Radio Free Chicago

Colin Huebert of Siskiyou: The Interview

Siskiyou - Siskiyou

It is an album of desire, composure and grace, as it tears at your heart strings, softly at times. Its melodically transitions accumulate like folds of luscious thick velvet layered upon a long winding wooden floor. There is simple imagery that in its essence is integral and lighthearted, though has peaks and valleys that bemuse you.

Great Lake Swimmers former members branched off and patiently learned to record and create their debut self-titled album, which was released on Constellation in the Fall of 2010.

The band is a collaboration of Colin Huebert and Erik Arensen; Peter Carruthers and Shaunn Watt joined the band to play the songs live, but have since become institutions. The band name was inspired by the Northern California mountain range, Siskiyou.

Colin currently resides in Vancouver, which is where he was when I spoke with him over the phone (from, get this, his land-line! How about it?) on a cool Saturday afternoon.

http://siskiyouband.com/listen/

 You can trust that Constellation Records will get it right, about over 100% of the time, and Siskiyou is an example - and, ahem, may I be so bold to say a testament to that?  Colin himself enjoys the artists on the label; Pat Jordache, Godspeed You Black Emporer, Colin Stetson and Do Make Say Think ... just to name a few. Here is a video courtesy of Constellation, The Land by Siskiyou

This Land - Siskiyou from Constellation Records on Vimeo.

 

1. Now for the safe word….(in case you don’t want to answer any questions, useful)

skate board

2. Favorite cheese?

Brie is my favorite

3. Robots or Dinosaurs?

Dinosaurs, stegosaurus is my favorite...

4. Strangest venue or gig you’ve ever played?

It was in Jackson, Mississippi, at a hot dog restaurant. It was infested with man-size cockroaches.

5. How did you begin your career and who were your influences?

Erik and I were (Erik still is) playing in Great Lake Swimmers until it became less enjoyable for me due to busy schedules. I learned how to record with two cheap microphones, recruited a few close friends, namely Erik Arnesen, and released the album on Constellation just recently. In the fall, we will release a new record.

Aside from music I do some tree-related work, and some urban farming. At the urban farm we mainly grow sprouts - sunflower sprouts, pea sprouts - in Vancouver. At the other farm (in the interior) there was much more land to grow every vegetable imaginable. Erik plays in Great Lake Swimmers and teaches ukulele to kids.

6. What is the most memorable show you’ve ever attended?

It would have to be The Flaming Lips performing Zaireeka in Austin, Texas. There were 40 boom boxes and they brought up 40 people from the audience.

7. What are a few items essential to your “tour survival kit”?

Sleeping pills. 

8. What are you listening to now?

Damien Jurado. St Bartlett, his latest release.  

9. What is the worst advice you’ve ever been given?

If you avoid something it will go away. 

10. If you were to communicate using one word what would it be?

Motherfucker. Two guys communicated using just that word on  “The Wire”. It was quite successful.

11. Can you dance?

Yes. Mmmhmmm (Matter of Fact tone).

12. Anything else you want the people to know? 

Our cat Pixie is an aspiring accountant. She is currently doing our taxes.

 

 Please note: This is not an actual picture of Pixie, she preferred not to be photographed.

Kings of the New Sincerity: An Opening Volley

“Be Sincere.”

That’s it really, in a nutshell, distilled to its very essence. That is our simple entreaty, something held more vital than a manifesto, but not quite dogma.

It a sense, there’s not much to it, or at least not much concrete. There’s something about it, though, something compelling. Sincerity is one of those lovely little ideas both ultimately mutable and utterly inarguable. One can be sincere about almost anything, yet once you are, it is a statement of ultimate purpose and conviction. It’s a form of truth.

I’ll admit, the last few years have been a bit grim when it comes to finding sincerity, especially amongst the young, restless and hip. In an age where all the information and art that has ever existed is available on Youtube, the way a person interacts with the world changes. We have, as a culture, evolved in such a way that the young and savvy now have a built-in filter to keep from getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume, the torrents (not a coincidentally chosen word) of music and art and information that we are submerged in every day.

That filter is irony. That ironic detachment that keeps us at a distance, that keeps us abreast from the things we enjoy. Irony is the ultimate enslavement of culture; the idea that (with some intellectual finagling), you can enjoy and take part in something, no matter how ridiculous, offensive, insipid, or irrelevant, without it defining you. It’s a safety blanket, a pressure valve, and armor against critique.

