Melvins: "The Water Glass"

Last year, sludge-rock band the Melvins released its 20th album (and third since linking up with Big Business members Jared Warren and Coady Willis). That album, entitled The Bride Screamed Murder, is emblematic of what the band has done its whole career: tweak its signature sound — part anthemic classic rock, part avant-garde heaviness — to present something entirely new yet quintessentially Melvins. That willingness to shake things up has been a major factor in the band's longevity.

After last year's release, the band undertook a tour in early 2011, playing a different album from its back catalog each night. As the saying goes, you get what you give, and in this case, the Melvins' 30-year history of experimentation has continually rewarded the band with new experiences. Dale Crover, drummer and founding member, recounts the band's some of the most memorable recent experiences below.

Endless Residency Tour
by Dale Crover

The Melvins did a residency every Friday night last January in Los Angeles. To make each show unique, we decided to play a different record from our ever-growing catalog of releases. It seemed to go over really well, and since we took the time to learn all these records, we decided to take it on the road. Here are some highlights from the "Endless Residency" tour.

Austin Texas: Austin shows are always great, except for the heat. It's 100 degrees out, and of course we're playing outside! The show goes well, but by the end, the "costume" that I'm  wearing feels like a soaking-wet sleeping bag. The next day we meet up with our friends from the band Honky to get lunch. Everyone I know that lives in Austin says that the BBQ downtown is average, and they know where the best is. We drive miles out of town to a place in Spicewood, Texas, called Opie's BBQ. We're greeted by a guy who opens a large trough with 10 different kinds of smoked meat. We let the Honky boys order for us, then sit down to stuff our faces. It was certainly worth the trip, and I highly recommend the spicy corn! After the feast, we stop by Willie Nelson's recording studio. Honky just recorded there. No Willie, but we  got the full tour, including seeing the tape vault with Red Headed Stranger master tapes! I was also highly impressed by the nine-hole golf course next door. Maybe we'll do our next record there!

Chicago: Last time we played the Double Door in Chicago, we were challenged to a Wiffle Ball home-run derby. We've been playing what we call "Hall Ball" for a few years now. The Double Door staff took notice and started their own version. Last year, we clearly won, but they wouldn't have it, so they cheated and claimed victory. Just like the 1919 Chicago Black Socks, who cheated in the World Series! I guess it runs in the family. These guys take their Wiffle Ball games seriously. Star Spangled Banner before the game, announcer/commentator — they even made Double Door Liquor uniforms this year! Unfortunately, we lost! We did end up talking them into letting Buzz [Osborne] pitch to them in the last inning. Fastball, inside: plunk! Fastball, inside: plunk! "Ooops, it got away from me!" We'll get you next year, ya bums!

Brooklyn, NY: Really? We're doing a photo shoot with Mick Rock? Wow! Iggy & the Stooges, Bowie, Queen and now Melvins! Wait a minute? This guy is a full-blown kook! We were warned that he will probably scream obscenities at us while shooting. Sure enough, "Buzz, you cunt, cunt, cunt! Suck it! Suck it! Suck it! Aaaaggghhhhh! Whew! I got off on it, I really did!" "You motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker!" Click, click, click. It was like a dirty version of an Austin Powers photo shoot. I was laughing my ass off the whole time! Our bassist, Jared [Warren] was visibly annoyed. "Your Hugh Grant charm isn't quite working for me." "Oh, please! Hugh Grant is a wanker!"  True, if he weren't who he was, we probably wouldn't have tolerated it. It would've been over in about two minutes. Also, we're not ones for embarrassing outdoor photo shoots. You can tell he comes from different times, obviously trying to get some kind of reaction, or whatever. I ended up really liking him. He told us that, at one time, David Bowie would do "anything, and I mean anything!!!!" People like Mick always have great stories.

Things seem to get weirder and weirder the longer we're a band, but fuck it! It beats the hell outta working at a pizza joint!

Avi Buffalo: "What's In It For?" (Avi Buffalo, Sub Pop, 4/26/10)

Talking to Avi Zahner-Isenberg over the phone from his adoptive home of Los Angeles, the singer/songwriter and frontman of Avi Buffalo holds a comfortable and nonchalant air of professionalism. It’s not surprising, considering that in a few hours, he’ll be playing the final show of his first headlining tour, a year-long journey that took him all over the country. It is surprising, however, that all of this is being taken in stride by a kid who redeems non-alcoholic drink tickets at venues because he’s still underage.

