their own pretty ways

i always think it's funny when i can precisely pinpoint where and when i heard a band for the first time; especially when it's love-at-first-listen.
i'm not much of a net-freak, blog notwithstanding. however, there is a particular chatroom where i sit-in frequently (but due to the overwhelming amount of trollish dowshes on the web, i'm not going to reveal it), and as the general focus, much divurged from, of the room is a band, the subject of what we're all listening to is a regular one. noticing the brightly colored, naively painted cover of a newly-acquired lp in one user's photos, i inquired what it was. "first aid kit," i was told, and another user sent me a link to a fantastic video with two elfin, flannel-clad young women sitting in a forest, singing a spare and full-throated version of "tiger mountain peasant song," by fleet foxes.
whoof. i was hooked.
the video begins with a sweet, but hardly-shy, dedication to fleet foxes, by way of introduction, then klara söderberg begins playing her guitar (thrum-ba-ba-ba-bum) with simple assertiveness. she begins, with a sweet, clear, slightly-accented voice, to weave the first verses into the song as her sister johanna sways shyly beside her. the shyness only lasts until the second verse though, when she opens up her mouth and adds her duskier contribution before both girls sing together in haunting harmony. every time i listen to it it still sends chills down my back.
to the best i can tell, first aid kit already had their ep "drunken trees" in the can before this video was made, and that due to the intense popularity of the cover, they re-released it with "tiger mountain peasant song" appended as an eighth track.
i tracked down a purveyor of said ep, and should add that it is very seldom i get so excited when a padded envelope arrives in the mail.
the only real criticism i have of "drunken trees" is that the reasonably charming, but long, sample that introduces both the album and the opening track, "little moon," is not on its own track, but is inseperable from the song. as a fan of listening to albums all the way through, and also of creating an overall texture and atmosphere, i'm all for that. however, i would prefer to sometimes not hear it, and get right to the music, y'know? but that's it. otherwise, the ep is fantastic, flat-out.
on their website(s) the band, or an especially adroit press agent, describe fak's sound as "gary numan if gary numan played folk music," which, yes, is glib, but is also a way of not taking their efforts overly seriously. basically, at it's roots, first aid kit is two teenaged swedish girls playing folk songs on acoustic instruments. the potential for overly earnest treacle is immense, but its well-circumvented here. on the album itself, the voice/voice/guitar relationship is deepened by autoharp, keyboards and subtle percussion--more rattles and shakers than drum kits--to restrained-yet-lush effect. at its core, however remains the simplicity of two sisters singing together.
the band has a single coming out in early october, anticipating a full-length effort sometime in winter. a song from the single has been posted on the band's myspace, and its shimmering, jangly guitars suggest that, not only will the lp be as good as the ep, but that winter may be just exactly the right time to receive it.

please turn off your dance music

this, if i know me, may well end up as one of those meandering and utterly pointless exercises in the documentation of catching up with all the other cool kids. so i may as well just come right out and admit that until last year sometime, i was not familiar with the work of julie doiron.
i am sorry. does that help? to be fair, i'm really the one who's been missing out, not you. trust me, i'm boring at shows. i wouldn't buy you a whiskey. and i just shuffle there, with my arms folded. getting into the music, y'know?

