The Bowery Presents upcoming shows
Rogue Wave / Midlake
Peter Wolf Crier
- Venue:
-
- Date:
- Wed 9/29
- Notes:
- 18+
- Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:00 PM
- $22 advance / $25 day of show
- Midlake
- official website
- myspace
- Midlake stays ahead of its own time by making music that transcends it. The Denton, Texas band's 2006 release The Trials of Van Occupanther, an inspired set of woozy, psychedelic pastoral rock, got fans and bloggers re-evaluating dormant ancestors like Fleetwood Mac, America, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young and Bread-music that has been embedded in the indie world's unconscious (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear) ever since. On their third album, The Courage of Others, Midlake are still themselves and yet completely reinvented, so much so that between the time they started working on the record and the time they finished it, the title track was re-recorded down to every note, simply because they'd turned into a more ambitious band, with new influences both classic and contemporary, from British folk to Russian cinema. 'It didn't sound like us anymore,' says frontman/songwriter Tim Smith. 'There was a lot of, 'check out this idea,' and 'let's get more into this kind of vibe.' Plus we were getting a lot better musically.'
Produced and recorded by the band-Smith, guitarists Eric Pulido and Eric Nichelson, drummer McKenzie Smith and bassist Paul Alexander-at their own studio, then mixed by Matt Pence at The Echo Lab, The Courage of Others is a stunning distillation of Midlake's gift for sadly gorgeous melodies and ornate soundscapes. Songs like 'Winter Dies' and 'Core of Nature' have both the epic sweep of early prog-rock and the fingers-on-guitar-strings rawness of acoustic music. To call it 'eagerly awaited' is an understatement-the disc appeared on Under the Radar's 'Most Anticipated Albums' list for both 2008 and 2009.
After coming off the road behind ...Van Occupanther, 'we spent probably a year just trying to figure out what we wanted to sound like,' says Smith. 'I guess on average it took about a month per song to record, but that's who we are. That's how long it takes us to figure out the best way to make something beautiful.'
Like a lot of bands in Denton, which is just a little north (but certainly not part) of Dallas, Midlake had its genesis at the University of North Texas music program-Smith was a trained saxophonist with no history of playing rock or punk-then followed their own muse. 'You come up here and there's just people setting up shop in houses playing music-just a community of artists,' says Pulido. 'It's very magical to me.' The Denton scene has caught the ear of Bella Union boss and former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde several times; Midlake were first recommended to him by Lift to Experience, while Midlake did the same for their friend and collabator Robert Gomez.
Once out of school, Smith discovered less is more when it came to writing rock'n'roll. Despite the band's intricate sound and painstaking recording process, his goal as a musician is quite simple. 'What we're always trying to achieve,' he says, 'is a sound that I feel really emotional about.' It's a paradox of being in the studio that you don't necessarily get the most natural sound in the most 'natural' way-i.e., by recording live. But after Smith brought in a few songs on his four track-a process that, improbably, still makes him nervous-the band set up all together in a room to start. Pulido says they were able to relax un-self-consciously into the music because they knew the finished versions were still many hours and days away. 'We work up the songs and then it's like, 'ok, sounds cool, now let's go do the real thing.' Then you start adding more and before you know it-that's it, that's the track... and we've recorded it 15 times.' This perfectionism is more metaphyiscal than technical-the band has no problem leaving in a musical mistake or going back to something from a demo if it contributes to the truest version of the song.
But because of this arduous approach, it wasn't until January of 2009 that The Courage of Others really came together-and it took leaving the studio for that to happen. 'We just needed a breath of fresh air,' says Pulido. 'When I was young, I used to go out to this farm (the Sand Hill Ranch, in Buffalo, TX). We'd hunt and fish and cook out. I called up the family that owns it and they let us come hang out.' They brought their instruments and some recording gear, to see how it might go in a fresh setting. 'We worked on one song ('Core of Nature'), kind of by accident,' says Smith. 'I didn't really have it all written, but it just turned out.' The song's title comes from a Goethe quote that Smith had been using as both inspiration and a kind of placeholder for melody and chord progression. 'Then I realized I would never write a better phrase.' After returning from this field trip, the entire record came together-a seven or eight month recording process after what you might call 18 months of 'pre-production' The opening song, 'Acts of Man,' even got recorded in a mere five days. 'That never happens for us!' says Smith.