But without making too big a deal over Zahner-Isenberg's age, it still makes for a good jumping-off point to examine one of the best new indie-rock bands of 2010, whose self-titled debut album is full of dreamy, graceful songs built with depth and poise — an album that belies the adolescence behind it.

Like for most other kids growing up in sun-soaked Long Beach, California, life started out relatively normally for Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg, Avi for short. He spent time skateboarding and taking in the usual So-Cal activities that surrounded him, until, at 12 years old, young Avi was given his first guitar. Hours and days were poured into playing the guitar, and he never looked back to the half-pipes of which he previously dreamed. Soon, though he was barely in high school, Zahner-Isenberg found himself sitting in with blues great and club owner Joel Weinberg and with friends out on Huntington Beach, learning a style foreign to most of his schoolyard friends. “I just started hanging out there,” he recalls. “They invited me up and I just started playing with them.”

“I’ve learned a lot about finding a balance. You totally can and should take time for yourself to not fall apart.”

The training propelled his musical appetite, and soon he was branching out, forming his own projects while balancing music with school. When he was 15 years old, the young musician started writing his own material and recruited friends to put it all together. In the beginning, his music materialized under the monikers of 60 Watt Kid and Monogram — acts that, while fun, rarely did anything other than blow out a few ear drums.

“Really loud and abusive to the wah pedal,” Zahner-Isenberg remembers. It wasn’t until his band became Avi Buffalo that his true artistic persona came out and carried with it the depths of his songwriting.

“I really wanted to do quieter stuff, more acoustic-minded," he says. "I started recording in my room, really quietly, into a really hot mic." These early recordings struck a chord, and soon all that spasmodic jam music drifted away and Avi Buffalo came into focus. Soon, Avi Buffalo became a full band as drummer Sheridan Riley, pianist Rebecca Coleman, and bassist Arin Fazio — the only one out of high school at the time — all stepped in to expand and complement Zahner-Isenberg’s fluttery falsettos and delicate fretwork.

After this initial buildup, Avi Buffalo went electric, shoveling more fuel into the band's increasingly locomotive sound. “Shows all the time,”  Zahner-Isenberg recalls. “We were driving an hour each way, five nights a week playing shows, on school nights too.” Without knowing it, Avi Buffalo was setting itself up for the biggest payoff for which any young band could hope.

In 2009, the group got a call from local producer Aaron Embry, an artist and engineer who has worked with greats such as Willie Nelson and Elliott Smith. Embry was putting the final touches on a new home studio, and he decided that the group would be perfect to try out the space. It was a total shock to Avi Buffalo, who couldn’t say yes fast enough. Embry took a week to record the group and, according to Zahner-Isenberg, everything just fell into place.

One of its first demos, an ambling and nimble tune titled “What’s it in For?,” floored Embry, who immediately sent it down the line. Two weeks after graduation, Zahner-Isenberg and Coleman flew up to Seattle to play it for the folks at Sub Pop Records. The band got a deal, released its highly lauded debut effort, and set out on the road, opening for label-mates Vetiver and Beach House over that year. “It’s crazy to be done, actually," Zahner-Isenberg says. "It feels like that’s all we’ve known for so long.”

It was not a year without difficulty. Both Coleman and Fazio left the group within the past few months, both on good terms and likely ready to pursue a sense of normalcy. In the meantime, Zahner-Isenberg and Riley maintained a feverish pace, bringing in old friends to fill out the few remaining dates and trying their best to stay sane in such a nonstop environment. “It was wearing us down,” says the weathered frontman. “I’ve learned a lot about finding a balance. You totally can and should take time for yourself to not fall apart.”

With a bit of wisdom and a whole lot of excitement, Zahner-Isenberg is channeling his energy into a new album that will take an unfamiliar direction. Recognizing that things used to be different not so long ago, Avi Buffalo is ready to slow down and gather its wits. “We’re in a cautious place,” he admits. “We’ve done a lot. And there’s more reason now than ever to make new music.” Throughout the tour, Zahner-Isenberg says that he’s been writing music, and now that he’s back home, he’s taking classes, training himself to record, recruiting new bandmates, and opting to do things his way.

“The biggest risk I’m taking right now is probably not going to a producer," he says. "I know what I want to do, and this next album is going to be pretty different. I want to go back to those earlier, quiet recordings to get more intimate. If people really liked the parts of our last album that were happy, hopefully they’ll be disappointed.”

