CMJ » Amelia Trask

Q&A: Future Islands

Amelia Trask — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 13:22:50 +0000

Photo by Abram Sanders

Future Islands is a band that has navigated its career the old fashioned way—working from the bottom up and peddling not only a fantastic songbook, but a live show of the same caliber. Armed with a semi-‘that’s show business’ attitude, the Baltimore-based trio caught some serious air under its wings last year after signing to eclectic Chicago label Thrill Jockey and releasing the magnificent full-length In Evening Air.

CMJ had the chance to ask its magnetic frontman Samuel T. Herring a few questions about the band’s powerful live shows and its relationship to Future Island’s music and songwriting. Side-stepping the very genre tags that sometimes fence them in, as Sam puts it, Future Islands is “dance music you can cry to”—a tension that clearly takes seed long before the final pressing and resonates over and over again throughout every recording.

Your live shows are incredibly theatrical—it’s definitely something that sets you apart from other acts. How do you factor the performative aspect into songwriting process?

The performance doesn’t come into play in the songwriting, but the songwriting, of course, is a huge part of the performance. In most cases, as things change and sometimes stay the same, the music dictates my movement and the power of my movement. The words dictate the gesture and the intensity of that gesture. The most important thing for me is to be able to tell a story without words, because people aren’t going to be able to hear what I’m saying word-for-word. So, it’s very important to show them what I’m saying and what I’m feeling. All in all, the performance is about getting into that story and that feeling I felt when I lived the words and when I wrote them.

You’ve said your original band (Art Lord And The Self Portraits) started out as a performance piece and turned into a more serious band. What aspects of your old sound and show have carried over into Future Islands?

Definitely the performance aspect remained. Doing something in costume allowed us to tap into the theater aspect, while being strong behind the mask of it. Future Islands was about taking the theater away, so that it was just real life theater. That may sound strange, since most bands perform plain-clothed, nothing fancy. But that’s a really important part of how and why I do a lot of what I do onstage. The Art Lord character taught me a lot about the power of the stage, and it was a heavy transition to try and get that back when I couldn’t hide behind a persona. Musically, there are a lot of similarities in the style and approach – keyboards, drum machines, bass guitar, dance music you can cry to.

I’ve heard that Future Islands plays acoustic sets. What does that consist of, and is it particularly challenging vis-à-vis your usual instrumentation?

We’ve only been able to do a couple performances, but it was really nice. It definitely opened up a new life for the songs that we hadn’t hit on before. A bit more tenderness, a bit more wounded nature, where there may have been fury. The two performances were acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, cello, piano and drums. Learning the songs wasn’t too difficult, as our songs are not too difficult. We were working with talented musicians so they picked it up really fast.

You really seem to play around a lot during the recording process, especially with field recordings and production touches. How does experimentation play into the final product for you?

With the field recordings we’re just trying to create an environment for the songs. We want them to live somewhere outside of a piece of wax or plastic. The sound of my backyard in Baltimore, or outside of William’s childhood home in Wendell, NC, are important in creating an atmosphere that feels like home. Not just for us, but for the listener. It’s all very subliminal, and I think that’s good. It’s kinda like, you can walk outside on an almost silent night, but there’s still something buzzing somewhere, a chirp, slow wind going by. That’s real life. We just want to capture some of that to make the experience more real.

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Q&A: Diamond Rings

Amelia Trask — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:03:13 +0000

John O’Regan, the one-man band behind the colorful synth-pop project Diamond Rings, is an artist who uses flux as a muse. He credits his current music and image to a barrage of the past, while vehemently maintaining that he is still a work in progress. O’Regan’s recordings and public persona are decorated with souvenirs of his many influences, and little riffs and flares burst from an arsenal of impressively quirky breadth.

CMJ had a chance to ask the up-and-comer debut Special Affections was recently released on Secret Cities, a few questions about the genesis of Diamond Rings, songwriting-gone-solo, and the many artistic hats he wears, both past and present.

I’ve read that Diamond Rings was borne out of some prolonged hospital stays for you. Lots of alone time and uncertainties. Can you talk about how that affected this new alter ego?
First off, Diamond Rings is less an alter ego and much more an amplified and accentuated facet of my own personality. That said, certainly having some forced downtime as a result of my stay in the hospital for a summer was fairly important in that it gave me some quiet time to reflect and write a bunch of songs that I really believed in.

Some of your music was written in the vein of folk and then later transformed into synth-infused electro pop. What’s inherently drawing you to a more electronic sound?
Diamond Rings started as a predominantly acoustic performance project but I slowly started to gravitate towards the world of electronic music, because I just find it more exciting and dynamic. It was a new challenge for me to re-imagine my work existing in a completely different place sonically. I wrote most of the chords for the songs on acoustic guitar or piano, and then went about working on lyrical themes and vocal melodies. After that I spent some time alone trying to figure out how to use GarageBand and turn each one into something a little more poppy and modern.

You come across as a visually minded artist, putting emphasis on your fashion and physical persona. What other forms of art have you worked in outside the confines of music?
I’m formally trained as a visual artist. Before jumping into music full time I finished a degree in visual art at the University Of Guelph, just outside Toronto. It’s a pretty bucolic college town and was a really great place to spend a few years making mistakes and learning about myself. When I was in school I spent most of my time doing performance and video art, as well as a bit of sculpture and design. I was always trying to find ways to incorporate my music into my schooling and vice versa.