well. now i'm clued in. of course i'd heard doiron's name before, and that of her previous band, eric's trip. considering the copious stacks of indie material i accumulate, it would have been an act of will to avoid hearing about them. but, as so often happens when other bands fall to the wayside of some other obsession du jour, i never actually got around to listening.
until last fall (?–this date may be erroneous, can anyone remember when i got the big pwelverum & sun order? that's when; yknow, for those keeping track...), that is. that's when i got the mount eerie/julie doiron/fred squire record, "lost wisdom." i listened to it one time, and thought, not for the last time, "my god. i truly have a shitty needle on my record player." however, i also at this time downloaded a recording of many of these songs performed at the 2008 primavera sound festival, at the parc del forum in barcelona. (if said recording is still up on archive: get it.) i have listened to this recording any times, and am here to tell you, it is damned swoonable. the set features julie doiron's earthily fresh voice prominently, whereupon she compliments the weary boyish voice of phil elvrum to a remarkably effective degree, particularly with a strong-yet-empathic forwardness to his reticence. what was even more remarkable, was the song breaks, though, when this sensual and masterly voice broke into the most girlish giggles imaginable, ephervescent without being "bubbly," belying not a ditziness, but a great and holistic joy.
determined to delve more deeply into the discography of this person, i was distracted almost immediately by something else. that something was probably related to one of the three ridiculous eps that the mountain goats have recently, semmingly grudgingly released. i accept that i have a problem, can we move on? once i remembered that there were other albums in the world that desperately required my acquisition, i began to think about julie doiron again. as if by the intervention of fate itself, i "had" to order something from jagjaguwar/secretly canadian/dead oceans anyway, and thought, oh, i should get some julie stuff too! i imagine since i have been out of work, small labels and distributors have been starving...
so there i found myself ordering a handful of julie doiron cds, and sat back for the refreshingly old-school label to take the order, find the discs, pack and mail them, all without the urgent reassurances of normal e-commerce. i had to wait a little, and i must say, it actually whetted my appetite. not that i'd want to do that all the time though...
eventually, "broken girl," "lonliest in the morning," "goodnight nobody," and "i woke myself up" arrived at my door, and found their way into rotation on my stereo, with "broken girl" asserting itself most surely. sadly, i missed ordering the most recent album, "i can wonder what you did with your day," my order placed a week shy of its release. i figured then that i would order it in a month or so, but then i found myself out of work. it leads the list of "things to buy when re-employed," a long list, i'm afraid. happily, the wealth of material on these recordings is immensely satisfying, and is work i go back to often for inspiration, but also for its sheer beauty. much has been written about the qualities of julie doiron's voice and material, so i won't re-remark on those, but i will say she was one of my happiest discoveries of last year, and would certainly urge anyone to look into her work. for an easy first step, daytrotter has a lovely set from this year's sxsw session. or you could check out julie's site, which features taster-mp3s from a good portion of her work. oh, and there are lots of those youtube thingees.
i found the experience of searching out julie doiron's work, and the resulting rewards, as being akin to going out to the grey and cooly damp woods, with heavy boots, and and a sturdy vest over a wool sweater, to hunt for wild mushrooms, turning corners to find wild, beautiful and delicious growths nestled in unexpected places. happy foraging.

chunky, not smooth.

remember the eighties and nineties? there were those tape thingees. and for most people i knew that meant that you had a pile of pirated cassettes (taped on double-deck stereos of real, bought tapes sometimes, but mostly they were from records. i certainly had a high percentage of my music on tapes horded from friends. it was (cough. and is) a good way to exponentially increase one's buying power. barry would bring in the pixies. jay would get the retro stuff. all of us would tweak out on sub pop's many offerings. don't even get me started on the mixtapes; john cusack can do a better job singing their praises.

i used to have a superchunk tape. leave it to me to not even know which one i had*. i doubt i knew anything then more than their name, and how that tape sounded. how it sounded was different. different from the ur-indie stuff we could scrabble together, like the pixies and the smiths and the vaselines. different from the scene happening around us: the green river and mudhoney, mother love bone and screaming trees, the butthole surfers and nirvana. i was maybe as snotty then as i am now, but i really didn't have the knowledge or experience to explain how superchunk was different from grunge. i couldn't articulate now how i thought it was different. it was though, and i enjoyed listening to that tape. that, and pj harvey, and seaweed and they might be giants. haha.
as with so many parts of our youths, that tape disappeared somewhere along the line and, rather than miss it, i forgot about it as new sounds greeted my young ears. explosions of screaming riot grrls and gentle strums of twee maestros vied for attention with the newly-discovered (for me) nicks cave and drake. and others, more and more, for years.
i remembered superchunk's name, and "oh, those guys.... i had that tape." couldn't remember how it sounded though.

