The David Bazan Band ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

[In August,  Abbey of Sound on the Sound sat with David Bazan for four hours for a feature story on Bazan and his new album 'Curse Your Branches' for Sound Magazine. Because four hours worth of interview cannot be contained in a 2,000 word feature, we're sharing some of the previously unused material here on Sound on the Sound; not only to preview Bazan's homecoming show this Saturday at Neumos, but to provide insight into the events that spawned Curse Your Branches.]

David Bazan is a man who’s been defined by his faith for as long as he can remember. As Pedro the Lion, he sang openly of the trials of reconciling faith with doubt and sin, equally contemplating one’s present and future existence through the lens of an utter believer or one who is struggling with the consequences of that belief. Bazan’s decade long journey with Pedro the Lion ended in 2004, at a point when Bazan’s faith in God seemed irretrievably crippled by doubt. He could no longer be Pedro the Lion, standard-bearer of Christian indie rock to the masses. As the weight of his doubt grew, he escaped into alcohol and the rock n’ roll lifestyle, while the depth of his internal turmoil became a palpable reality to those around him.

His belief, and therefore the band, had never existed in a vacuum. His wife and family were devout Christians, as were his devoted fanbase and friends. In 2003, just about a year before Pedro the Lion ended, his best friend TW Walsh joined the band as it’s drummer. It was then that  things were coming to a crashing head.  Bazan’s telling of the events that became the song ”Please Baby Please” from his long-awaited solo debut album Curse Your Branches, provides a window into that difficult moment and what it took to right himself:

[My wife] Anne started to get really worried, and Walsh, and a bunch of other people did. I mean there were promoters who would call my booking agent and ask, “Is Dave Okay? Because he’s been coming through here for years and we’ve never really seen him like this.” So there was definitely an intervention on the table. That didn’t happen, but they were pretty worried.

And at that point I was like, okay, okay. I’ll stop drinking for a month. So I stopped drinking for like a month, and then when I started again, it was just back to the same thing. At that point it was pretty functional, where it was maybe twice a month I would basically go on a bender. And it was when most of the time when I had a ride home. Some of the time it wasn’t and I’d have to get a ride home and pick up the car later.

And there was one bender in particular, the song “Please Baby Please”  basically makes a reference to. TW Walsh dropped me off at home, in the downstairs bedroom because he didn’t feel like carrying me up the stairs after he’d already cleaned puke up out of his car and changed my shirt because I’d thrown up all over myself. And he called Anne and woke her up and said, “Dave’s downstairs, you might want to keep an eye on him.” So she brought me upstairs and almost lost me over the banister because I was in and out of consciousness. And she was up with me all night, in her mind, convinced that I wasn’t going to make it. And I really don’t know what the reality of that is, she thankfully isn’t experienced with alcohol poisoning. Just when I woke up the next morning, which actually I think is the lyric of the song, and she was sitting on the bed and just was like “That’s it. You’re done. There’s no way for this to move forward if you don’t do something different.”

And two days later I went on tour, and I agreed not to drink on tour, which as the time line indicates was the first basically sober shows I’d played in several years. And it was in that time period where I kind of decided okay, you DO perceive that God exists. You’d like to be able to suspend that assumption, but it’s not an assumption at this point. You perceive that he does, for better or worse. And you have to admit that to yourself or there’s going to be some pretty big problems you don’t know how to control. So I was able to admit that to myself and for me that was a really good step in the right direction. I don’t know what the outcome of that will be, but ultimately in the mean time it was good practice at being honest with myself. I couldn’t adopt any arbitrary posture, I had deep convictions one way or the other, I had to be true to those even if there was a lot of contradiction. And after that, that compulsion to get blacked out just was gone.

Though he did eventually come to a place of personal peace,  his friendship with TW Walsh was probably the gravest casualty of the dissolution of Pedro The Lion. Though Walsh (who now lives in Boston) and Bazan are again close friends  (TW’s band The Soft Drugs opened for Bazan on an East Coast date this fall), in retrospect how Pedro the Lion ended still troubles Bazan.

I had genuinely wounded him. But then it got so fucked up and complicated, because I didn’t mean to do anything. There was nothing overt where I made deliberate decisions to fuck him over. It was all a wake of destruction that I was unaware of, or that I wasn’t doing intentionally.