Having walked a fine line between cutesy twee aesthetics and dark, subtly complex interplay, Avi Buffalo is now in a position to show off its more mature side, to mark its maps and plot its course, rather than just take the ride. And, again, the nonchalance and young bravado of confidence comes through as Zahner-Isenberg looks to his next great adventure without a hint of any pressure.

Swans: "Eden Prison"

Swans: My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky

With Swans’ first studio album in 14 years, songwriter Michael Gira has sparked the incendiary fires of his best-known group for another push at the fertile boundaries of music. Having made a journey from raw, ritualistic purgation in the early 1980s, to carefully crafted soundscapes in the late ’90s, the newest incarnation of the Swans swaggers with refined violence and drags the listener into its beautiful and sonorous depths.

Declaring the Swans dead in 1997, Gira went on to acoustic explorations, both solo and with an ensemble under the name The Angels of Light, allowing him to work through his ideas on a more subtle level. The words, his presence, and the subtle nuances of sound came to the fore, no longer consumed by the notoriety surrounding the identity of the Swans. As the Angels of Light progressed, some of the old fire started to peek out again; Gira began returning to the innate energy that had fueled the Swans.

His 2010 solo release, I Am Not Insane, built on this feeling and also helped fund the reality of a new Swans record and tour. The limited-edition CDs, complete with hand-printed packages, sold out in two weeks. “I had a couple of hundred prepared three days before recording the new album,” Gira says. “I wasn’t prepared for them to go so fast.” To make up for the shortage, he went into overtime with his wife and daughter getting everything ready to send out.

"Playing live is about rediscovering the song and getting back to that place where the people are playing, the sound starts swirling."

Adorning select copies of I Am Not Insane with a golden swirl, Gira’s use of the ancient symbol for the labyrinth provides a poignant reflection for the Swans and for Gira himself. As he noted in his announcement, this is no reunion jag. Like the symbol of the labyrinth, this is a passage through an altered circle — Dante’s inferno — the progress of an artist having gone through hell and coming back out the devil’s mouth.

“This is the most vulnerable I’ve felt in years,” he says. “We’ve rehearsed very hard to pull this off. When you put together a new band, it has to become a band, and that takes time.” Many of the new songs that appear on I Am Not Insane are performed with just Gira’s voice and guitar, and in order to get the new Swans roster up to speed, he sent each of the musicians a copy and allowed them to start experimenting with their own additions. Though Gira has become something of a cult brand, it was important to him that this album represented the individual talents of the players.

To achieve this, Gira assembled hardened veterans of sonic exploration, reaching a realization of the possibilities that earlier Swans albums slyly suggested. Thor Harris, credited with drums, percussion, vibes, dulcimer, curios, and keys, is an accomplished carpenter, musician, and craftsman in his own right. Bill Rieflin was an integral part of Ministry and Revolting Cocks and is currently drumming for REM, as well as working on projects with guitarist Robert Fripp. Norman Westberg, Christoph Hahn, Devendra Banhart, Phil Puleo, Chris Pravdica, and “Grasshopper” of Mercury Rev — each helps this album come together as collective artistry.

My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, the group's raw return, was recorded with Jason LaFarge at Seizures Palace. In a stripped-down room of concrete walls and an unfinished ceiling, the band played 12 hours straight for most of the songs. It used the stone walls and high ceilings to accentuate overtones and harmonics. “There was no separation,” Gira says. “We recorded all of us in the room playing. It’s overwhelming to play it that way. It takes a lot of overdubbing to get back to the intensity of the room.”

Indeed, Gira’s expressive music explores the physical experience of sound itself. Both in and out of the studio, he addresses the physicality of sound, creating waves of powerful music.

On tour, this process becomes a more immediate exchange. “I don’t try to recreate what I do in the studio when I play live,” Gira says. “Playing live is about rediscovering the song and getting back to that place where the people are playing, the sound starts swirling — sometimes it takes whole tours to get to that point.”

“No Words/No Thoughts” introduces the album with a gentle percussion piece that builds in violent orchestration of squealing buzz saws. By the time Gira’s vocals come in, the listener’s brain has been scrapped, becoming a sonic Charon leading a journey across the river Lethe. Forget what came before; the Swans walk on.

The album moves through a carefully balanced mix of musical discordance and delicate harmonic play. Gira's respect for artists like Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan allows him to take this physical material into a place of intricacy. His vocals walk through landscapes of sound, pursued by occasional melodies and orchestral compositions.