a few years ago i was rifling through the used cd bin at a local record store and i came across a superchunk cd ("on the mouth"). i said, "oh hey, those guys," and picked it up. it sat on my shelf for a little while, and when i put it on the player, i was a little shocked at how good and how raw it sounded. i hate to admit that after that playing, it went back on the shelf as some other record (in all honestly, probably one by the mountain goats...) took over my affections with an iron grip.
then several months (okay, maybe eight or so) ago, i came across another cd ("come pick me up"), this one for a real price, and i picked it up, and both went onto rotation chez matt. it all started to come back to me, the significance of this fine exponent of rocking the fuck out without being douchebags. i started getting wistful thinking about mac playing with the bats for their stellar "spill the beans" ep; about how jon was revitalizing the otherwise two-man mountain goats with his insanely good drumming; about the whole romantic history of a great band giving birth to a truly legendary label, merge records.
it was all just to much, and i fell in love properly this time--not just a fleeting crush.

i would've been content to harbor my feelings within if a few recent reminders had not spurred me into some rusty writing: i discovered mac mccaughan's excellent "portastatic"** blog, and have been enjoying that; then came the announcement, timed perfectly to co-incide with my recent unemployment, that not only was a superchunk ep now available, but a 7" single on clear vinyl would be available for pre-order--two more temptations from the nearly irresistable merge catalogue at just the wrong time; then there was portastatic's gorgeous cover of franklin bruno's "tableaux vivant" that scott from fayettenam hooked me up with. it was all too much. i caved and ordered the ep and single--i couldn't hold out any longer, and after all, what are credit cards good for if not going into debt for what you love? amiright? (it's gonna be rough this fall when merge puts out the clean's new studio album. argh. gnashes teeth.

unfortunately the single, "crossed wires b/w blinders (fast version), and crossed wires (demo)" met the vinyl production delay indie record geeks have come to regard as a natural pitfall of their endevors. however, in a classy move, the label sent out the download coupons included with purchase early so we who bought would not lose hair waiting. they are absolute darlings down there in north carolina, i tell ya. so i've been listening to three songs all day (ok, with a little julie doiron thrown in for swoonability purposes)--actually, two versions of one song, plus the middle one. ha. nerdy? yes i am.
but holy shit, they are so good.
especially good is the third track, the demo version of "crossed wires." the single track is awesome, and kicks every ass in the room, but the intimacy and immediacy of the more-acoustic version, with stereophonicly jangling guitars perfectly setting up mac's inimitable high-pitched and plaintive drone, is nearly impossible to top in my opinion. it showcases the strength of the song, one that's capable of being rocked to the edge, but also the depth of a more "humble" treatment. that it also highlights the range of this venerable punk band is a point almost rendered redundent, but it is one i will make nonetheless. can't wait to get some income again; then i can delve deeper into the back numbers...

* upon reflection, it was most likely 1990's "superchunk"
**portastatic being mac's longstanding other project.

it's a mystery how we're so unaware

sometimes you take a long time to express affection for someone or something that you love.

i love the bats.

try doing a google search for this fixture of new zealand indie rock (before that they were 'alternative', before that 'new wave'--at least according to the daddy's highway press kit, or was it law of things, i forget?). try it, and all you'll get is 'release the bats'--and not even the birthday party song.
oh, you may stray across the myspace page or wiki listing for the bats, but it may well be obscured by the fog of lesser entities. you would do well to clear away the cobwebs and give an ear to one of the most enduring and consistent bands i've ever heard, a four-piece outfit who sound as fresh and vital on their 2009 release the guilty office as they did in 1984 when they began making records.