We had such an intense relationship and the success of that relationship was based on the functionality of my business. And I fucked all that up. And it’s still… it may be the biggest regret of my life. I’m finally getting my shit together and putting in the appropriate amount of time for the band to work. And the hardest part of all of that, is why couldn’t i have done that when Walsh was living here? And why couldn’t I have done that when he had the opportunity to be in the band? It kills me that that opportunity is for all intents and purposes, just over.

It really kills me. But at the same time, we’re both really glad at this place now that we’re in. And on the record, on the credits I was so proud to write: Recorded by Bazan in his basement. Mixed by Walsh in his basement. Because that is the essence of what we were trying to do for the whole time [with Pedro the Lion] and we just couldn’t do it, because by the time he came on full time the writing was already on the wall and nobody saw it. But it was my doing. [His participation] is a really sweet aspect of [Curse Your Branches].

While Bazan’s position on God remains uncertain from day to day, where he used to be paralyzed by contemplating that fact, he now accepts that his view may always be evolving.

You know, I’ve been doing the religion thing and thinking about it hard for a lot of years. And I also know a lot of really smart guys that challenge my thinking. So I guess that now that I’ve played the [Curse Your Branches] songs forever, and have gotten really comfortable with them, and then further that they’re out in the world and I’m starting to get feedback on them. I do feel like at the very least, they hold up on some basic level. I think that the problems with the story of Christianity that are implied in the tunes might have answers to them that I just don’t know, but they are genuinely big question marks for me, they’re not just surface issues. I feel like they are fundamental flaws that I’m curious that if someone has the answers. I’d love them to email me.

Curse Your Branches artfully document’s those questions about faith through Bazan’s own eyes and his own history. Make no mistake, his songs are deeply autobiographical, yet he frames his struggles in such a way as to be accessible to the religious, the former-religious, and the simply “spiritual” alike. The hopes and fears of parenthood and providing for a better more harmonious future for one’s children transcend denominational and cultural lines. He’s expressing the universal human need for safety and righteousness of purpose here, and what purpose could be more righteous than fighting for the safety of one’s own child. I can identify deeply with the compassionate criticism he’s expressing about topics that popular music rarely dares to dabble in, and even as a staunch and long time Pedro fan, I’ve got to say these are the most impactful songs about religion and life Bazan has written yet.

David Bazan and his new band wrap up their nationwide tour at Neumos this Saturday November 7th. Say Hi and the Sea Navy are opening. Find tickets online via TicketsWest.

The Sea Navy ::: Photo by Sarah Jurado

The Sea Navy are playing a record release show, tomorrow, Friday August 21st at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard with Battle Hymns and The High Strung. With the long-awaited (at least by me) release of their latest record Memory Matches next Tuesday August 25th, the Sea Navy have revealed yet another collection of short sophisticated pop songs out of the mind of front-man Jay Cox. The output of a year and a half of work, this time around Cox had his drummer Jordan Cumming to shoulder the weight of recording and mixing and the result neatly bottles the sometimes overflowing bursts of energy the band exudes on stage and then some. Through clever production and a determinedness to be what they are, I think with this new record they’ve set themselves among our city’s finest examples of heart-on-sleeve pop.

Jay and Jordan responded to a few of my questions about the new album and where they’re at right now via email, with sometimes slightly snarky answers.

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SOTS: The previous Sea Navy record came out before the current lineup had been able to form. This record found you playing many of the songs as a band long before committing them to tape. How did that change the song creation process for you this time around?

JAY: It changed the process to where the people recording/playing the songs are the ones that wrote the parts (for the exception of certain parts of “Rodeo”). We were able to make this record as a band and not “people playing with Jay.” Up until meeting both Jordan and Stuart I had missed the feeling of operating as a band and I am very happy at where we are at in our development. It has a long time since I felt so excited towards what a “band” was able to create and play. I’m so glad that the three of us function so well and I can’t imagine having written these songs with any other players. I don’t mean the previous comment as a negative comment on former members of The Sea Navy but more that having a stable lineup and having people equally invested made the whole process more comfortable and less rushed or on borrowed time.

SOTS: You guys’ bread and butter is the short form pop song. Not a song on this record tops 3 minutes. Is that result of an increased pace in general over the last record, it is even a conscious thing or does ’shorter’ just seem to be the natural length for the songs you guys are creating right now?

JAY: I think maybe 1% of the songs I have ever written have been over 3 minutes. I never worry/think about the length of the song. I think there is enough going on in each song to where the listener will not feel ripped off.

JORDAN: We play for as long as the song needs to be played. We could make the songs longer but then practices would run longer and that’s the last thing we want.