As a songwriter, Gira builds from his experiences without nostalgia. Something as commonplace as visiting music websites becomes the beautiful, eerie duet between Banhart and his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter on “You Fucking People Make Me Sick.” “Jim” is built from his relationship with JG Thirwell of Foetus, Steroid Maximus, and Wiseblood, but the friendship is merely a source for sauntering rhythms and oblique wordplay.

Along with the official release, Gira created an instrumental mix of the album to explore the longer sonic elements that he’d wanted to put on the album. He describes the process as a “matter of layering bricks; it takes a long time, and grows organically — rushes of inspiration — but most of it is like hacking away with an ice pick.”

Of course, Gira remains busy with his 20-year-old label, Young God Records, which has issued releases by James Blackshaw, Fire on Fire, Lisa Germano, and Akron/Family in recent years. Running the label has allowed him to foster a number of young careers, but it also has fostered Gira’s artistic growth. And with My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, Gira and Swans emerge as elemental and potent from 13 years in the grave. Plans for the next album are already fomenting in Gira’s creative consciousness, and we can look forward to further visions of grace and power.

His recent work fully integrates the text — which is generally minimal — into the visual context of the image instead of displaying the text and image as two separate entities. Thus the image as a whole appears natural and undisturbed as it provides information to the viewer. In essence, instead of reading, the audience is viewing and absorbing the design.

Dan MacAdam: Wilco concert poster

Based out of Chicago, MacAdam places a strong emphasis on photography in his work, and generally, the screens for his prints are generated directly from an original photograph.

“My process is always focused on the print,” MacAdam stresses. “Even when I’m taking the photograph, I’m thinking about how the print is going to work, what inks I’m going to use, how I’ll get the most out of the process. It’s all about how do I make this physical thing, not how do I get this to look good on the computer screen.”

Dan MacAdam: Willie Nelson's Country Music

MacAdam is influenced primarily by musicians rather than visual artists. He is specifically drawn to music that suggests visual images, a concept that of course correlates to his line of work.

“I remember the first time I heard Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation when I was 17,” he says. “It completely blew my mind. In the sound and textures, and in the spaces between the notes, there were landscapes and structures, and I could see them. If I put on the headphones and closed my eyes, it was like they were right there in front of me. It opened my mind to a whole new way of listening and understanding music.”

MacAdam also notes his admiration for album artist Hipgnosis, who designed the album art for Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, as well as German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. The later artists’ influence can be seen clearly within MacAdam’s subject matter, which focuses heavily on industrial architecture. His images generally incorporate both industrial and rural elements, often focusing on a single building, vehicle, or architectural element into which vital text (such as the band’s name) is incorporated. The text often appears within MacAdam’s designs in the form of graffiti, signage, or building lettering, while his color palette is generally composed of natural and overcast tones, with the occasional insertion of an over-saturated hue for emphasis.

Dan MacAdam: "Fort #3"

In addition to creating an impressive portfolio of poster art for such bands as Phish, The New Pornographers, and Conor Oberst, MacAdam also designed the album art for Willie Nelson’s 2010 release Country Music. Earlier this summer, MacAdam’s work also was prominently featured in the publication Rock Paper Show: Flatstock Volume One, which documents and celebrates the success of Flatstock – the American Poster Institute’s showcase of rock posters since 2002.

Within MacAdam’s work, there is little evidence of humans or living creatures. Instead, the pieces focus solely on a single structure and its natural, isolated setting. Therefore the viewer is able to rest his or her eyes upon the prominent textures present within each print, the delicacy of the successfully rendered image, and the subtly placed text.

MacAdam doesn’t plan on simplifying his printing process anytime soon; he strives for improvement and continues to push the boundaries of his artistic abilities. “I’m mainly focused on becoming a better printer," he says. "The little nit-picky technical things that some people hate dealing with — I live for those challenges, and seek them out.”

Within the hour, he'll be out feeding his chickens, or pitching in to help with chores at Grandma Whitmore's beautiful old farmhouse not 200 feet away. She ever is the matriarch and family historian around here, with a background as colorful as a character in a Howard Hawks movie.

"There's a barn around here that was built in 1866 by a long-ago relative on my mom's side with lumber that he floated down the Mississippi himself," Whitmore says via phone from his Iowa roost during a lengthy shit-shooting session. We were supposed to meet in person, but a blizzard left him snowed in for nearly a week.

