An Interview With Lambchop

Lambchop have been attributed the tag of "the most consistently brilliant and unique American group to emerge during the 1990s". Kurt Wagner still can't believe people turn up to his gigs. Finbarr Bermingham had a word with the head honcho and found out that he really is "just a dude"

A conversation with Kurt Wagner is a lot like listening to him sing. His voice wavers between a deep throaty growl and a gentle higher pitched whisper, depending on how interested he is in the question. From time to time he'll get excited, but since undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous growth from his throat a few years back, it's doubtful he'll ever be able to replicate the joyous falsetto that graced Nixon and Is A Woman. Instead he just laughs straight from the gut. Wagner in 2008 seems a happier man than back in '06, for plainly obvious reasons. I refer him to the closing track from Lambchop's last album Damaged, The Decline Of Country & Western Civilisation, in which he seemed to have a pop at some of his more illustrious peers.

"Certainly I threw a few punches out in that direction, but I think it was more about how frustrated I was then. You know, here's a guy who's just got diagnosed with all these problems and one of the things that happens is that you just lash out. It's one of the stages you go through. One of them is anger, one of them is denial, then self-pity. I was so young and I was having to deal with this shit that I didn't think I'd have to worry about for a long time."

Video: Slipped, Dissolved and Loosed

Lambchop have been making music for 20 years. What started out as a hobby amongst drinking buddies in Wagner's Nashville basement gradually gathered momentum, with the band enjoying popularity in Europe and the UK long before they'd established themselves in the States. When asked why they don't seem to attract the same veneration at home, he is nonplussed. "I've yet to figure out a fucking answer!" he laughs, "Maybe then we could change things a little bit!"

Throughout the first decade of Lambchop, Wagner balanced his musical pastime with a job laying wooden floors, taking time off to play European shows on his own. It's this background that has instilled a certain work ethic and modesty in the songwriter. "I can't afford myself the luxury of thinking I'm worth more than I actually am. Everyday I've gotta look in the mirror and I'm like, 'Come on guys!' If I did, then I wouldn't be me." All the while Wagner's words are embellished with long wheezy bursts of laughter. "I'm still amazed that people show up at all. Man, I'm just a dude doing my thing!"When it comes to his music, however, there's a firm self-assuredness lurking beneath the modest exterior. Lambchop's new album OH (Ohio) is one Wagner is particularly pleased with. "I don't wanna blow my own trumpet, but it's a good record. I'm really happy with it," is his succinct recommendation. The title of the album stems from the air of uncertainty in the USA around the time of recording.

"Ohio is a swing state, [but] I'm not trying to be overtly political or anything, that's just what was happening." Wagner's concern regards the recent surge in support for Republican nominee, John McCain. "I haven't been there since this big shift happened. I'm walking around here wondering what the hell's going on, I guess like you. I don't know what I'm going back to." He rounds the sentence off, as ever, with a trademark laugh - only this one is a little bit more nervous than the others.




Video: Up With People

An Interview With Death Cab For Cutie

Death Cab Have The Facts, And They're Voting Change

The USA is in its biggest economic crisis in years. Hurricanes are literally tearing the country's infrastructure apart. The upcoming election is the most pivotal in years. Oh, and there's a war going on? Finbarr Bermingham finds Death Cab For Cutie's Chris Walla with a head full of steam

"I'm sitting in my truck in the car park of the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada." Symbols of Americanism don't normally manifest themselves as boldly as that. "It's pretty intense," admits Chris Walla, lead guitarist and producer for Washington state indie-pop stalwarts Death Cab For Cutie. But partisan symbolism isn't something he's too comfortable with right now. "It's a troubling and complicating time to be a progressive American," he sighs, his resigned tone speaking volumes.

Over a lifespan of seven albums, Death Cab For Cutie have carved themselves an educated and attractive niche; one filled with irresistible melodies and impressively literate song writing. Transatlanticism, Plans and most recent offering Narrow Stairs are a catalogue of safe but sound twee-tinged tunefulness, but not some of the hardest hitting records put to press. Yet despite being affable and polite throughout, Walla's conversation is at odds with the niceties of his band. To go with his ear for a sugar-coated melody comes a keen eye for politics, bulging at the socket and baying for reform.

"A John McCain presidency runs the risk of being potentially worse than the last couple of years of Bush's reign have been," he states matter-of-factly. "He is so angry and so committed to the destruction of Iran. In the same way that George W really had it out for Iraq in 2003, I think McCain has got it out for Iran and I don't think there is any way around this."