SOTS: One of the pitfalls of such a short time can be that the songs start to be indistinguishable from each other because there is just less time for melodic theme development. It’s something that I think you guys have avoided pretty well with this record. Was there a concerted effort to step away from any formula? It seems rarely is a turnaround simply a turnaround, there are lots of vocal tricks to add some character, and the guitar “solo” moments are just as energetic as Jay’s freak-out moments on stage amount to.

JAY: We have no formula. However it should be said that two out of three members of the band operate on the metric system. There are a lot of aspects of the songs that we will not try live but I think it does capture the character of the band well.

JORDAN: We did quite a lot of experimenting production-wise for this record, but that didn’t spawn out of an effort to step away from any formula. Making a record should first and foremost be fun…. and we had a lot of fun making this record. Going into the studio we had no idea that we would be adding so many layers to these tracks but after listening back to the basic tracks, we realized there was a serious lack of micro korg…. and the possibilities soon became endless.

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Israel Nebeker of Blind Pilot at Sasquatch ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

[Blind Pilot is opening for The Decemberists and Andrew Bird at Redmond's Marymoor Park on Friday July 17th. Tickets are $35. ]

Just a year ago Portland-based Blind Pilot was releasing their critically acclaimed LP 3 Rounds and A Sound and biking their way down the coast, their instruments fastened to the back of their two-wheelers, playing tiny local stages or busking when there were none available. This spring and summer has found the band in a new role: opening for established bands on some of the worlds biggest stages.

In March at SXSW they were included in an NPR live showcase at Stubb’s, broadcast alongside the Avett Brothers and the Decemberists. In May they were tapped to tour the U.K. opening a stadium tour for The Counting Crows and the Hold Steady. Now they’re currently revving up to spend select dates the rest of this summer splitting their time hitting festivals, supporting Gomez in large rooms or the Decemberists in amphitheaters.

Needless to say I had a few questions regarding this kind of drastic transition, about how the band enjoyed Europe and whether they felt they’ve been able to succeed in this new setting. Lead Singer Israel Nebeker was frank about the challenges, and completely humble in the face of unexpected success.

Yesterday I caught up with Israel via cell phone as the band was driving through the eastern reaches of Oregon on their way back home from a date in Boise.

SOTS (Josh): Let’s start on your recent trip to the U.K. So the last time you were in London, you were busking on the street, right?

Israel Nebeker: Yeah… that was the last time I was in England. That was quite a while ago.

SOTS: Did you find any time to step away from the tour and do a little busking for old time’s sake?

Israel: We did. Yeah. It was really fun. It definitely was a good break from arenas. Those are really fun too, but it was nice to kind of like feel a bit grounded again, and add some perspective to the whole tour. We particularly had a really great time in Scotland in this really small town, that we were not planning on stopping in. It was just really beautiful. There was like one gas station, one hotel and a pub and an antique store and that was the whole town. And we bartered a hotel room in exchange for playing at their bar. So yeah we had some time to branch out.

SOTS: There were just four of you I understand.

Israel: Right, for the Europe tour. And right now we are doing six.

SOTS: Did you feel a little naked in those big rooms without all of your other instruments with you?

Israel: Yeah. I guess, at first. Eventually we made friends with it. It got to be really fun actually. It’s such a massive sound. You hear yourself better coming off the back wall, and that just seems like miles away instead of right up on stage. It’s such a huge space and it echoes so much. But eventually that got to be kinda fun.

SOTS: Do you think there might be an intimate element that might be lost? I think is part of what I like so much about your music, is that there is some intimacy going on. And maybe the bigger rooms don’t really show that as much.

Israel: Yeah, I think that was part of it at the very beginning, is feeling that loss. We had to approach it a little differently, and just kind of make friends with the space, and just kind of keep it intimate at least for us on stage. I think you’re right though. Once you get to that level, you lose a lot of intimacy, and everything you do feels telegraphed, like your one a play stage, rather than just bringing honest music to people. It’s just hard to get away from on that level.

SOTS: It seemed that you started the band and you were riding around, and you were probably able to look into every single persons eyes that you were playing to.

Israel: Completely.

SOTS: Now it’s a sea of people.

Israel: I miss that a lot. But I’m always really impressed when sometimes certain bands or certain performers are able to make you feel like it is an intimate space, and there is and exchange that is an intimate thing going. With the people make the music and people listening to it. I think it’s totally possible to do on that level, but I think we’re still getting used to it.