i first heard the bats about six or seven years ago (oof) on local 'college-radio' station kexp, and from the first notes i was hooked (on the guitar hooks! har). i have tried several times to figure out what song it was, but everytime i'm convinced i know what it was i get fogged out by another that's just as jangly-rifficly good. it was either boogey man off 1991's lp fear of god, or one of the brilliant tracks from the previous year's law of things.it's ahrd to tell, as the sound from that 'first period' is like one huge fantastic album. from 1984 to 1995 releases came out every year or two, but since then the rate has slowed somewhat, with an entire decade seperating 1995's couchmaster from the shock re-emergence of at the national grid. it's been another four years until guilty office. these extended gaps stem from the fact that the bats, unlike many bands, are fairly heterogenous in their activities. songwriter and lead robert scott writes approximately two songs-a-day by some accounts (that may be an exaggeration) and performs solo, with nz legends the clean, and with a handful of local friends, most recently gina rocco, with whom he has released a solid full-length and a stunningly spare ep, called moonlight potato which to me, recalls his work with jane sinnott as the magick heads--a ridiculously difficult-to-track-down band (although douglas wolk still has an available release at dark beloved cloud). from what i understand, the bats do new stuff when robert comes up to christchurch, where kean and woodward, and grant all live, from the otago port of dunedin where he lives. up north the other three bats members keep active with the wonderfully jangly minisnap, for whom kaye writes most of the material.
i keep using the term 'jangly' and it's a bit of a crutch, i admit, but the reason is that the bats, along with the clean and the chills, were part of what defined the so-called 'dunedin sound' slapped onto flying nun bands in the eighties the way 'grunge' was slapped onto everything in the pacific northwest a decade later. i only mention these three bands because they're really the only ones in the fn stable who fit the name! the verlaines had a little jangle-jangle too, but the tall dwarfs didn't, and many of the subsequent bands on that label didn't either. anyway, i'll search for other adjectives!

after hearing the bats on the radio, i couldn't find out anything about them! it was very frustrating (especially since i was sub-savvy on the intraweb at the time), and it was probably more than six months before i happened to stumble across fear of god in a used cd bin. i actually let out an embarrassing whoop in the store. i got it home and popped it in the stereo, and just sat there in my chair for the duration, just listening. i can list the amount of records i have done that with on maybe seven fingers.
the used bin became my tried and true ally since most of the flying nun output has been o.o.p. for longer than i care to admit. i found the all of the first five albums (i don't count compiletely bats because it's a compilation, although i don't have it, and i want it desperately) and the stellar ep spill the beans (featuring mac mccaughan 'duelling wahs' with kaye!!!) in them bins, and when national grid came out i was so stoked to be able to actually buy a new bats record!
so often in my musical history, i've come across great bands too late to be a part of their extant lives, like young marble giants or beat happening, and it's been very special to me that not only have the bats (and the clean, for that matter) kept going when they easily could've called it a day before i'd even come across them, but i've even had the great privelege of corresponding with them. it's such a wonderfull feeling to have such a small connection with a band one loves...

back to the record at hand, the bats' first on nz label arch hill (who released the clean's live album mashed as well, i should note):
much has been written already about how the guilty office 'breaks new ground' with the sound, but stays true to the 'driving guitars' and lyrical 'darkness' affiliated with past releases. well, that's true, i suppose, but not definitive. the 'bats sound' being referred to is a simple set-up of the solid backdrop of malcolm grant's drums and paul kean's perfect-punctuation bass-work (on his hand-made 'barracuda' bass--so cool if you can find piccies of it). this tight rhythm works the low end and the bridge to kaye woodward's soaring riffs and jangly (sorry--that word again) trebly lines and hooks is made by robert scott's solid and subtle rhythm guitar (mostly, sometimes they switch roles). all the instrumentation is set of by the frankly lovely harmonies of bob and kaye's voices. bob has a low croon-to-high warble and kaye sets him off well with her sweet melodic backing vocals.
all of those characteristics have been present since 1983, and they continue to be the definition of what a bats album sounds like. which apparently draws some accusations of 'samey-ness,' which i find ridiculous. i think if a band sounds identifiable from record to record, then that's a good thing. if they sound the same i can see a doorway for objection, but when a band like the bats--or for that matter like the mountain goats, who sound like the same chords are used ad infinitum (not a criticism, btw)--places a high priority on the songwriting, as they do, then such claims become more baseless.
for the record, a lot of the 'new sound' talk comes from the strings (with harp!) arrangements done for the album by allan starrett, though these commentators are either forgetful or unaware that the band has past associations with dunedin's alastair galbraith. speaking of the starrett contributions, it was a neat experience for me to follow the progression of one of the songs on the record, crimson enemy. i first heard the song on a 'live to air' recording of the bats on kfjc (a san francisco college radio station) in 2006, a recording i got directly from robert, actually. it's a song the band 'just learnt up today' according to the recording, and i had to sit there for nearly two years waiting for it to resurface! slightly faster and higher-pitched than originally, the song popped back up on the bats' myspace page late last year, but didn't yet have the added strings. than the record came and the song had overdubs and other juicy studio details. it was really cool for me, trying to learn how to master my own songs, to see how theirs progressed.
anyway (how could this be one of my posts without an 'anyway'...), i should stop this epic post now.
if you can find bats records buy them. if you find actual vinyl bats records, buy them and email me and snail mail them to me and i'll paypal you!
seriously though, the bats defy the rolling-stones-dinosaur-please-please-stop model of how a band matures and ages, still making great, and sadly underappreciated, music. they have this new record (only a few months old!) and a 7"(i think?) in the works. they're touring europe this summer. one can only hope they'll make it to seattle eventually...