Having appeared on the Vote For Change Tour in 2004 in support of John Kerry alongside more illustrious politico-musicians Springsteen and Stipe, Walla's fear of another Republican tenure in the West Wing is hardly surprising. But his viewpoint is certainly not blinkered. Speaking to The Skinny around the time of the Democratic Primaries in June of this year, his frustration with former prospective candidate Hillary Clinton is almost as impassioned as his fiery mistrust of McCain.

Video: Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart

"It's mathematically impossible for Clinton to win the nomination for the Democratic Primary in any conventional sense and yet she is continuing to run. She's started to run her campaign the way Bush has run his whole presidency; by ignoring the facts; by operating as though everything's great and by hammering away on her opponent relentlessly. It's so hideous and tiring. There was so much excitement at the beginning of this primary season. Everybody was energised in a way that I haven't known in my lifetime and that excitement is quickly waning."

With retrospect we can now see that Mrs Clinton has fallen into the party line, tail between her legs. The energy Walla had feared was lost has been recaptured in the form of Barack Obama's trailblazing campaign of glitz and glamour as he prepares to lead the Democrats into what promises to be a pivotal, if bitter and tense final stretch. With both sides picking at the issues of credit crunch, Bin Laden and global warming like vultures, trying desperately to endear themselves to the electorate, it's easy to forget, Walla says, that thousands of miles away there's a real war going on, one not based wholly on rhetoric.

"We've got 130,000 troops overseas and the war doesn't make headlines in the States. You can go 3 or 4 days and lift any newspaper anywhere in the country and not see a front page story about Iraq or Afghanistan. The reason? Well in marketing terms, it doesn't react well with the public at large. Nobody is really that interested. People are running the news industry as though it were the entertainment industry. It's so sad because so many kids are overseas fighting for something, but it's so unclear as to what they're fighting for. Clearly they're incredibly brave patriotic kids. But what the hell are we doing?"

Video: Death Cab For Cutie - Cath

Walla seems unafraid of putting anyone's nose out of joint, politically at least. And whilst it may be fashionable for musicians to take a pop at Congressmen, it should be noted that since they first came to prominence around the turn of the century, Death Cab have always been fiercely independent. Signing to Atlantic Records in 2004 was viewed as a move that could have alienated fans who’d been with the band since the outset. So much so, in fact, that it prompted front man Ben Gibbard to issue a statement to reassure them. “The only thing that will change,” he promised, “is that next to the picture of Barsuk (the band’s longtime home before the move) holding a "7", there will be the letter "A" on both the spine and back of our upcoming albums.” According to Walla, though, the transition was not as painless as they might have expected.

“I think the biggest pressure came with Plans. That record felt like making a record for a major label. It felt big. It felt important. It felt like something critical was about to happen and there was really this sense of anticipation and anxiety about it and I think we played that down at the time. We didn't really recognise what it was and what it felt like."

Despite Plans being released to critical acclaim, Walla thinks it is the sound of Death Cab trying too hard to be Death Cab. The “coming to terms with it,” as he puts it, took place after the record. After a three year hiatus, in which both he and Gibbard took their solo material on the road, the band reconvened, more settled and comfortable with their status as a major label act. From Walla’s perspective, the results (this year’s Narrow Stairs) are a better representation of what the band are all about.

“Making this record felt so much more like making a Death Cab record. We did it in places that are familiar to us. It was just so much more comfortable than the last record. I feel like we have a confidence about us now that I don't know that we've ever had before. I don't think its cockiness and I don't think it's particularly brash. I just think it's… well, I think that for the first time, we completely know what we're doing.”

Video: Death Cab For Cutie - A Lack Of Colour

Tenebrous Liar - Tenebrous Liar's Last Stand Album Review

Tenebrous Liar's second album combines the lo-fi indie of Slint with the post punk misery of Joy Division to great effect

Alongside Everett True, Tenebrous Liar's lead singer Steve Gullick is widely acknowledged for his role in bringing underground American music to UK audiences in the early 1990s. We shouldn't be surprised, then, that his musical ventures are clandestine, grave and melancholic affairs. With his vocals deep in the mix of dystopian guitar hooks and solemn drumbeats, it's at times difficult to decipher what Gullick's singing about. But it's safe to say it's pretty, well, tenebrous. The band's second album, Last Stand, at times recalls the miserable post-punk of Joy Division and occasionally the lo-fi indie of Slint's brilliant Spiderland. Alongside the excellent instrumental jam Sour, Alight stands out as the album's highlight; the fuzzy undercurrent of a rising guitar eventually cedes to a coherent riff - one of the few moments of clarity on an album that seems to revel in confused and formless depression. One of the darkest albums of the year.

