight and rethink everything all my life. When I’m writing or playing music, I’m trying to bring it to its realized version and learn about American music, co-opt its aesthetics, but articulate it differently. I want to give people something new. I’m not doing that yet. It’s not near where and what it should be, but I’m trying.

But, to answer the other part of your question, I don’t think the structure I’m working towards came from any writing experience. It’s from listening to a lot of old music and having friends that play new forms of American music and being inspired by what they do and their big, weird brains. Also, traveling around the country created a lot of my ideas because I want this music to sound like America, the speech of people in rural towns, regional music, city rhythms, kids feeling like they need to get the fuck out of their dead-end hometown, evocations of weather and smells and earth sounds and nature. When you’re traveling America, you hear a lot of people say a lot of things. Radio is there, too. Music is there, too. Singing is there, too. But my songs might be seen as something you hear at a party or in a living room or bar or restaurant: people talking, ambient noise, nature noise.

DOA: An interesting question, though perhaps one that’s a bit more concrete than intellectual or emotive. What sort of work do you do day in and day out? Your “work” – as in, I suppose, the content of our conversations – seems to engulf you (and the constructed/public “Adam Gnade”) in so many ways and to tap deeply into your personal experiences. How or how much does this figure into day-to-day routines and life? I guess, in the most direct way, how full-time are your adventures as a writer and musician?

AG: For the past couple years, I’ve been living off freelance writing money and either traveling full-time or keeping a house or an apartment somewhere and traveling half the time, but since getting back from our first tour in November, I’ve moved to Portland and have been working for the Portland Mercury, writing about music. Besides the fact that they don’t give a shit about standard, AP-style, objective, by-the-numbers journalism, which makes it a fun environment to be a part of, it’s also a great position to be in because they’re fine with me taking off time to travel or tour and are more or less into me doing whatever I need to, as long as I get my work done. It’s a weekly paper, and I’m only in charge of the music section, so the workload isn’t as inhumanly intense as the magazine I talk about in Run Hide Retreat Surrender, where I was the editor and spent all day at the fucking thing. So they treat me well, really well.

I work there for a while everyday – in and out of the warehouse we work out of – and then we’re usually either practicing, “we” being my regular band-mates, whom I live with, writing songs together. Or I’m working on book stuff or related writing. Weekends, work-wise, are either record or book. I used to freelance a lot, but I have a hard time writing for magazines I don’t believe in, so I’ve cut a good bulk of that out. But I’m very much into artistic discipline and make myself work whenever I’m home. I don’t watch TV or have any other big, real hobbies or anything like that. My home life, besides living with my band, which can be a strange endless party sometimes, is very monastic.

DOA: How do you balance the time between the music, freelance writing (or financial means of sustenance), and your novel? And, while we’re on said subject, tell me about this novel of yours.

AG: There isn’t much of a balance to tell the truth. I don’t have a schedule per se. It’s more or less what feels right at the time. At the moment, I’m not freelancing much at all because we’re getting this record ready for Drowned in Sound. Lately it’s been all songwriting and messing around with instruments to find riffs and changes. But as soon as this is done, who knows? I’d like to take a break, but most likely the break won’t involve art of any kind.

The work on the novel is pretty much continuous. I’ve always believed to do a good job at a bigger project, something that’s going to take an extended amount of time to finish, you need to let it consume you. So I work on the book all the time. While walking around town, late at night, in the morning, whenever it hits me. But as far as what it’s about, I’ve always been wary of talking too much about a story and letting it talk itself out. I’m superstitious about these kinds of things.

DOA: Wanted to end with the look forward. What’s next for you?

AG: As far as future stuff goes, I just recorded a track for this new band Dave Allen from Gang of Four and Danny Seim from Menomena are doing. Came out great. Also I’m working on a split LP with Argumentix and putting together ideas and demos with Thad Christian for our next full-length. Oh, and our split with Gang Wizard came out yesterday on DeathBombArc. I’ve also been doing some band bios for friends’ bands to take my mind off the book. Just finished one for Festival of Dead Deer and for the new Locust/Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower/Friends Forever/Moving Units band, Ground Unicorn Horn. I did one for Castanets, and I’m just about done with one for Xiu Xiu’s new album, which is amazing, really beautiful and gentle. Reminds me a lot of the Dirty Projectors, who I think are making some of the best, craziest, smartest music around. (Been laying in bed a lot late at night and just listening to their shit in the dark and laughing my head off.)