SOTS: What sort of element of your music do you think resonates with people. Why do you think you guys have started to get some attention?

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Portrait By Abbey Simmons

[Ed. Note: Shane Tutmarc plays tonight at 8pm, the early slot for tonight's Sunset Tavern edition of Noise for the Needy. Also on the bill is Widower, Jack Wilson and his Wife Stealers and Adam Stephens (of Two Gallants) and his band the Finite Plan.]

Earlier this week we posted the first section of this interview, where we discussed the winding path Shane Tutmarc has taken to get to where he is today. In this second edition of the interview, we cover Shane’s new course adjustment, and it’s result, an LP titled Shouting at a Silent Sky, which was released today on iTunes.

In the last portion of the interview, Shane discussed the reason he let go of his longest running project, Dolour, saying that it no longer represented who he was as a person. With his latest release, Shane has synthesized his own experience, his family’s musical legacy, and the help of some experienced musicians, into a record that completely represents Shane Tutmarc, personally and musically.

He says, “I feel like the goal of songs should be to be able to connect with people and to relate with humanity. There is a place for every type of song, but I feel like, at least with me, a goal is to always be true to yourself. And if you’re true to yourself than people can relate.” And Shane has succeeded, because we most definitely relate.
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SOTS: Do you consider yourself a songwriter or a story-teller?

Shane: I think the song part of it is as important to me. Though, I’m totally in love getting around writing devices and structures. And I’ve definitely, through the Dolour era and the Mercies, tried a million different approaches. To me the joy really is finding a new way to get it out. And I know that if it was just strictly story telling, it wouldn’t be as important to me as the craft part of it.

I think phrasing is a big thing. Like Bob Dylan. Just the way he phrases things makes me aware that when you’re telling a story, there’s a million different ways you can tell it, and so much of it from Sinatra on down comes down to how they place those words. I think with Dolour it was a lot like “Here’s a melody written out that I am singing.” Whereas from the Mercies on it’s been “How do I want to say this” as opposed to “What are the notes that I’m singing?”

Which to a lot of my pop songwriter friends that I knew through the Dolour phase have no idea why I’m doing what I’m doing now and hate it, and think I’m doing the wrong thing.

SOTS: What do they think you should be doing?

Shane: I guess following their dream of what I should be doing or something.

SOTS: Is that part of what’s on this album? The sense that people think you should be doing something else? But you don’t.

Shane:

So definitely through the Mercies it was kinda of a battle. You want to make a record that your friends are going to like, but I don’t think I was pleasing too many of my friends.

It was interesting how it kind of, it polarized. I don’t think I took to many Dolour fans with me with the Mercies stuff.

SOTS: You’ve grown and you’ve aged.

Shane: I definitely feel like I don’t know that person that wrote the Dolour Albums. Thomas Mertin later said that about his first book (his autobiography).

SOTS: Are you embarrassed by some of it?

Shane: I did the best I could. But I feel like I would constantly get myself to the edge of the cliff. An escape. I would be in a dark mood, and maybe write a song to get me out of that dark mood. Running from reality in a lot of ways. Pop music to a certain extent says “Everything is all right.” Folk traditions, or blues, or even rock generally speaking says “Everything is not alright.” And I think it was that turn that I took with trying to stay in those moments that might be painful but might also bring some truth. That’s what kind of led to this collection of songs.

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Kerry Zettel of See Me River ::: Portrait by Josh Lovseth

[This Friday, June 12, See Me River plays the Crocodile as a part of Noise for the Needy, with Grand Archives and A Curious Mystery.]

Noon. By the roller coaster. As I sat in a sunny cluster of picnic tables amidst the Fun Forest at Seattle Center, Seagulls circled and screeched overhead while curious tourists gawked before entering our town’s shiny tome to American music (and science fiction) the Experience Music Project.

This was where I was to meet up with See Me River front-man Kerry Zettel to talk a little about where his hardworking band was at right now. I had a few questions swirling in my mind that had been unanswered surrounding the transition of his focus to See Me River and the resulting dissolution of Das Llamas, a provocative rock band that I thought just wasn’t getting enough deserved attention. But I also had questions about what seemed a change in his songwriting attitude for his new band as well.

As our half-an-hour in the sun came to a close, and my questions were drying up Zettel remarked, “I think to not put as much effort into the lyrics as you do the music is to insult the listener.” It was an encompassing and revealing comment about just how serious Zettel takes being a musician.