4/5

Greg Weeks - The Hive Album Review

Espers frontman flirts with prog rock and freak folk on impressive solo album

Through his work with Philadelphia's Espers and various solo collaborations, Greg Weeks is often conveniently lumped in with Devendra Banhart and his raggle-taggle bunch of freak folk nomads. His third solo album, The Hive, certainly won't estrange him from that movement; however, Weeks' sauntering blend of baroque-tinged prog rock and cosmic folk suggests he draws just as heavily from the courts of King Crimson as he does from more conventional folksy types Pentangle and Fairport Convention. Weeks' songwriting spans the centuries: the hats of court minstrel and new-age hippy fit equally comfortably, united by a dominant array of keyed instruments and splashes of whistles and flutes. But it's his attempt at contemporariness that is the album's weakest point - a nauseating, slowed down take on Madonna's Borderline. Whilst not as captivating as his work with Espers, The Hive is an enjoyable album that shows the New Weird America front still has plenty to offer.

3/5

Brightback Morning Light - Motion To Rejoin Album Review

Desert dwelling hippies return for another album of perfectly pedestrian goodness

Occasionally, records come along that reflect perfectly the place from which they emerged. Adynamic duo Brightblack Morning Light are based in the New Mexican desert and appropriately, their music is mono-paced, self contained and unashamedly lethargic. It's as if they refuse to step up a gear for fear of burnout. Much like their eponymous debut album, though, Motion To Rejoin’s apathy to upping the tempo is what makes it so ultimately enjoyable; to get worked up about it would be missing the point. Instead, sit back, relax and let yourself become intoxicated by the languid blues, the bursts of gospel (Another Reclamation) and the warm, asphyxiating psychedelia (Hologram Buffalo) that converge on this utopian delta of Southern American sounds. None of these genres, though, emerge victorious from Motion To Rejoin: none can escape the hoover-like haze that consumes each one, fashioning a record of coagulated, comforting sonic valium.

4/5

MGMT For Dummies - An Interview With MGMT

The year 2008 has been good to Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, aka MGMT. I met them before a show in Glasgow at the beginning of 2008, just before their trajectory was changed to super-stardom and they were timid, confused and slightly nervous. The results are below.


MGMT For Dummies


Maybe Google isn't the most reliable information source in the world, as Finbarr Bermingham found out when he sat down with Brooklyn duo MGMT and accused them of being a couple of recovering acid heads

Remember those AOL advertisements that ran just a short while ago? "Is the Internet a good or a bad thing?" they asked us in rather one-dimensional fashion. Up until recently, this trusting scribe thought the campaign was a no-brainer... surely such an endless source of information could only be a good thing?

When catching up with Yankee trailblazers MGMT in Glasgow before their debut Scottish gig recently, gleefully armed to the back teeth with a Google-mined lowdown on the band, my head was turned: "So I read somewhere that you guys were both pretty heavy acid users?" It is enthusiastically put to the duo. The responding hoots of disbelief suggest otherwise. "Who the hell said that?"

In their mercurial ascendancy, a great deal has been written about MGMT; we now know that much of it is false. And having had our fingers burned, it seems prudent to give MGMT some chance to set the record straight. So let's take it from the top.

MGMT (formerly pronounced Management, but not anymore) are Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, both 25, both music graduates of Wesleyan College, Connecticut. It’s a place they describe as "a great little hippy school. There were a lot of cool kids making a lot of cool art." Encountering them for the first time in the deserted upstairs bar of the Beat Club, the bearded Goldwasser, more aesthetically introverted, is donning a new jumper, the front of which is boldly dominated by some sort of woodland creature. "I picked it up in a charity store in London", he beams, "you like it?" VanWyngarden on the other hand, is every inch the art student. Rake thin, big glam hair and draped in trinkets, he could be the love child of Marc Bolan and Mystic Meg. Certainly, neither of their appearances betrays nerves, but when the questions start coming, the awkward sideways glances and embarrassed laughter suggest otherwise.

“You start,” says VanWyngarden.

“No, it’s your turn,” is the comeback from Goldwasser.