Besides that, my friend Zach is moving to Mexico City tomorrow, and that’s all I can think about. Living out there. Maybe for a few months. He said once he gets settled, “show up any time” and all that, so maybe. My Spanish is good, and I’m ready for big city action. I saw Mexico City once, standing on the – what do you call that? – the stairs leading up to an airplane and looked out across it and fell in love. All those rooftops. Felt like home. So, I don’t know, maybe that’s next.

Review: Dave Spalding – The Invisibles

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy March 11, 2005

For those who think Dave Spalding’s been quiet since Northwestern instrumentalists Pell Mell faded into the ether after the muted majesty of gems like Interstate or Star City, think again.

The guitarist, now rooted in New York City, has been carefully refining the dreamy, expansive textures of the band he helped to define for much of the 1990s and has reinvented them as landscapes for sugary singer-songwriter pop on the self-released/unreleased Invisibles.

The mostly-solo collection is modestly pressed to CD-R but light years beyond most of the rough-draft curiosities or works-in-progress some have come to expect from the format. The 13 tracks on Invisibles are fully formed and frequently enveloping songs, works that easily — and sometimes frighteningly — both stand up to Pell Mell’s sonic grandeur and offer a kind of post-script to the group’s late work.

What’s most surprising about the disc, though, is how smoothly Spalding has made the transition from sometimes long-form, instrumental (and often cinematic) post-rock to the smaller and more intimate worlds of the singer-songwriter. From song one, the transformation is readily apparent.

There are Spalding’s familiar guitar touches — the foundation of a repeating guitar figure, the hammered and bent notes, the even-handed lead guitar crescendos, the interplay of guitar and bass lines — but there’s also a more traditional sense of verses and choruses, each of them cemented to the music with emotive but underplayed vocals from Spalding himself.

How the man packs this much sound into three-minute pop songs is still a mystery.

The mood varies from song to song, ranging from the pensive (the spare acoustic “Snow,” the blues-folk of “Theory” and “The Hard Way”) and the instructive (“Listen”) to the dreamy (the boozy, bluesy sway of “Murder,” the glassy “Never Gave”) and the optimistic (the addictive “Where I Want To Be,” “The Letter”).

At points, Spalding sounds like jazz guitarist Bill Frisell covering Elvis Costello. Elsewhere, he’s a post-Gastr del Sol David Grubbs dueting with Mark Knopfler from the Dire Straits.

There’s not a single dud from beginning to end and there are a few tracks you’ll never be able to shake from between your ears.

On his debut outing as both singer and songwriter, Spalding also is unusually comfortable in his new skin, playing the role of frontman as an emotive, inviting troubadour and not a spotlight-hungry auteur.

His lyrics focus on fairly routine topics, whether it’s the intoxication of love (“As I watch you sleep it seems it’s me who’s dreaming … there’s no other, no place I’d rather be”) or the helplessness of giving one’s life over to fate (“Everything that was given eventually just gives way … Destination unknown”) but his delivery, sometimes bordering on a kind of whispered dead-pan, lends an emotional punch to the proceedings.

And then there’s the instrumentation and the recording, where Spalding seems to shine the boldest and the brightest.

Over the course of the record, there are flourishes that keep each song feeling incredibly vital and fresh and engaging, from carefully layered backing vocals and tambourine (again, the radio-ready “Where I Want To Be”) to bassy thumps and the tickle of a bar-room piano (“Long Way Down”) to weeping or country-western-inspired pedal steel (“Universe,” “The Scene”) to hand-claps (“A Letter”) to electronic interjections (“Over The Moon”) to the familiar Hammond organ that swelled in the background of more than a couple Pell Mell songs (“Murder”).

The list runs on.

Spalding is ably abetted by drummer Tony Leoney, studio guru Tim Champion and others, but Invisibles is clearly his record and it’s proof, if any were needed, that Dave Spalding clearly knows what he’s doing.

It may be a few years since Pell Mell put a new record in your stereo speakers but Spalding’s Invisibles, a misleading title perhaps, proves that one of the group’s members hasn’t run his full creative course.

Welcome to the next chapter.

Review: Mike Tamburo – Beating of the Rewound Son

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy Feb. 10, 2006

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jim O’Rourke!

Well, perhaps not, but it can be downright frightening how close in tone, composition and structure American guitarist Mike Tamburo’s work on Beating of the Rewound Son comes to O’Rourke, whose acoustic guitar mannerisms and flare for tabletop experimentation have clearly left their mark here.