"It might be the oldest building in the county still standing," he says. "Everywhere I look, there are fingerprints of my forebears. This area is my spiritual center. I'm just fortunate to be its steward during my time here on Earth. It will be here forever; I'm just passing through."

This probably sounds idyllic if you're one of this country's innumerable city dwellers, looking through your kitchen windows at overstuffed dumpsters, brick walls, and parked cars, or a suburbanite surveying your property while a familiar set of golden arches looms large on the horizon, keeping constant watch over a buzzing hive of interstates, strip malls, and outlet stores. And in a very real sense, it is. Like your dad always told you growing up, there's something to be said for a life of hard work.

But Whitmore didn't grow up much different than the rest of us, spending his afternoons in town with his cousin and his brother, skateboarding and raising hell while Black Flag and Public Enemy cassettes played in the background.

On that same stretch of road where the local cops used to tell them to "move it along," there's now a tattoo parlor run by a friend of the family. Here, everybody is family.

And though the meeting places of rural Iowa might now be the tattoo parlor or the sports bar up the road, that mythic American Mayberry sense of knowing your fellow man and looking out for your neighbor is alive and well here — something put to the test this past summer when the whole town came together to save the local watering hole from the swiftly encroaching floodwaters of North America's biggest river.

But don't let him fool you. Though a farm-boy heart beats proudly in his chest, William Elliott Whitmore has toured the world with nothing more than a banjo and a guitar for company. He learned French for an enthusiastic crowd in Paris, and has traveled from Copenhagen to Amsterdam to London, making all the stops between.

"I remember playing my first show in Rome," he says. "I'd never been to Italy. As kind of an icebreaker, I told the crowd how I'd recently played a show in Rome, Georgia, which was this cool little town where I'd been booked at an abandoned train depot that everybody said was haunted. They got a kick out of that."

Can we call a whirlwind elephantine? No? Well, SXSW was huge, it was bewildering, and it went by fast, and I'm not absolutely sure here, but I think it liked peanuts.

Trying to get a handle on the whole thing from one solitary sleep-deprived person's perspective brings up the proverbial blind men with the elephant. Alarm, of course, was holding an ear.

The weather gods, at least, seem to like the idea of SXSW; after a week of cold rain, the sun shone down on four days of festivities, sending the New Yorkers and Chicagoans home clutching real estate brochures in sunburnt hands. One local band wisely counseled the tourists to make a second recon in August before signing anything.

The most striking thing about SXSW this year was how much it seemed to be leaking: there are entire well-stocked auxiliary festivals happening out of bounds. Free day shows, unofficial showcases, renegade music in every little pocket of Austin.

Even a healthy number of the official happenings were wide open to the non-braceleted, un-badged masses. Without pay and with very little hassle, you could catch the Circle Jerks, M. Ward, Alejandro Escovedo, Explosions in the Sky, Cursive, Monotonix, Billy Joe Shaver, etc. etc.

Anyone with the entire festival thrown open to them was liable to end up a gibbering, indecisive wreck, wandering up and down 6^th street with a schedule the approximate size and weight of the NYC phone book. Without the use of powerful computers, it was impossible to consider all of your options at any given time.

Luckily, we have powerful computers: the geeked-up site Sched.org would help you filter through 2,742 offical Music Events, as well as 2,427 unofficial, 488 panels, and 200 parties, to make a personalized plan, one that you would scrap as soon as your evening began. (Still this didn't include events happening at SXSanJose, at the hipster hotel paradise in south Austin, where about forty acts played over the course of the festival.)

As usual, some big names showed up; PJ Harvey played Stubb's (as part of a awkward lineup: Harvey, then the Indigo Girls, then Third Eye Blind; a evening designed to appeal to the massive demographic of frat-boy punk hipster lesbians), the Decemberists enjoyed another press coronation, the New York Dolls were around, (though making a smaller splash than expected), Perry Farrell, Devo, Kanye West, etc., etc., etc., all distracting to various degrees from the stated purpose of SXSW, namely, to provide a platform for the up and comers.

And there were lines: one of my major tactical errors occurred on night one, when I waited in line with some astonishingly pretty people to see the Harlem Shakes; their buzz ensured that they could be named the Stark Naked Emperors and we'd all try to enjoy them anyway. I couldn't do it.