After meeting in 2001, the pair bonded over a love of Sonic Youth and began making electronic music together shortly after. "We started playing really short little shows of loops of music that we made - 15 minute loops. They were weird. Not exactly performance art, but messy antagonistic shows," recalls Goldwasser, after the band finally settles on who should talk us through their early days. Compared to the flamboyance and confidence their music now exudes, their earlier efforts were meeker and their live shows shambolic. "We had less faith in our musical abilities," VanWyngarden picks up: "We tried to entertain people in non-musical ways."

It was through one of these shambolic early performances, though, that the band made a useful acquaintance in Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes. VanWyngarden takes up the story, "We met them at a bar in Athens, Georgia. I was being a drunken ass and I went up and told him I wanted to be in Of Montreal. I said I was gonna drop out of school, but I didn't even know them. Then they came to one of our shows... we were playing in a kitchen. Me and Ben were doing a karaoke style gig and they really liked it. So they let us come and open up a couple of shows for them, and that's where the friendship started." A bold move by VanWyngarden, and one that seems totally at odds with our initial nervy introductory exchanges, seems to have led to a lucky break MGMT have not looked back from. Hence the slightly apologetic admission that the band "never really went through the ‘paying your dues period’ of being in a band, like playing in front of 6 people every night."

Despite MGMT acknowledging their early good fortune, it would be wrong giving Lady Luck all of the credit for the band's ascent. The song that brought the band to the public eye, and perhaps more importantly, to the attention of their monolithic bankrollers Columbia Records, is Time To Pretend, a sardonic tale of rockstar overkill and burnout. The band, slowly finding their conversational rhythm and perhaps finding comfort in the fact that this particular hack has come blissfully ill-informed, refute any suggestion that the song is autobiographical, or indeed, that the band are unholy acid heads. "I don't think we'd be this coherent if we were," retorts Andrew. "The song is quite tongue in cheek lyrically. When we wrote it, we weren't expecting to be signed to a label or anything; we were just these goofy college boys singing about being rockstars."

Goldwasser continues the conversation, “I guess listening to us for the first time we can come across as a little cocky. Sort of like “Hey! Look at us, we’re rock stars!” But when we wrote it we were totally goofing off.”

For better or for worse though, rock stars they now are and apparently, it’s not just journalists who are mistaking them for a stereotype. VanWyngarden’s father, it seems, has been perusing similar sites: “I got this email from my dad when we were in France saying ‘don’t shoot heroin!' I’m like 'get off my back, dad, I’m not gonna shoot up!’” Whilst not ostensibly stressed, there’s a clear sense that the band are concerned with the perception their misleadingly projected image may portray at home.

“We like to party as much as anyone,” Ben admits gingerly, “but we’re not speed freaks or anything. I don’t want a person saying anything that’s untrue or misleading about us, it just makes me feel bad. I shouldn’t be offended because that’s what people do. They manipulate the facts to make their own end. So if they want to make us out bad and say we are druggy freaks, well there’s not much we can do.”

Ballyhoo aside, once you peel back the layers of hype, there is the small matter of a debut album to deal with. Oracular Spectacular (the title being the result of an Internet search for ‘mystical bullshit’) is a matter MGMT seem much more pleased to discuss. “Anyone who’s listened to our album is not going to pigeonhole us easily stylistically,” Goldwasser boasts. It’s fair to say the band cover substantial musical ground over the course of the LP (VanWyngarden lists their collective influences as anything from The Legendary Pink Dots to Spaceman 3), which is without doubt a fantastic fusion of pomp, funk and electro-kitsch. And once the cyber-dust has settled and the rumour mill moves on, Oracular Spectacular will still be here, testament to two mommy’s boys from Brooklyn, who just happen to be rockstars.

Turn Out The Bright Lights - An Interview With Interpol

This interview took place at T In The Park 2007 in Balado, Kinross. I spoke to Interpol's lead guitarist and songwriter Daniel Kessler in the press tent and he was visibly unimpressed by his surroundings. The article appeared on the front cover of Fest Magazine in August 07.

Lesson number one: Never ask a member of Interpol if he thinks his band sounds like Joy Division. Finbarr Bermingham learned that the hard way...

Before an all too familiar backdrop of summer rain, Fest caught up with Interpol lead guitarist and songwriter in chief, Daniel Kessler. "Welcome to Scotland. Have you had a chance to play in the mud yet?" It is put to him enthusiastically. "No. Not yet," comes the deadpan response. His tone of voice suggests playing in the mud is not a very Interpol thing to do.