get onboard, ay?

you've never seen when i wear a turban

in the same line as getting to know a new band (new to me, natch) via the world wide double-yoo, i am obsessing about herman düne who, despite their recent seattle gig, i have not seen outside of my 12-inch laptop. have you heard of these fellows? i had not until quite recently. my friend carlos (a massive shrimper fan) turned me on to them when he asked me if i wanted to check out their show down in ballard towne. i say, well, who are dey? any good? he sez, well they're okay, i heard them on the shrimper, and i want to check them out. i say i'd like to go, and file it away in my head. i also go to their myspace and listen to a tune and think, oh french-swedish jonathan richman kinda thing, i can dig it. and so i friended them and planned on going to this show.
so a few weeks later, the night of the show's come up and i've got some nasty diarrhea (if this offends your delicate sensibilities, and/or you think it's too much information, you probably won't like it here... i still like you, i'm just sayin' though...) and anyway, going to a tavern in --it bears repeating-- ballard, was lowest on my priority totem pole. s i didn't go, and the next day my (former!) co-worker adam says to me, so dude, why weren't you there last night. shit shit. now i'm totally kicking myself because i have been listening to this shit over and over again. i don't know what it is, but sometimes i just can't kick a record. when i first got sweden i listened to deinara crush over and over and over for weeks before moving on to nine black poppies.

anyway. i've mentioned the concerts a emporter, the 'take-away shows' at blogotheque before, and they were key again in this instance. (if you don't know these, they are al fresco semi-improvisational and über-stripped down videos of musicians performing in unusual circumstances--check them out, you won't regret it.)
i've been on this whole kick for a few years of appreciating bands/performers highly based on their versatility, or more specifically, their ability to adapt to minimalist modes of performance. calvin johnson, mount eerie, and the mountain goats are the types who dress up a little for studio, but i've also flipped that esteem to compare favorably with guys like john vanderslice, the clean and (non-guy) st vincent, who drop all the studio trim to bust it out solo (or trio-lo). i don't know if i'm awake enough to articulate what i mean. i like maximum sound out of minimum means. that's what i mean.
anyway, these herman düne dudes, currently a two-piece, sound fantastic. their studio recordings have a lot of nice ixed percussion, layered guitars (like, rhythm and lead!), bass and lovely-voiced angelic back-up singers. but on the blogotheque vids it's just the two (david-ivar (yaya) and neman herman dune) guys singing and playing through the parisien streets. david-ivar plays this little parlour guitar and sings and neman follows along with a varity of little percussions like wood blocks and rattles. and that's all they need, and it blows my mind.

so is song of samuel. i cannot stop listening to this five-and-a-half minute story-song of a blossoming love between a young rich girl ad a violinist from the ghetto. goddamn it's gorgeous...

anyway, i don't have money now, and can't buy up their records, so until i get a new job (new life?), i'll have to make do with the blogotheque, with the myspace, and the excellent daytrotter session they did. right now they're on the top of my 'when i have money again i will buy...' list.