I saw you play in Brooklyn early December, and you have an incredible command of the stage. Have you always felt comfortable in front of an audience or is that a skill you honed over time, for example playing frontman to the D’Urbervilles?
Ever since I was really little I’d always be organizing plays and performances that I’d get my family to pay me like a quarter or something to watch. So I think somewhere I’ve got a real thirst for entertaining and engaging with an audience. At the same time, I’ve been playing in bands for six or seven years now and have learned tons of different tricks. It’s taken awhile, and Diamond Rings right now is just a reflection of all that I’ve learned as a performer up until this point.

Through your music and visual media, it sounds as though you’ve shed more than a few identities to get to this point. How does Diamond Rings hold up to the sort of ‘spectrum’ of your past selves?
I think what people have trouble understanding is that even from an early age I’ve always been fearless when it comes to trying on different styles. I’ve had more than my fair share of bad haircuts growing up, you know? I’ve always just followed my heart and gone after whatever feels inspiring and exciting at the time. Diamond Rings is just where I’m at right now.

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Young Prisms – Friends For Now

Amelia Trask — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:18:31 +0000

Hailing from the the Bay Area, psyched-out quintet Young Prisms slowly rips its way through its Kanine Records’ debut, Friends For Now. Wrapped in layers of reverb and nonchalance, the ten-track release steps in a more layered direction compared with the sunny distortion played out on its self-titled EP debut last year.

Young Prisms wrote the record while shacking up in San Francisco’s Mission District, living above a Chinese restaurant, marinating in MSG and writing and recording side-by-side. Those cramped quarters are palpable throughout Friends For Now—sprawling soundscapes stuffed into dense psychedelic cubbies, vocals drowning in sound and comprehensible lyrics surfacing for air every now and then.

Its first cut, garage-smeared “Sugar,” is an easygoing rocker that acts as a standard for the record as it picks up the up tempo before jamming its way out. For the most part Friends For Now remains mid-tempo—if anything slowing down the speed with tracks like “In Your Room” and the title track, “Friends For Now”—and the vibe sustains a feelgood swirl from start to finish. Friends For Now is cloaked in a tremolo fuzz as the band waxes poetic about being young and chilling with friends. Young Prisms plays like there’s nothing worth worrying about. For now.

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Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde

Amelia Trask — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 15:00:14 +0000

It’s been a rocket fueled trip for Smith Westerns since the founding members, comprising a pair of brothers and their friend, all under the age of 21, decided to pick up and start playing instruments midway through high school. Soon after its inception, the young Chicago band basically recorded their self-titled debut on GarageBand, with limited release through local label HoZac. Then in a whirlwind touchdown including a high school diploma and a tour with Girls, Fat Possum came knocking. Using all of its advance on recording costs and hooking up with producer Chris Coady (Beach House, !!!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Smith Westerns’ sophomore album Dye It Blonde is born.

This quickie bio is important because without understanding the agile leaps and bounds the band made in a year, this record sounds like an impossibility (or at least an improbability) standing next to its debut. Dye It Blonde blows away the fuzz and polishes the scratchy sounds off their last recordings, revealing a whole lot of something we didn’t hear before.

T. Rex is an automatic influence flag, in both its instrumental construction and that irresistible vocal production, with Cullen Omori giving a terrific performance all the way through. Tracks like the album’s first single “Weekend” and “Imagine, Pt. 3” pay homage to early glam rock (Bowie included) in the best way possible. Then the vibe twists here and there, going into straight-up Eric Clapton “Bell Bottom Blues”-y wah-wah pedals and epic feel-good build-ups in songs like “All Die Young” and “Smile.” It’s like listening to a radio station with “Eagle” in its name whilst driving through San Francisco.

So many pop movements of the past have been reactionary against the Big Kahunas of the world; in the spirit of rebellion, flying a flag for the youth, in the name of art, or whatever. Dye It Blonde seems to be more interested in kicking off of its own graduating class whilst simultaneously jacking the ‘best hair’ superlative. An interesting move by a young band who, in one fell swoop, has pulled ahead of the rat pack with nothing but a few more dollars, hard work, and talent.

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Fergus And Geronimo – Unlearn

Amelia Trask — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:06:30 +0000

Unlearn, Fergus And Geronimo’s debut full-length on the Seattle-based Sub Pop spin off Hardly Art, doesn’t run as a particularly cohesive record. Instead it skips like an excited young band stretching its muscles, still deciding which direction will make their dreams come true. Some of its tracks are British invasion riff heavy with a little rhythm and blues, some get the organ tuned up and others dabble in jam band zone. Most, however, have enough kick to be singles with memorable choruses, retro sing-a-long sort of melodies, and plenty of energy. Unlearn’s first official single, the mid-tempo cut “Powerful Lovin’,” is a particular stand out. Clever lyrics about the tripwires of love carried along by that early ’70s neutered rock soul a la Paul McCartney with singer Andrew Savage tearing out the vocals.

Fergus And Geronimo is a transplant group from Denton, Texas, recently relocating to join the musical ranks in New York’s most populous borough, Brooklyn. The move not only gave the duo a change of scenery but also scored them a new guitarist and drummer, as well as a live female back up vocalist. The band that got its start as a side project between two friends, Savage and Jason Kelly, met when Kelly was mixing a record for the Texas-based band Teenage Cool Kids, and the Texas grown jangle pop spread across state lines and soon it was clear the side project needed a little extension. Having developed feelers on both ends, the partnership’s combined strengths via production chops and band practice really lend to the record’s debut maturity.

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