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SOTS (Josh): I was starting off listening to your latest [The Great Unwashed EP], and the first thing that came across as interesting was “The Great Unwashed.” Was that directly inspired by the whole Obama experience that we’ve been having?

Kerry Zettel (KZ): Well… yeah?

SOTS: Was it written before or after he was elected?

KZ: It was written before. I guess what was going on around me, and my environment probably inadvertently affected the lyrics of that song. It’s just one of those things that you can get done if you put your head to it.

SOTS: It seemed very much a song of that moment. You’d said you recorded it in December… Maybe I was drawing too much of a direct line to it.

KZ: That’s the great thing, how everything is open for interpretation. Even stuff that is specifically about stuff people have misread, or whatever.

SOTS: I’m sort of interested to see your take on this, because it seemed like when you were doing that last Das Llamas record, it was a little more “disaffected with my fellow man.” This is a flip-flop of that.

KZ: Right. Absolutely. I definitely went from being massively frustrated with humanity in general, to just being stoked that people wised up. I would absolutely say that. That whole EP is about change, whether it be negative or positive, I just felt like it was a good time for that to come out mainly because there was a lot of change going on at that time.

SOTS: Especially since you played on that word ‘change’ in “The Great Unwashed” in that first section. I don’t know if you had like a real direct interaction with somebody who was homeless or something like that…

KZ: Every day. To go to work or just walk down the street, is always a weird interaction. I understand everyone faces their own personal battles, maybe you’re bipolar and unable to whatever… but there’s different things you can do to take control of your own life, whether it be through the resources provided to you, creating your own. So I just think human life is such a precious thing to waste it on not doing anything with your own.

SOTS: Does that feed into your own work ethic at all? See Me River is playing shows constantly…

KZ: Oh absolutely. Right. It’s just a matter of getting it done. I’m here, I may as well do something.

SOTS: One thing I also noticed as a difference between this new record and the older records, maybe because this is the first studio recording See Me River, was that… I think the old records it felt much more organic. And I was trying to figure out why that was. I think maybe you didn’t use a metronome much on the first couple records and this time you used a metronome.

KZ: Absolutely. Chris Common, the guy who recorded it is really anal about timing and pitch. Which is cool, that’s the reason why we went with him. Because we don’t have the best timing. Not to mention, for Time Machine, the drums were done as an afterthought, where as regular recording you do the drums first. Until Time Machine was recorded, we didn’t really have a lot of drums on stuff. And then Kellie got a lot more active as a drummer for the Great Unwashed.

We actually have an album that we’re working on right now, that we’re hoping to record in September. We’re doing pre-production on it in August in Montana. It’s written.

SOTS: Doing it with the same people?

KZ: Oh yeah. We’re going to go with Chris again. We already have some studio time booked to do some stuff. Cause the plan record eight to ten new songs, and then take maybe three songs off of the EP.
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Shane Tutmarc ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

We first heard Shane when we heard a demo from Dolour, his long running pop project that put it’s first album out in 2000. When we went to our local record store to pick up a copy of a Dolour record, Shane happened to be our cashier. It’s one of our favorite small Seattle moments, strangely embarrassing at the time I suspect for both of us, but a case of happenstance I won’t soon soon forget.

What I didn’t know though, was that by the time I was discovering Dolour, Shane was already in the process of moving on from that project and from the idealism of his youth and what Dolour represented. Not only that but he was about to have a life-shaking experience, that would launch him in a new direction that would end up leading back to where he started: gospel and blues and the music of the south, by way late-sixties Elvis and Hank Williams.

The result was Shane’s next project, Shane Tutmarc & the Traveling Mercies’, a return to the origins of rock that’s sound quickly cemented his boundless potential in our minds. For the Traveling Mercies, Shane created a family band, consisting of him, his brother (Brandon) and his cousin (Ryan), and together they made old gospel songs new again. Dolour had become a meticulously managed vanity project that no longer represented him as a person; the Traveling Mercies were a cathartic opportunity to pay homage to the musical tradition of his family and America.

This week, Shane has a new record coming out titled Shouting At A Silent Sky, we think his finest to date, and he’s been joined by a new band of ringers to back him up. But we’ll get to the new record in Thursday’s portion of this interview. First of all we thought it was important for him talk about how he got to where he is today and about the details of his life-long one-of-a-kind musical education.

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SOTS: How did you discover you could sing?