we're all gonna die

in the last several months i've been hustling to grab as much music as possible as soon as i hear something good, i've been hitting the interweb asap and bagging as much of said band/songwriter/whatever's back catalogue as possible. it's been quite effective as an acquisition strategy, but the downside has been that my 'absorption' rate has plummetted. with some exceptions, i've been giving most of the new stuff a listen or two then moving on to either a) old mountain goats b) new mountain goats or c) the next record. add to that the stuff i come across on myspace and daytrotter and blogoteque and you get one big pile of mess.
so now that i have no job, i've been obsessively listening to handfuls of records at a time, and am developing plenty of new music crushes. so the next few days should be a bit of a torrent...

in no particular order, i am starting the deluge with scout niblett.
i've heard about scout niblett for a while now, but had not heard 'them.' see? i didn't even know that they were a her. but then i finally got tired of not paying attention and started digging around. the first thing i happened to come across, by pure chance, was a youtube video from february, 2007, of scout (née emma) playing dinosaur egg at shepherd's bush empire (a london club).
i was gobsmacked.
there she stood on stage in a tatty pullover, long skirt and tousled hair, and a vintage fender jag (rather than the mustang she often favors) strapped around her shoulder. she played the first notes and they viciously carved their dischordant harmonies into my brain. as she began to sing, the high girlish whisper accelerated slowly into a febrile shriek rife with emotion and desperation.
i listened to dinosaur egg about ten times in a row that first sitting, just over and over.
then i got serious and started simply following the youtube links. the next video i watched was a performance, with her drummer, of song for scout in ten years. with just the three elements of her voice and guitar and his percussion i was convinced that studio engineers are highly overpaid individuals (sorry loren). the song started softly, but abruptly launched into a raucous hard rock attitude, then back, and so forth.

i haven't been so thunderstruck by anyone in a while (musically, *cough-cough*), and i was just in shock that this woman had been out there doing this for some little while. i immediately ordered whatever of her records i could find. have you ever ordered from the secretly canadian/jagjaguwar/dead oceans trifecta? it's very old-school (as these things go); no instant gratification, just some dudes in indiana going into their storehouse and mailing stuff. while it killed me to wait three weeks after hearing this shit, i still appreciated the hell of the fact that labels still function this way sometimes. insrt smiley face.

in the meantime, as i waited, i kept digging up stuff on the net, learning that scout niblett's songs are sometimes just her accompanying herself on drums, and that she's partial to a blonde wig or a roadworker's neon-orange reflective vest. i found the concert a emportér episode of her wandering up and through a parisien apartment building, in oberkampf, walking down a hall sweetly passed by an inquisitive and dapper frenchman, and finding herself in someone's flat where, when she finishes her song, the guy says "hello, would like some tea or some-zing?" and she giggles back "yeh, that'd be really nice." she's sweet and shy and goofy and ferocious and passionate and feral, sometimes at the same time, a bizarre combination of the insouciant type of woman you seldom find outside of england, and a patti smith-type chanteuse-maudit.
i also came across a lot of lazy descriptions of scout niblett in relation to either pj harvey, catpower, or both. i also came across a lot of reactionary denials that she was anything like either of them.
funny, that.
she reminds me a bit of what polly harvey sounded like back in the early nineties: both women are smallish with big grinding guitars and voices that whisper and scrape and wail equally effectively. that those voices are also english adds to a certain sense of sorority (and perhaps it is silly, but i have always found it sexy to hear a british woman's voice--a cliché i'm sure, but true).
i don't quite agree with the catpower assertion, though both are intense and powerful singers. i tend to think that the comparison stems more from chan marshall's supposed bipolar status and some sort of insinuation that scout niblett is as unstable. i think that feeling tends to come from people who, were they asked, would describe themselves as 'normal' for the most part. heh.