There’s shades on the Music Fellowship disc of the Faheyisms of O’Rourke’s Bad Timing, the abstract avant-constructions of Terminal Pharmacy and early Grubbs/O’Rourke documents like Crookt, Crackt or Fly, even the Minimalist insinuations of Happy Days.

This is terrain that’s rarely visited by imitators and even more rarely visited with endearing results but Tamburo pulls it off while still managing to craft a record that feels, oddly enough, like its sculpting its own orbit.

And that’s an important point to make.

Tamburo, no mere mimic, is far from making some sort of vague homage or carefully studied reprise to the O’Rourke (or Grubbs) canon: this is an engaging record in its own right.

Tamburo’s solo debut proper only runs five songs but those songs are scrawled across epic-length canvases and lend the record a startling kind of clarity, as well as a refreshing form of sonic wonder.

Songs like “Adam’s Fruit Temptation” and “Something About Dangerous Women” define that form — long-playing instrumentals that meander, fade and flourish between emotive acoustic guitar passages, drones and textured passages of electronics and found sounds.

The pieces don’t always fit together, varying in tone and key as much as recording source, but that seems to lend them the invigorating, hear-it-as-it-forms quality of improvisational guitar. It’s those loose threads that provide the record with some of its most distinctive moments — the tingling climbs and airy descents of finger-picked scales on “Something About Dangerous Women;” the jangling acoustic notes fluttering together in an understated crescendo three quarters of the way through the nearly 17-minute-long “And You I Will Love Like Yoko Ono;” the drunken, vaguely remorseful piano and pulsing keyboard swells that close “Kremblin Krab.”

There may be some who suggest Tamburo is tapping into too much Gastr-worship, that his spare, somber compositions, which can suggest with their silences as much as they define with their cartography of notes, are too closely descended from Crookt, Crackt or Fly or Mirror Repair.

Maybe there’s merit to the argument.

But his first solo outing feels like it picks up where releases like that left off 10 years ago, continuing to build unspoken narratives out of dissonant guitars and a mood created less by clearly defined verses and bridges than a landscape of dirges and unexpected refrains. It’s an impressive disc and an even more impressive debut, if he chooses to build on it.

I, for one, am waiting for the duet with O’Rourke.

Review: Swissfarlo – Boxed

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy March 31, 2003

Imagine that you’re in high school again.

You’re making a mix tape for some acquaintance and decide, among the usual favorite selections, to toss on a song from a local band who’ve just self-released a demo tape. You’ve heard the band play live a bunch of times at local venues, and they always seem to get the crowd moving and engaged in their songs. Why not?

When you play back the tape, though, the band and their catchy songs seem to pale in comparison to the work that surrounds them.

Sound familiar? This is the tragedy of Swissfarlo’s Boxed.

What may be the biggest let-down about Boxed, the debut from the Cincinnati-based lo-fi quartet, is that some strong indie pop and rock songs seem to get lost in a recording that’s poorly executed and inconsistent.

Swissfarlo seems to have a good handle on the two-guitar pop formula, and during their finer moments, they sound like a rougher, more lo-fi version of Weezer. But these finer moments are often surrounded by lackluster transitional material and muddy, flat sound levels that keep the proceedings just a half step above a hometown demo tape.

On most of the songs, the band’s entire rhythm section is dropped so low into the mix that you sometimes will find yourself straining to hear anything but a hi-hat cymbal and an occasional bass note floating somewhere beyond a wall of fuzzy guitars. While some bands can convey the emotional weight of their work despite recording limitations, Swissfarlo seem to lack the necessary lo-fi charm that their debut frequently demands.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the record is a disaster. The direct but tender acoustic approach of “Roman Candle” is alarmingly sweet, even moreso because it is surrounded by distortion-drenched guitar pop. It is here that the band’s core members – vocalist/guitarist Tim Heyl and guitarist Andy Kroner – display an engaging chemistry, something that will speak to musicians who know what it feels and sounds like to paste together emotive pop-rock songs in a basement or garage.

Elsewhere, sugary-sweet pop moments prevail where you wouldn’t expect them. Things like the “wo-oh-uh-oh” vocals of “And I Digress” (the only track on the record written solely by bassist/vocalist Matt Gossett) may be one of the small details of the record that keeps it moving. What follows “And I Digress,” though, is another indication of how the record lacks consistency. While the sloppy pseudo-punk of “Yr Mine,” “Simple Faults,” and “Expect Finer” is an interesting antithesis to the band’s more poppy tracks, it makes Boxed feel like the document of a band still searching, still trying to find itself.