Shane: Because every band that I had formed, from like 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, nobody ever wanted to sing. Like my first show that I ever did, my band teacher in 6th grade let my little band open up the school band show. And we played instrumental covers of Nirvana and Green Day and stuff and nobody sang. Finally after that I think I was like, okay I’ll sing, whatever. And just really enjoyed it and loved it.

SOTS: You must have learned a lot about music from your family background and the elders in your family.

Shane: I think one of the biggest shockers for me when my Grandpa passed away (in 2006) was kind of fully accepting for the first time that there was this huge family legacy. All growing up I kind of felt like an alien in my family, I was like, how did I end up in this family? There wasn’t a whole lot of that, at least in my face at least growing up. But through my Grandpa getting sick and then passing away, definitely delved into the family archives just like wow, I was put in the perfect family for what I do. But I hadn’t really thought of it that way until that point.

SOTS: So that was a huge event in your family?

Shane: Yeah for sure. I felt like for the first time like how he had such a big part of who I am, without even knowing it. My whole axis of the way my world turned completely… I was working on a Dolour record at the time that I completely scrapped as soon as he passed away. I got the family band together and I think even up to this new record, the… mortality… the thought process that started when my grandpa passed away still effects me everyday.

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The Pica Beats ::: Photo by Josh

Over the Sasquatch weekend I had a chance to get to meet the Pica Beats and do a short get to know you type interview crouched in the shade next to a dumpster. Please excuse the brevity of this interview. Unfortunately some of the interview was lost as sometimes happens with ad hoc recordings. (Read that as: I don’t know what the hell happened. The first part is there, then it just goes fuzz.) Thankfully much of the good stuff remains.

Band leader and songwriter Ryan Barrett (far left) has developed a rhetorical pop style all his own that’s wry and personal. While anyone with a loquacious story-telling style tends to inevitably draw comparisons to fellow Sasquatch act the Decemberists, the comparison with this band pretty much ends there. It’s music that’s sadder and more grounded in reality than the fantastical imagination of Colin Meloy. That they’ve incorporated eastern and sitar tones into their music will now forever make me associate maladroit pop with those instruments. (Which, I know, is strange.)

The Pica Beats are playing a Noise for the Needy benefit show at Chop Suey on Saturday June 13 with Pt. Juncture, WA, The Black Whales and Grant Olsen from Arthur & Yu.

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SOTS (Josh): I feel like your songs focus on awkwardness a little bit.

Ryan: (Chuckles and nods.) Yep.

SOTS: Do you feel like life is awkward?

Ryan: It’s getting better. But that was kind of my MO growing up. I was like the nerdy outsider kid. I think it was inevitable that that would make it into my songs.

SOTS: I feel like it’s a theme in probably half the songs I heard today.

Ryan: Yeah, pretty much. I had kind of a rough start I think.

SOTS: Were you in band in high school? Or A/V club or something?

Ryan: No. I don’t know. I didn’t fit in with anyone. I had friends and everything, but by high school I was in a punk rock band. Back in Vermont, where I went to high school, we were the only band in the whole school basically, so I was very much just not the in-crowd kid. Nobody payed attention to us for the most part, so we were pretty much just playing for ourselves.

SOTS: How did you guys get hooked up with Hardly Art?

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This week we’re proud to be hosting L.A. band the Local Natives and tour-mates the Union Line at the Columbia City Theater on Thursday night (view the poster and details to the right on the sidebar, or at the bottom of this post). We haven’t felt this strongly about an emerging band in a while. In fact we think they will be happily embraced by the masses and be one of 2009’s breakout acts come fall when their record hopefully sees the light of day. Take just one listen to our featured track for this week below titled “Stranger Things” from the band’s forthcoming LP Gorilla Manor and see if you don’t come to share that sentiment.

Stream: “Stranger Things” by the Local Natives from Gorilla Manor

If that’s not enough convincing to come down Thursday and see this band for yourself, you can then check the band’s recent Daytrotter session for three more superb tracks.

Last Thursday I caught up with vocalist Kelcey of to discuss the new record and the past year for the band, on the day before they were headed out on a west coast tour that’s happening through the rest of April. It was a short but informative phone interview, and one that I would find out later was interrupting Kelcey attending his hometown theme park…

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Josh (SOTS): Are you guys shopping Gorilla Manor around right now? Does it have a release date?