Head to toe in black, black shades (no sun), perfectly coiffed (black) hair and sporting designer stubble, Kessler does little aesthetically to banish the "cool" image that has come to define the band. The very mention of Ian Curtis, however, hits an unexpectedly exposed nerve. "You know what? It has absolutely nothing to do with me. I don't know where that shit comes from, and I have no answer to that question." Lesson number one: never ask a member of Interpol if he thinks his band sounds like Joy Division. "I don't really care what people write about us," he asserts with his head tossed back against the wall, "I don't read our press, good or bad. If somebody told me there's a really great article, it's great, it's glowing, I don't read it because it shouldn't matter. I just do what I gotta do."

Three acclaimed albums and a major new record deal would indicate he does it rather well. The move to Parlophone Records came before the release of new album Our Love To Admire, but have the band been feeling any added pressure with the transition? "No... we wouldn't have made a move like this if we thought it was gonna change the foundation of our process. We don't have ambitions of grandeur for this kind of success or that kind of success; we just made a slight infrastructure change."

Their first "infrastructure change" was signing to Matador Records in 2002 and shortly after, their profile was given a massive boost when REM famously covered NYC from Turn On The Bright Lights in a series of live shows. After flatly rejecting any comparisons to Joy Division, this is a connection Kessler is more comfortable with. "It's very flattering, it's like, our first record and I've been listening to REM since I was 14, so it's amazing." And just as a smile threatens to invade his face, Kessler explains how the Scottish weather doesn't agree with him, launching into a fit of violent sneezing. "This is going to be a very good colour for your article," he offers, gratefully accepting a tissue from Fest.

REM's decision to write NYC into their post 9/11 manifesto indicates a jingoism that Kessler is adamant doesn't exist, not only within Interpol, but also in their hometown of New York. "New Yorkers tend not to be very patriotic; they're very resilient and have moved on since then. Personally, I don't even believe in countries," and for the first time removes his shades and adds sincerely, "I've lived in New York since I was 11, it's my identity but I'm not patriotic about it, or America." The suggestion that spending significant time in New York influences his music is also met with a sceptical glare, "I don't think it does. That's where we live, that's where we've written every single song. But we don't go out roaming the streets looking for life. That said, every time I go back the city looks a little different."

Whilst their surroundings are perpetually evolving, so too, it would seem, are Interpol's peers. Modest Mouse have recruited Johnny Marr. The Strokes have seen Albert Hammond Jnr. produce a decent début solo album. Can we expect to see any similar developments within their ranks?

“There will definitely be nobody joining the band. I think we're too tight for that, the name “Johnny Marr” is all well and good, but it wouldn't work for us. But yeah, everybody does their own individual things. Carlos (Dengler, bassist) has aspirations of doing film scores and is working towards it, Paul (Banks, lead singer) does his own music on the side, as does Sam (Fogarino, drummer).” Fest candidly reminds Daniel that he has not included himself in the rundown, leaving him visibly ill at ease. “You know what, I start all the songs... I do less of my own stuff because I'm so busy with the band. But whenever Interpol are together, every one of us is 100% committed.”

It's a defensive stance that Kessler has preserved unflinchingly throughout the interview, constantly obliged to vindicate his band and what he says. “I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling too hot,” he states apologetically, returning his sunglasses to his face. "It's been a little bit tough with all the travelling." The band played nearly 200 shows whilst touring the Antics album and the effects of a gruelling recording schedule are taking their toll on Kessler. But he insists he wouldn't change it for the world, "When you go out there, people really want to see your music and we're fortunate that people follow us and pay really close attention to our records, not just our singles. That's something very special in this day and age. When you go out there and play, that's energy, and whilst I'm pretty beat right now, I never get sick of it."

As a band, Interpol are not renowned for the hellraising antics, and Kessler admits they "do not seek unwanted media attention. We try to be very musically productive on tour." This tight-lipped privacy no doubt adds to the enigmatic shroud surrounding the band. Even the origin of the name is laced in ambiguity; "I bet you loads of bands with 'classic names' are for very silly reasons. Paul said 'Interpol?' We all said, 'yeah... that's our name.' It wasn't a great theory as to why." For the first time today, a broad grin breaks out on Kessler's face, "You look disappointed?" Fest assures him otherwise, after all, we could have been speaking to Electric Blue Peggy Sue and the Revolutionions from Mars.