I am, of course, avoiding the elephant in the room, that horrible, horrible word that gets tossed around so casually to describe the omnipresent cultural “other” that seems to occupy our periphery. The word everyone uses but no one want to be called. The word that is incredibly evocative and has specific cultural connotations, but few would ever profess to be.

I’m talking hipsters, kids. Stay with me.

The personality, the sense of self, is under siege by the insane volume of content, and so we embrace the avatar. That’s what “hipsters” are, real world avatars. That’s why, even though there is absolutely no debating that hipsters exist, they are never self-identified: no one would say they’re creating an alter ego through embracing specific cultural memes. But that’s what all the frumpy, ill-fitting sweaters, professed enjoyment of PBR, and ironic facial hair represent: the creation of the intellectualized, controlled “self” that is self-evident and well-defined.

Frankly, I find this tiresome. I imagine most do. It just seems like a lot of work, a grotesque distortion of the punk rock ethic of defining yourself in contrast to pop culture and somehow sanitizing it, making it safe. If culture is saturated with information with no real filter as to value, the hippest cat in the room is the one that embraces the most unlikeable, the most obscure, the most oblique aesthetic. Take crunk, chopped up and screwed grind beats, throw in a dash of Joy Division, a sample of "Ode To Joy," maybe a saxophone solo.  Don’t forget to overdrive the amps and lay on that endless reverb. Storm the offices of Pitchfork on a crack binge. Repeat as necessary. Yawn, motherfucker. Yawn. 

 Salem - King Night

What I find so exciting is that this repugnant, knee-jerk defense of the ego seems to ebbing in favor of… Sincerity. Be here now. As the familiar forms of distribution are getting outmoded by technology, culture is twisted and turning surprising ways, and music seems to be at the foreground of this change. Those of us who are observers and participants in the Midwest indie scene (whether its Chicago, or the new home for several of our contributors, Ann  Arbor, Michigan) have remarked that there’s something in the air, something palpable. You feel it at the shows by the local bands, some of them new, some of them scene stalwarts for years.

You can see it at work in the aesthetics of the bands we here at RFC have championed, both on a national and local level: Dawes, Blitzen Trapper, Local Natives, Okkerville River, the Tallest Man on Earth, Fleet Foxes, The Head and the Heart, Wye Oak, Timber Timbre, Lightning Love, Gun Lake, Matt Jones, and countless others. All these bands, while dramatically different from one another, seem to be eschewing the obscurity of the hip in favor of familiar sounds, lovely melodies, heartfelt lyrics, and often-acoustic instrumentation.

Dawes - Love Is All I Am

RFC Thinks You Should Know... Matt Jones

I usually like to get my adjectives in order before I begin discussing an artist, and, while shuffling through the thesaurus in my head, the best I could manage to describe Matt Jones was "lithe." True, it's a term heaped more often on strippers than indie folksters, but it seems oddly fitting to describe Jones' nimble, carefully orchestrated tunes. An Ann Arbor/Ypsi folk stalwart with an impending Daytrotter session, Matt Jones sings sly, beautiful songs in a sharp, controlled voice that at times is reminiscent of the Weakerthans, of Jeff Buckley, but with a slightly more theatrical bent.

To call the man and his music folk would be to do him a bit of a disservice: His album "The Black Path" (recorded with another AA music notable, Drunken Barn Dance's Jim Roll) is a stumbling, beautiful waltz through Americana as its only real genre. From opening rag/vaudeville of "Threadlines" to the evocative dustbowl instrumental "Antietam" (only lacking the Ken Burns narration to be convincingly antique) Jones is very much a graduate of School of Indie Anachronism.

Matt Jones - Jugulars, Bones And Blisters

Still, there's a a diversity to the approach that is refreshing: the dusty cowboy anthem "Jugulars, Bones and Blisters" is broken up by an unexpected synthesizer solo. "Waltzing With Lady Dawn" has a challenging, odd melody throwing touches of dissonance into it, held together by Jones' dancing voice.