Kelcey (Local Natives): So we recorded the record back in September, and finished for the most part. Right now we’re doing some tweaks on it. And basically what we’ve been trying to do is lock down some people to help: a booking agent, managers and stuff. So we can kinda make a plan. And yeah, we’re kind of in the initial stages of shopping it around. We’re actually going to release a single in UK, because we’re getting a lot people that are into it… SXSW was really good to us, getting a lot of interest from the UK. By the end of the week [the shows] were just kind of filled with UK type people, who were just going nuts. NME came out and saw us. And so it’s really cool and we’re really really excited. We just locked down a booking agent over there, and we’re going to go in the summer hopefully, if it permits financially.

So we are shopping around the record, and we’re hoping to release it by late summer, early fall. So that is kind of the tentative release date.

Josh (SOTS): That’s very methodical, and it seems smart to take your time, and make sure that you’ve got all your ducks in a row, so you can make the most of it. Because I think you guys have got something really polished, and at least from the few tracks that you’ve sent me, it seems you’ve got something that has a possibility of appealing to a really wide spectrum of people.

Kelcey (Local Natives): Yeah, we hope that we can get it out to a lot of people. We’ve been writing music for a really long time, and finally we’re at a point where we’re really proud of this stuff, and just can’t wait to show it to anybody and everybody.

Josh (SOTS): Was it done in all live band setting? It sound’s like it was done in a live room or something?

Kelcey (Local Natives): We’ve recorded stuff in the past, and kinda learned that we really wanted to capture the live feel as much as possible. We really try to do a good live show, and try to bring a lot of that into the recording. We did all the drums and bass live, and then the guy that we were recording with just really helped out so much with getting that feel and capturing that feel. So we were really stoked.

Josh (SOTS): Yeah, I thought it really did. I thought something notable about all the tracks that you guys sent over. So who did you do it with?

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I was privileged to have the opportunity to interview Ryan Bjornstad and Josh Hodges of Starfucker back in November, in the back room at the Vera Project prior to the Seattle show on their first ever nationwide tour. They had just swung through New York and CMJ and were about to hit the rest of the west coast after a week’s break in Portland.

Ultimately the interview proved to be the best that I’ve been involved with, revealing and in-depth, with both members being frank and honest about their previous band experiences, popularity and thoughts on the Portland music scene. As such I’ve included nearly the entirety of the 35 minutes of the interview in this post essentially unedited. It’s very conversational with alot of back and forth between the two, which makes for a long read, but I promise it’s worth it.

Ultimately Starfucker is a band that is always looking to have fun, and wants everyone else to have a little fun too, period. That a larger audience than their friends has grown for their music still seems almost unreal to them. That people are taking notice of a couple of guys who turned too much fun with looping pedals and fooling around the local DIY and house scene into another organically rising star out of the Portland scene still seems almost too much to believe.

Starfucker is playing the Vera Project this Friday, along with Guidance Counselor and Navigator vs. Navigator. The show is $9 ($8 with club card).

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Josh - SOTS: Tell me a little bit about Japan. How was it being the Portland ambassador to Japan?

Josh (SF): I don’t know man. I felt like someone fucked up and we Just got flown to Japan for free. And it was fun. And that was really it. It didn’t seem like what whatever someone was trying to do happened. Some how we got involved in a scam that worked out in our favor.

Ryan (SF): It did kinda seem like that because it was so disorganized. We never really knew what was going on half the time, unless we asked what was going on. I think it wasn’t necessarily their intention for that to happen.

Josh (SF): It was fun though. I think I’d like to live there.

Ryan (SF): I would have gone there no matter what, if it was paid or not. What happened with the show and all that stuff didn’t really make to much of a difference, it was the experience of the culture that was really nice.

SOTS: I saw your pictures. You guys were having fun with the signage… the english translations.

Ryan (SF): It was really weird. I don’t know if you saw that one picture that has Portland in the background. That was totally random. Jeff from Travel Portland, who was our cultural guide there, he was totally awesome, a really rad guy. He randomly asked his friend who was at this bar that we were at there if he knew anything about it, and it was actually his friend that had put it up.

Josh (SF): It said something weird too. Some girl on our myspace translated it as like “The Land of Commercial Success.”

Ryan (SF): The idea is i guess is that Portland is renowned for it’s for it’s urban growth boundaries, and these people in Japan are using it as an example for them. They really love Portland apparently.

SOTS: So CMJ. Did you guys get out of it what you thought to get out of it?

Josh (SF): We didn’t know what we were supposed to get out of it I don’t think. It was kind of all setup. We didn’t do anything to get those shows. We have a booking agent and he said “Oh yeah, you should play CMJ, I’ll make sure you can.” He hooked all these shows up.