Phosphorescent's show at De Ville was another thing altogether: no line, but a deliriously happy crowd, loving the raucous, party-in-church treatment of Willie Nelson covers from their recent tribute To Willie. "Well, goddamn it, Austin,"

Phosphorescent/lead singer Matt Houck said, as close to beaming as the man can come, "they're cutting us off." It was true: he clearly would have stayed for hours, but he had to close right then, with a feverish version of "The Party's Over". "Turn out the lights/the party's over/and tomorrow we'll start the whole thing over again," he sang, calling to mind Kurt Cobain wailing through "In the Pines". It was too early to peak, but my SXSW didn't get any better than that.

Although: Danish band Efterklang proved that sometimes buzz is justified, Rafter proved that he has yet to translate that enormous live talent to record, Mojo Nixon still brings a white trash party, The Gourds continue to be Austin's best band who elsewhere hide beneath the shadow of their novelty cover ("Gin and Juice"), Ty Segall did something undefinable but wonderful to garage punk, Zoroaster's drummer is a god with a tattooed neck, M. Ward is still better than you think (even after you've heard eight million times how good he is), and Peelander-Z are as weird as they pretend to be.

And The Delta Spirit's song "People C'mon" will soon be as unavoidable as Snow Patrol's "Run", and Deer Tick may be thinking he is Paul Westerberg, but he'll find out those times are past.

Questions we're left with: do bands still get signed from this? Has SXSW become the music equivalent of Sundance, a basically false indie parade, with buzz predetermined by dollars and star power? (Well: no. But isn't it fun to ask?)

Why are bands slotted to play twelve times? How could Homeslice Pizza run out of pizza? Can we avoid saying "in this economy"? Apparently not.

Lesson for next year: make no attempt at understanding the elephant. Grip the ear and hang on.

On 12/31/00, dropped-D alt-rockers Hum played their final show in Chicago, appearing with the Flaming Lips at the Metro.  Now, eight years to the date, the group reconvenes in the Windy City for a double dose of reunion performances.

ALARM intercepts transmissions from Hum singer Matt Talbott and bassist Jeff Dimpsey before these impending shows, the first of which is tonight at Chicago's Double Door.

The Champaign-Urbana, IL quartet, known widely for its 1995 hit, "Stars," wrote what local illustrator and Dianogah bassist Jay Ryan called "enormous songs about astronauts, whales, and girls."

It released four accessible yet feedback-and-metal-suffused records from 1991-1998. Its major label debut, You'd Prefer An Astronaut, the one with "Stars" on it, sold over 250,000 copies in a few months.

Hum's last Chicago show was at the Metro on New Year's Eve in 2000. Since officially disbanding, the group has played a spate of shows, mostly in Champaign, but its members' busy professional and family lives — as well as their separate musical projects (Centaur, Gazelle) — have made a Chicago return impossible.

This year they've decided to make it work. For a band with such intense, intricately arranged songs, its members are surprisingly casual about all things Hum. "It's not personally important for me [to play again with Hum]," says singer Matt Talbott. "It just sounded like fun."

We caught up with Talbott and bassist Jeff Dimpsey over the course of two weeks in early December.

Matt, how easy or difficult has it been to access the feelings behind the Hum lyrics you wrote so many years ago?

Talbott: I think one of the most difficult aspects of doing a show like this is rediscovering meaning in songs you wrote a long time ago, when you were perhaps a slightly different person.

The audience can't have a legitimate emotional experience if you're not having one, you know? Otherwise you might as well be putting your energy into a Foghat tribute band working the county fair circuit. Which, now that I think about it, actually sounds kinda cool. Maybe that's a bad example.

I've found it easier than I expected to access the original intent of my lyrics, and, in some cases, I find the same lyrics articulating new ideas, offering new interpretations of experiences I've had in the many interim years since I wrote them.

It's probably only possible because most of my stuff walks that fine line between impressionism and pure mountain gibberish.

How did Chicago's music scene influence Hum while you were writing records?

Dimpsey: I don't think that the Chicago scene influenced us, though who knows — all experiences are folded back into oneself. We played a lot of shows in Chicago, and with bands from Chicago, and Electra 2000 was recorded at Idful Studios. But if there was a musical scene from a larger town that we felt a kinship with, it was probably the scene in Kansas City at that time.

What about Kansas City did you connect with?

Talbott: There are more dirt bags out there. It's an evil place. We just seemed to fit in better and were always made to feel very welcome.

Ian Mackaye recently said that music shouldn't be your job. You should get a job and then make music because you need to. What's your reaction to Ian's comment?