blah-blah. i could go on and on musing on the little things, i suppose. it seems a little innecessary to try to use words to describe scout, when one should listen to her. i'll leave this with words from niblett herself. i went over to her myspace page to listen to the tracks from her new single that she had just posted, and saw that she had updated the page thus: in the 'influences' box, she had written:

i just went up to a woman i didn't know to ask her about her dog. this is how the conversation went: me: 'arrr, what kind of dog is that?' she: 'chiwawa ....his name is weston' me: 'is he a puppy?' ( a logical question it seemed to me as he seemed extremely tiny for even a chiwawa) she then ignored my question and added before she walked off... 'you could turn your life around you know, ...do you know that? at any time, .....you could have a weston too!'

brutal. <3

from the vaults

several years ago i interviewed martin donald of the australian twee-pop trio the lucksmiths for a small seattle lit/culture magazine called rivet. it was pretty exciting. i was crazy about this band (still am to be frank), and very people had heard of them yet on this side of the pond. the rivet issues were conceived around central themes like "perspective," "invention," "value," etcetera. regular columns and features would reflect these themes, as would specials and illustrations, haikus and whatever else. so when the theme was announced as "luck" i thought, well, i'll shoot an e-mail to [the now-defunct label] candle records requesting an interview, they'll shoot me down, and my editor will know i tried. much to my delight however, candle's head honcho chris crouch not only hooked me up with an interview, but was nothing short of totally generous and encouraging. i was so stoked. i may as well have been interviewing tom waits or david byrne. or at least belle and sebastian. i nervously compiled my list of questions and sent them off to lucksmiths' lead guitarist and main songwriter, marty donald, in january 2005, as the band was finishing work on a new record.
a heavily edited version of this interview originally ran in rivet issue #13, the "luck issue," in spring or summer, 2005, i can't remember which. my friend andrea jean, a librarian, recently sent me a note saying how she'd come across a review of the magazine (in general) by one douglas mcclemont, of the library review service, which noted, "an interview with the possibly fictional band, the lucksmiths is a highlight [sic]." i lol'd as the kids these days say.
my mom's an editor. maybe that's why i've never liked being edited, i don't know, but i thought why not run the original, uncut interview for posterity. many thanks again to crouchy and marty for the generous sharing of their time and energy.

here it is:

matt neyens: in all your albums, there is a great mix of humor and heartbreak, sometimes combined. is there a concerted effort on your part to create that balance, or does it just happen in the songwriting process? also, how important is the humor to your songs?

marty donald: the combination of humour and heartbreak is not accidential, though neither is it entirely self-concious: i don't get to the third verse of a song and think 'this is a bit gloomy, better whack a pun in.' most songwriters i admire (and writers of all sorts, for that matter) strike a balance between the two; morrissey is probably the most obvious example of this, although david berman and bill callahan spring to mind as well. without wanting to get overly heavy-handed about it, i suppose having humour leavened with a little sadness, or sadness lightened by humour, appeals because that's largely what life is like, and artists who tend towards a more simplistic point of view generally seem to me to be missing something. a good deal of our early material seems (in retrospect) excessively jocular - favouring cleverness at the expense of emotional content - and as a result i shied away from that in my writing for a while. so i'm pleased if you feel i'm striking a good balance between the two.

matt: on the subject of songwriting, do you tend to bang things out quickly in a flash of inspiration, or do you tend to ruminate on songs over a long period of time?

marty: very much the latter. though there are exceptions (notably "the great dividing range," which i recall coming in a couple of hours), after the initial inspiration - usually just a line or a title - most songs take me weeks or months even, occasionally, years to finish. and this seems to be increasingly the case over time, which probably should be something of a worry.

matt: you write the lion's share of the lucksmiths' output. is this a comfortable relationship with you guys, first, and second do mark [monnone] and tal [white] tailor their songs to be similar to yours stylistically, are they similar naturally, or is there more of a collaborative effort musically than just bringing in a tune and saying, 'here, play this?'