It was fun though. We had three shows in one day. We were supposed to have four shows but one got canceled. It wasn’t as bad as i thought. Playing three shows. Driving around the city in our van that barely holds everything. It was fun. I think we all just love music. It’s just nice to be there.

CMJ was OK. I didn’t really watch many bands, except for Jay Reatard which is out in Brooklyn. So It was a little less hectic. It was fucking amazing. I just can’t even remember anything else. It was too mad. Craziness. Over by the Cake Shop and everything.

Ryan (SF): Plus, I think we viewed it as a nice break for us from being on the road. A lot of us viewed it as more like a vacation. Really hang out and get our bearings. So the madness of CMJ was at least for me, a little overwhelming at times. To be there when we’re not playing. But I definitely appreciate that…

I was talking to Josh earlier about this. But I really like the idea of this pilgrimage, all these bands from all across the United States, all going to this one place for these shows. For this one week of madness, or whatever, and then they all tour back out. And I imagine all the places around the country that don’t get to see a lot of good music, get to see a lot during that time. I like that idea.

SOTS: It seems that some bands go to South by Southwest with the idea that they’ll get noticed or notoriety or whatever. And that it’s one step. Somehow sort of randomly you guys sort of did. Just reading blogs as I read blogs… BrooklynVegan… Pitchfork did your video the other day. So it’s kind of organic. I thought that was really cool.

Ryan (SF): I feel like that’s how a lot of things have been going for us, alot of it happens really organically. Although there is some expectation with CMJ for a lot of bands, for us, we wanted to have fun and just play shows. To go there expecting notoriety or something is just setting yourself up for disappointment. There is just so much there. There is so much music, that it’s impossible to get “noticed,” unless your just having fun and doing what you normally do.

Josh (SF): I didn’t even know who BrooklynVegan was until we were out there. I don’t read blogs. Especially about music.

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Skeletons With Flesh On Them will be having a CD Release show for their debut full-length All The Other Animals this Saturday March 21 at the Comet Tavern with the Occupation, The Quit and Little Penguins. Last.fm is currently streaming All The Other Animals, and exclusively from this here blog you can take home an mp3 of the title track from the album below.

MP3: “All The Other Animals” by Skeletons With Flesh On Them from All The Other Animals courtesy of Skeletons With Flesh On Them

When I first heard the name “Skeletons with Flesh on Them,” I thought it was kind of cute, but maybe too cumbersome and smart for it’s own good. After having a sit down interview that I’ve excerpted below with lead singer and lyricist Scott Roots, I learned there is something to that name, and it is by no means a random choice. Reflective of Roots’ own fatalistic leanings and jaded world view, the name could almost be viewed as an homage to the humor of some of his favorite authors.

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SOTS (Josh): It seems like your attitude has changed a bit from the first record to the second record. The second record seems to be a bit more of a “Late Bush Years” type of record.

Scott: A late what?

SOTS: A Late Bush years kind of record. It definitely feels like we were aimless. The first record was kind of a free-flowing pop affair. And this one seems to be a little more thoughtful about our place in the world.

Scott: If you mean lyrically, that sort of thought drives what I do. It’s in all my writing song and otherwise. This unshakable feeling of impending doom. It’s a pretty apt sort of all encompassing theme for the band for me. You know, I don’t write very introspectively. I don’t write love songs. I don’t write about characters like Colin Meloy or Ben Gibbard. I just kinda write about this reoccurring theme.

It’s not uniquely in my subconscious. It’s in everybody’s subconscious, if you allow yourself to take in the data that’s coming in from every possible direction. Listening to of course the environment is the obvious one. Economically, of course, specifically now. Political news. It all just seems like we’re in a bad spot, and scientifically speaking we’re tailing down, we’re on the down-slope of civilization.

Josh: We’re in an age of information overload, and all the information is saying we’re not moving the right direction.

Scott: Yeah. (Laughs). By writing about it, it’s not solving anything. It’s just musing on something. It just makes me feel better, writing the ideas down. It’s the sort of stuff I’m drawn to in books and movies and music too. There’s tons of people talking about the same issues. For me even if we write a pop song, which we’re doing less and less of, it’s going to be the same lyrics. It’s not all of a sudden going to be about meeting a girl in a bus and falling in love or something. Or my childhood or something.

Josh: What sort of writers, I’ve seen all of your messages about David Foster Wallace, are there other writers that are inspirational too you?

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