While some bands play it coy about their inspiration, Smith remains an unabashed lover of music who considers new discoveries a vital part of his creative process. He never shied away from Fleetwood Mac comparisons, and, with increasingly more flute on The Courage of Others (a proxy for his original wind instrument, the saxophone, which he doesn't think fits into Midlake's sound) he'll own up to Jethro Tull as well. When you're making confident music that achieves its own originality and beauty, you're not afraid to give credit where its due. British prog-folk bands like Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Amazing Blondel and the Strawbs were also in the mix as Smith began to write and demo songs. Plans to incorporate mandolin, mountain dulcimer and auto harp into the new sound didn't go as far as the band initially expected, but the folk vibe did find Nichelson abandoning piano and keyboards, which he'd split time on in the past.
What people heard as Americana-ish on Van Occupanther, Smith thought of more as the Bavarian Forest or the British countryside. but one song on the new record, 'Small Mountain,' is inspired by his parent's old place in Bandera, Texas, just outside the Hill Country. All the lyrics have an abstract quality-for Smith, the way they feel matters as much as what they say, but he also includes a lot of physical and geographical rooting: rain, land, woods, valley, ground, skies. Though Smith says he didn't know it at the time, 'Winter Dies' echoes a lyric by Jimmie Spheeris, the late 1970s cult figure (and brother of the film director Penelope) best known for Isle of View. 'My favorite album of all time,' says Smith. 'Nothing can top it. There's just something special about it to me.'
Similarly, the album's cover art pays homage to another major favorite: Andrei Rublev, the 1966 film by Russian writer and director Andrei Tarkovsky. It was Tarkovsky who once said, 'Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal.'
And the ideal, well... as The Courage of Others also , it doesn't happen overnight.
- Rogue Wave
- official website
- myspace
- “Now we’re born again,” sings Zach Rogue on the closing track of Rogue Wave’s fourth studio album, Permalight.
The dreamy acoustic lament lasts just over a minute but in sound and spirit it neatly sums up everything that comes before it. A punchy, deceptively effervescent set of multi-instrumental pop tunes, the Northern California band’s latest set represents a giant breakthrough for Rogue and his longtime musical partner, drummer-keyboardist-vocalist Pat Spurgeon.
“The record sounds, for lack of a better word, fun,” the frontman says.
It’s an astonishing change of direction, to say the least. Formed by Rogue in 2002 after he lost his tech job and parted ways with the Oakland rock group Desoto Reds, Rogue Wave has a reputation for crafting classic, inward-looking pop songs highlighted with psychedelic guitars, pastoral sound effects and intricate rhythms.
On tunes from the new album like the title track “Permalight” and “Good Morning,” however, Rogue Wave steps away from expectations. Rogue says the former was written as a left-field sequel to Kool and the Gang's “Celebration,” with synthesizers that simultaneously sound brittle and blissful. “Stars and Stripes” builds on a deep groove before spilling over in a raging chorus. Clubby beats are prominent but the album doesn’t sit still for long. “Per Anger” is a straightforward rock tune that takes its cues from Pixies’ loud-quiet-loud dynamic.
Then there’s the album’s unofficial centerpiece, “I'll Never Leave You,” a simple acoustic tune that finds Rogue coming to grips with the overwhelming emotions that come with young fatherhood. Like many of the songs on the album it’s rooted in Rogue Wave’s triumph over seemingly constant peril -- including the tragic death of a former band mate and constant health issues -- and the band’s undying determination to push forward.
Making this album was no exception.
In September 2008, after the band returned to Oakland following a summer tour, Rogue played a solo show opening for Nada Surf. Two days later, the singer woke up and couldn’t move. There was some concern that he might be having an aneurysm or heart attack, so doctors wheeled an X-ray machine into his living room to check his heart and lungs. It turns out Rogue had slipped two discs in his neck, which were pressing on his spinal cord. “It was the worst pain I had experienced,” he says.
Over the next few months, his condition grew worse until he eventually lost feeling in his right hand. Confined to his bed, there was nothing doctors could do for him, no medications that could relieve his pain. “I just felt like I was being tortured,” Rogue says. “I felt like I was dying.”
In January, the pain began to gradually lift, giving him just enough sensation to pick up the guitar and strum it. He celebrated the recovery the best way he knew, by pouring his relief into new material. “When I started writing I wanted to make a record that was a little more up, a record you could move your body to because I couldn’t move for so long,” Rogue says. “I told Pat I wanted to make a total dance album.”
To do that Rogue decided to make a conscious break from the past. “I decided when I picked up the guitar again I didn't want to play anything I knew,” he says. “Even if that meant yelling into the microphone or detuning a guitar, I wanted to record all those ideas.”