Dimpsey: I suspect that this is a common thought, that there's a purity to creating art, and that any sort of compensation involved, especially the monetary kind, somehow must taint the output for the worse. I'm not sure that I agree.

I'm glad that many musicians can and have concentrated on their musical output fully without the distraction of a non-musical job. Artists such as Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Brian Eno, Willie Nelson and many, many more. I assume that these artists make music because they need to. I think that the world would be a much less rich place if artists like these were trying to write and record on evenings and weekends.

Continue reading Jarrett Dapier's interview with Hum.

The Jesus Lizard

With its first performances since 1999, pummeling mid-tempo rock icons The Jesus Lizard will briefly reunite to play at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, UK in May of 2009. The group's original lineup will be present and play a short series of additional dates that culminates in Chicago next November.

Idiosyncratic rapper Busdriver performs live with a jazz-crossover band called Kneebody tonight in Los Angeles. Pigeon John also performs and tickets are only $10, so don't miss it!

Instrumental violin-centered trio Dirty Three will perform its beautiful fan-favorite album Ocean Songs at All Tomorrow's Parties in New York in 2009.

Comprised of vocalist J. Bannon (Converge), Dwid Hellion (Integrity), and Stephen Kasner (Blood Fountains), Irons is billed as an artistic, nonlinear expression of melancholy through electronics, guitars, and vocals. The trio has announced the impending release of a split 12" with Pulling Teeth.

Minimalist folk group Phosphorescent has recorded a full-length covers collection of Willie Nelson tunes titled To Willie. The group will tour this winter and spring.

One-man grind project Toxic Holocaust will assemble in band form for January tour dates with 3 Inches of Blood and Early Man. Currently, Toxic Holocaust is touring with GWAR.

Andrew Bird's deluxe edition of Noble Beast, due out on January 20, is available to pre-order through Fat Possum Records. The deluxe edition includes a second disc, Useless Creatures, that includes new instrumental works.

Rhymesayers has posted the video for "The Truth," the single from Jake One's great new album, White Van Music, that features Freeway and Brother Ali.

Beginning today, you can download the Christmas single "Beam Mig Op, Jesus" by Danish rockabilly weirdos Powersolo via iTunes or Clicktrack.

Groove trio Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is playing a New Year's Eve show in Tulsa in which the featured performers play the tunes of Prince, Lionel Richie, and Michael Jackson. Get down.

“I can’t even relate to that person,” Thorburn says, speaking softly and in measured tones. “I was such an adolescent. It was fun. It was a good thing to go through. But I can’t relate to that me at all, musically or otherwise. I feel like so many people still mention or reference The Unicorns when talking to me or about me. I don’t think that [Islands] has quite yet earned its own reputation. I think that’s what this record is going to do. It’s so drastically different from who I was in The Unicorns. I think this record will really be in our own place."

Illustrating his point, Islands’ sophomore album, Arm’s Way, is a remarkably assured work of pop craftsmanship, honing the creaky sprawl of 2006’s Return to the Sea into glistening orchestral arrangements and proggy detours. Gone are the creaky textures and yelping vocals of their debut, here replaced with trilling strings, growling knots of guitars, and exacting choruses that wiggle away right before you start to sing along. There’s dance music, Bowie referencing space pop, and some theatrically surging hooks that could have fit on the The Who Sell Out. The shades of world music — Caribbean, Eastern European, African — remain, as does Thorburn’s taste for a visceral assortment of bursting veins and lifeless carcasses, but everything on Arm’s Way is bigger, bolder, and more exaggerated. Whereas Thorburn and Thompson used their first album to experiment with whatever they could find and whoever wanted to join them, this time every note would be locked down with exactitude. Anyone waiting for a punch line will be disappointed.

“When we made the first record, it was just Jamie and myself, and there was no band to speak of,” Thorburn explains. “It was more of a project, and we just had friends and musicians in Montreal come by and lay down guitar or keyboard or bass. We didn’t really have a band. And then after we made the record, we found these musicians and put the band together. Jamie left the band, but aside from that, everyone that reassembled immediately after making the record is still with us. It was a little premature, as far as a band goes, but I think that makes this record that much stronger and cohesive because of the band jelling.”

Of course, losing Thompson was no small event in the band’s history, as he was Thorburn’s collaborator and confidante, the only security blanket he had leftover from his days as a teenage pop terrorist. Though he’d move quickly to find a replacement drummer, the psychological hole Thompson’s departure left temporarily put the band’s future in jeopardy, leaving Thorburn to wonder if he was going to have to start yet another project for what was becoming his newest art-pop opus.