New Mountain Goats: "Damn These Vampires"

I recall seeing John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats perform a concert in Durham North Carolina over the summer and grasping what exactly makes the Mountain Goats so compelling as a band. While I’ve been a steadfast fan for years, they are an acquired taste. Whether it’s the crackling lo-fi and the clawhammer strumming of his early career to Mr. Darneille’s nasal yowling and inscrutability of his lyrics, the Mountain Goats seem committed to being vaguely off-putting while crafting hyper-literate pop songs played with a disturbing ferocity. They occupy odd territory in indie rock: scene stalwarts for years at this point with LITERALLY HUNDREDS of songs available, the music they make is more visceral and adolescent than your average navel-gazing singer-songwriter, but more intimate and cerebral than a punk band. This has left them a criminally underappreciated band. They don’t court their audience and instead seem to delight in being the indie rock equivalent of the drunk guy at the party talking a little too loudly and fervently about how much how awesome the Curtis “Showtime” Stevens Vs. Jesse Brinkley fight was, or his favorite ever death metal band he saw in high school.

Darneille’s drunken antics at the show in question further cemented their claim on this territory. The show was pure punk rock, if not in its aesthetic, than in its ethic. Darneille (backed by the self-proclaimed “best rhythm section in indie rock” Peter Hughes on bass and Jon Wurster on drums) dived into the audience, grabbing fans and screaming in their ears like a man on a joyous bender. For the diehards, it was heaven (being slapped by John Darneille is an honor akin to getting a jersey tossed to you after the game by your favorite football player);  still, to the uninitiated, and even those who maybe have only listened to them on their last few relatively restrained albums, it was a spectacle that might prove… disconcerting.

Still, possibly the most vital piece of information for comprehending and appreciating the MGs came earlier in the show when, during one of John Darnielle’s signature halting, blackly funny diatribes about getting drunk and unloading on a friend about your impending divorce over lunch, he said the following: “I woke up the other day, and I wrote a song. Because, that’s what I do. I’m a songwriter, I write songs.”

Much has been remarked upon by fans of the band in regards to the shift in the MG’s sound and aesthetic, the abandoning of the much ballyhooed boombox recordings for a slicker, more produced sound (first with producer/artist John Vanderslice, now on their new record All Eternals Deck with Morbid Angel producer Erik Rutan), but I see this as a natural evolution of the boombox: after getting the meager (in comparison to what they deserve) recognition for their years of service, people started to hand Darnielle bigger boomboxes. Were there no producers or studios interested in hosting Darnielle and his demented pop legacy, he’d return to a boombox. It’s the song, not the singer.

This is basically the essence of the Mountain Goats; their steadfast aesthetic, their prolific output, their resolve to simply not give a fuck. John Darnielle is merely a conduit for songs. The entire haphazard, carefree (careless?) aesthetic of the band, from their inception to now, has been all in service of not blocking the unending flow of music that has been inexplicably routed through Darneille. He’s unconcerned about being anything but a songwriter and imparting the diamonds, rough included, as quickly as possible to avoid losing it. It’s immediacy, the most primitive and powerful you’ll ever experience.  He didn’t have time or resources in the early days to belabor the songs, and it manifested in recording hundreds of songs in the most intimate, hissing analogue format possible.

His limitations as a singer/guitar player/producer/engineer/arranger all are inconsequential: The Mountain Goats write and play songs. No more, no less.

Still, given this ethic, the MGs have been thrust into an awkward position: after toiling for years in relative DIY obscurity, starting with the brilliant Tallahassee  they’ve  given resources, time, and patient and intelligent producers. Their recordings (from We Shall All Be Healed through The Life of the World to Come) have grown more ornate, the rawness and intensity traded for beauty and dynamics. We’ve seen John Darnielle’s debut as a classical-inspired  piano player, heard him whisper in our ears about feeling like a little boy lost in a mall on Get Lonely. This has pushed the band to more challenging places with some really wonderful results. Still, those of us with a fondness for the old days of tape hiss and out of tune guitars have perhaps missed the musical kidney punch Mr. D used to specialize in.

With the impending release of All Eternals Deck, we are treated to a new track “Damn These Vampires” which, I think, recaptures a bit of that magic while reconciling the ability to have more elaborate production.

The Mountain Goats - Damn These Vampires

Reminiscent of  his “Alpha” song cycle where the metaphors all concerned being young and wasted and falling out of love, “Vampires” feels like watching a spaghetti western at noon while drunk. Finally grasping dynamics, Darnielle’s guitar and Wurster’s drums are understated, letting Hughes’ melodic bass really carry. And even for the closet popstar like Darnielle (Robyn, watch out, the Mountain Goats are comin’ for you…), the chorus hook is almost too good, with that anthemic, scream at the top of your lungs quality:

Crawl till dawn

On my hands and knees

God damn these vampires

For what they’ve done to me…

All Eternals Deck comes out March 29th on Merge records. Get excited.