He still had to make accommodations for his hand, which remains numb. So Rogue started playing an old Sears Silvertone guitar just because it was the lightest instrument he owned. The guitar set the signature sound for the album. “I would plug that in every day and record little musical thoughts,” he says. “After a month I had about 50 ideas for songs.”
After trying to get the new songs down in couple local recording sessions Rogue Wave decided to tap producer Dennis Herring, whose previous clients include Modest Mouse and Elvis Costello, to take on the project. Herring brought the band out to his Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford, Mississippi where they meticulously worked together for four months. Spurgeon says, “Dennis knows what he wants and he'll keep working until he gets it. If he's going to put his name on something it's got to be good.”
Rogue adds that the famed producer’s perfectionism was necessary to pull off the group’s reinvention. “If you want to make some real changes that means rethinking how you approach things,” he says. “You have to take your time and really map it out, especially when that involves structural changes. We have to be really comfortable with all those changes.”
Then one day Costello dropped by the studio. “He told us, ‘Trust Dennis,’” Spurgeon recalls. “That was good enough for me.”
Leading up to the album’s completion, the drummer also spent some time on the road touring with “D Tour,” a documentary directed by Jim Granato chronicling Spurgeon’s search for a living kidney donor while assuming his regular band duties in the face of twice-daily dialysis. The band plans to partner with the National Kidney Foundation on future tours in the hopes of signing up organ donors at its shows. “It's such an easy gesture and makes such a difference in peoples' lives,” Rogue says. “I've seen it first hand.”
Permalight could represent a great push forward for Rogue Wave. Having toured with the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, Jack Johnson, Spoon, The Clientele and The Shins, the group already has two indie albums – 2004’s Out of the Shadow and 2005’s Descended Like Vulture on Sub Pop – which earned it prime soundtrack placement for movies and television shows such as “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Heroes,” “Weeds,” and “Nip/Tuck.” Its move to Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records for the release of 2007’s politically charged, multilayered Asleep At Heaven’s Gate brought critical acclaim and the band’s first foray onto the alternative radio chart with “Lake Michigan.” The track has also been licensed for the upcoming film “Up In the Air,” and was used for a popular Microsoft Zune commercial.
Both Rogue and Spurgeon says the group might seem like an odd fit for Brushfire Records, which boasts a roster largely made up of acoustic singer-songwriters, but the label’s willingness to give the band complete artistic freedom is all the encouragement they need. “They trust what we're doing,” Spurgeon says. “We would like to have a long career in music and to do that you do have to step it up sometimes.”
RELEASE DATE: MARCH 2, 2010
PERMALIGHT TRACK LISTING:
Solitary Gun
Good Morning
Sleepwalker
Stars and Stripes
Permalight
Fear Itself
Right With You
We Will Make A Song Destroy
I’ll Never Leave You
Per Anger
You Have Boarded
All That Remains
ALBUM DISCOGRAPHY:
Out of the Shadow (2004) Sub Pop Records
Descended Like Vultures (2005) Sub Pop Records
Asleep at Heaven's Gate (2007) Brushfire Records
Permalight (2010) Brushfire Records
- Peter Wolf Crier
- official website
- myspace
- Inter-Be is the debut album by Peter Wolf Crier, the Minneapolis-based duo of Peter Pisano and Brian Moen. The album was born on a single summer night when Pisano felt a torrent of creativity after what had felt, to him, like an interminably long dry spell. He shared the songs with Moen, and over the months that followed, at Moen's home, these rough-hewed tunes became what they are now: a confident collection of songs, but deceptive in that their very guts still reflect the thoughts of a man in transition.
Pisano's is not a new songwriting voice. He is best known for being part of the Wars of 1812, an ascendant Wisconsin-bred quartet. Their first album together, Status Quo Ante Bellum, was more than just an album. It was relocation and aspiration and Pisano's lyrical Eden. As the Wars went on hiatus, Pisano continued to hone his craft, keeping his days full as a teacher at a small private school while fine-tuning, at night, the songs that would soon become Inter-Be. Feeling confident in the songs, Pisano approached Moen, a seasoned drummer and engineer best known for his involvement in Laarks and Amateur Love. After being asked to add some percussive elements, Moen added his thundering drum rolls and perfectly timed fills, but he also added something much more: a melodic soundscape that would complete the evolution of the songs. So was born the partnership that is called Peter Wolf Crier.
OTHER UPCOMING SHOWS FROM THE BOWERY PRESENTS
© 2010