Between the verses of “Coil,” Swissfarlo launches into a two-guitar instrumental assault, bending distorted high notes into a frenzied give-and-take guitar solo that hints at both surf-punk and rockabilly.

On the album-closing “2nd or 3rd,” there are similar points where everything falls into place, points where Heyl’s vocals float above two wandering guitar lines and hit the mark dead-on. It’s moments like this, however, that illustrate how incomplete and inconsistent the record can be.

Hey, Kroner and company can clearly write a sharp indie pop, song and that – despite concerns with the pros and cons of a lo-fi recording – is documented on Boxed. If nothing else, the band’s Datawaslost debut will hopefully be a warm-up for some great material in the future.

Review: Tanakh – Dieu Deuil

Originally published in Delusions of Adequacy June 7, 2004

Dieu Deuil boasts an even dozen contributors on everything from guitar, vocals, drums, keyboards and bass to flute, violin, accordion, hammered dulcimer, bowed glockenspiel and everything in-between.

You’d never know it, though, because the record’s eight tracks, each of them engaging and breathtaking, feel like they were burned straight to disc directly from that wonderful and indefinable space between a musician’s head and their heart.

Yeah, the goddamned thing is just that good.

Those familiar with Tanakh or their last effort, Villa Claustrophobia, may have a string of adjectives lined up and ready to pin down the Alien 8 ensemble but those introduced to the group through Dieu Deuil, a group of which I am a member, simply may be at a loss for words.

Aesthetically and structurally, they could be cousins of the Montreal experimental-rock crowd or Alien 8 labelmates Set Fire To Flames, which seems to favor sonic fluidity, improvisation around themes, and the magic of entangled organic sounds over the familiar patterns of a carefully written chorus.

Musically, however, Tanakh is warmer, more emotionally accessible and more inviting, as well as less likely to display its songwriting techniques in front of its actual songs.

But what does it sound like?

Dieu Deuil, in the most reductive sense, is a strange combination of folk, country landscapes, contemporary rock and psychedelia, without all of the predictable Grateful Dead references that musical cocktail may invite.

They hint at the folksy and textured dream portraits of Dirty Three, with acoustic and electric guitars intertwined around violin and strings that sway between country-twanged bridges and Eastern scales.

They reference the cinematic refrains of Pinetop Seven, with passages that ebb and flow as they evoke the grandeur and dusty passions of the American frontier.

They tap into the tradition of the Tim Buckley troubadour, with emotive measures giving way to the sweet whispers and wails of vocalist (and multi-instrumentalist) Jesse Poe.

They do all of this, though, while somehow keeping the listener engaged to the point where they’re not questioning musical reference points or tracing the trajectory of each note.

The record is also great as a complete package, as a journey between songs and sentiments, and as a developing conversation between the group and the listener. Tanakh has a developed ability — at points on Dieu Deuil, it feels downright instinctive — to draw in and intoxicate the listener through loose, seemingly improvised moments, like the wandering instrumental “The Lord Is In This Place … How Dreadful Is This Place.”

But it follows those moments with more developed pieces, like the somber, semi-acoustic march of “’Til San Francisco.” As such, it’s difficult to cite the record’s best tracks. Do you go with the album-opening ballad “November Tree,” its guitars and violins and harmonized vocals wailing and weeping at just the right moments of every verse and bridge?

Or do you talk about the brilliant “Exegesis,” where the finest moments seem to surface and unfurl less methodically, tucked around refrains that sound as influenced by Spanish flamenco as they are by the warped horizons of psychedelia?

Dieu Deuil closes with “Lock The Door When You Leave,” which seems, if only vaguely, to incorporate pieces of the musical themes expressed in each of its predecessors. It’s a beautiful and fitting reprise of sorts, with Tanakh showing the listener sets of postcards and photographs from the places they’ve taken them over the last hour.

Rather than allow the track to whisper and fade and reminisce, though, the band decides to stick its hooks in you even deeper, and there are bridges that build upon themselves with a kind of intensity you wouldn’t expect and you can’t ignore. While electric guitars and violins skitter around Poe’s plaintive voice, it’s difficult to imagine Tanakh sounding anything but passionately involved with the music they’re crafting.

Lock the door when we leave? Why would we ever want to leave?