marty: for me the balance of writing duties within the band is a comfortable one, although as you point out, i'm the one with the lion's share, so it might not be so for the others. but it seems to have evolved that way naturally; it's not something we've ever really had to discuss. i'm not much of a musician, as such (certainly less so than mark or tali); songwriting has always been the primary attraction of being in a band for me. as for the similarities in our writing styles, i'm constantly surprised by the extent to which this is commented on (even though i have the same problem with other multi-writer bands such as teenage fanclub and sloan). to me, there are very obvious differences between our songs. but i suppose these are disguised by the lucksmiths' sound they inevitably assume, and in this regard you're right to suggest a degree (albeit varying) of collaboration. arrangements and often individual parts are worked out collectively in the rehearsal room. and given the amount of time we've been playing together [as of this interview, about twelve years], stylistic similarities are unavoidable.

matt: i recently saw your label-mate darren hanlon (who has guest-musician-ed with you many times) perform here in seattle, and very few people knew who he was. how much exposure do you feel you and other bands from your local scene are getting, both in australia and abroad?

marty: i find it very hard to judge precisely how paltry the level of fame we have achieved is, and even harder to explain. within australia, we have been playing and releasing records for long enough to have established ourselves fairly well - an interviewer recently called us 'iconic!' - without having broached the mainstream to any real degree. as for the rest of the world, there seem to be handfuls of fans dotted here and there, and generally when we visit the handful seems at least a little bigger than last time. when we first toured to the northern hemisphere we were amazed that anyone at all had heard of us, and i suppose the novelty of hearing people on the other side of the world sing along to our songs has never really worn off.

matt: related to the last question, the lucksmiths have been kicking around since 1993. how do you guys feel about where you are as a band? you've obviously influenced a lot of the newer chamber-pop" bands, and your sound has been consistent - and terrific - over the years. are you a success? are you guys happy about how things are going for the lucksmiths?

marty: related to my last answer, i find it hard to say whether or not we're a success, although the very fact that we're still making music together must count for something. in a recent interview tali employed the frog-in-a-saucepan-of-water analogy to describe our career, which seems apt: even if it's been slow enough coming that we might not have noticed it ourselves, i do look at our (however modest) success with a degree of pride. and this is certainly so in a less careerist sense, and more an artistic one, which has always been more important to all of us: i have been happier with each successive record we have made, which is a nice thing to be able to say.

matt: you have a new single (which will be out by the time people read this) called the chapter in your life entitled san francisco. presumably this is anticipating a new full-legth[ed record] to be released soon. would you say something about either or both of these projects?

marty: i am typing from audrey studios, where we have just begun the mixing process on our forthcoming record, provisionally titled warmer corners, from which the chapter in your life entitled san francisco is taken. it's been a while between releases for us, and i'm quite excited about both the single and the album. it's distinctly more upbeat, and more fully-developed or textured than naturaliste [2003]; the songs seem (to me, at least) simultaneously more adventurous and more 'classic' than much of our previous work. (i should warn you, though, that this is the first time i've been forced to describe it at any length, so i don't yet have the pat little phrases from the press release at my disposal.) a big feature is the brilliant work of louis richter, who has been the fourth lucksmith in the live context for a year or two now, but whom we have not worked with in the studio before; he has brought to the songs an unerring ear for a jangly guitar line or a tasty organ part. ad we have again had the pleasure of working with producer craig pilkington, whose beautiful string- and organ-arrangements are the aural icing on the cake. the single, which is to some extent indicative of the direction of the record, takes its somewhat unwieldy title from a 1930s pro-californian-emigration pamphlett i stumbled across a couple of years ago in a secondhand bookshop.

matt: lastly, you're over there on the other side of the globe, and i often wonder what you guys are listening to that sounds great to you. what were your top five records from last year [2004]?

marty: my top five records for last year (already largely forsaken for the two new bright eyes albums; and including, given the geographical-remove thrust of your question, at least two australian releases) were okkervil river's down the river of broken dreams (which i think actually came out in the u.s. in 2003, so i'll include their sleep and wake-up songs ep as well); shearwater's winged life; the concrete's self-titled album; art of fighting's second storey; and our labelmate darren hanlon's little chills.

19 january, 2005; 14 february, 2005.