“I was pretty heartbroken and despondent,” Thorburn admits. “I felt pretty rejected. I got over it. It wasn’t about me. It was about Jamie’s decision to not be a part of that whirlwind machine anymore, where you’re constantly on the road and don’t have any foundation. That was becoming less and less appealing for him. We sorted through our differences, and we’re pretty close now. We’re working on a rap record now, and I respect his decision as much as I can. It was pretty shaky for a minute there, but I think that it was actually the best thing that could happen for me and this band. It was one of those things that make you stronger."

Provided with another starting-over point, Thorburn and the rest of Islands wasted no time in following the detailed blueprint he had in his mind for Arm’s Way, going into the studio with a set of songs that had been perfected in their rehearsal space and tested on tour for a past year and a half. With producer Ryan Hadlock (Stephen Malkmus, Blonde Redhead) pushing him to be more deliberate with his vocals, Thorburn is a commanding presence, his confidence matched by the bombastic sprawl of the arrangements. With the exception of “Creeper,” a song that took shape in the studio, Islands’ follow-up album was more or less written just as their Return to the Sea was hitting “Best of 2006” lists. The man who had found fame shortly after figuring out a few guitar chords is now a serious auteur, creating a perfectly controlled album-length meditation on loss and longing where every song rises and falls with calculated precision to form a perfectly balanced whole. Indie rock’s clown prince has grown up.

“I’m not willy-nilly about making music, or even Willie Nelson about it,” he laughs. “I have an understanding of a concept or a conceptual whole, and I knew going into this record that there were certain lyrical themes that were repeated and lyrical moods that were constantly running through them. But I didn’t over-think it. It’s not like I sat down and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to write some songs for the new record!’ It just so happened that they were related, and maybe all the songs that I’ll ever write are going to be related to each other. I’m always writing, and it’s like a good puzzle where you have to find out how all the pieces fit. That was the idea for Arm’s Way, to make it work as a whole but not think about it too much. It’s just fortunate that it did work.”

But before he even went into the studio, Thorburn had to decide just what album he wanted to make, as his prolific writing pace had outstripped his ability to record everything in a timely manner. “We had a bunch of songs that we were playing out live for the past two years that ended up not being appropriate,” he says. “We had twelve other tracks, a whole other album of material, that didn’t fit. It wasn’t where we were going musically as a band. Some of the songs are really indicative of where we think we fit in. A song like ‘In the Rushes,’ that’s really where our heads are at these days, just moody and long instrumental parts that progress and parts that change and lyrics that are oblique but morbid. It’s one of my good qualities to know what works and what doesn’t without deliberating too much or hemming and hawing. I have too much time on my hands, I guess.”

That decisiveness has now blessed him with an excess of forty new songs through which he has to sort while the world is still catching up with his newest batch of twelve. And just as he turned toward excess and exploration with Arm’s Way, he promises that his current tastes are pulling him in yet another direction. “The songs I’ve got up my sleeve now are much shorter and much more straight-ahead, but I think that I’m just broadening my palette a bit. I think Islands is open to accepting all kinds of songs. I don’t want to be limited to doing pop psychedelia or proggy whatever. There are all sorts of possibilities. Everyone in the band has an influence on that too. Everyone has their own background and interests and musical tastes, and it all comes out.”

Whatever the case, Thorburn now presides over an expanding body of work that no one—least of all he—could have imagined only three years ago. As fascinating as The Unicorns were, it’s hard to sustain a career that’s based half on music and half on high jinx, making it far more likely we’d tire of his shenanigans than find him making albums as dazzling and vividly imagined as Arm’s Way. His creative restlessness, the one character trait that he shares with that impish teen, might just become his legacy.

“I find I have a thing where I reject work that I’ve done and put out, and quickly move on from that,” he explains. “That can be to my detriment or it can be a good thing, if it means that I’m trying to constantly grow and evolve as an artist. I think this album is way different than the last one, and it’s where I’m at as an artist and where the band is as well. I have no way to know what the objective impression of the record is,” he says, wavering for a moment. “The first album is really a dinky, wimpy, and poorly recorded album of jingly jangly throwaway tunes that I don’t really relate to anymore,” he says flatly. “Which is weird, because when making that record, I remember distinctly rejecting the idea of making a rock record. I had no desire to make music that was loud and annoying and arrogant and macho, but…eh…things change. I’m sure I’ll keep fluctuating.”