| The City Beat |
|
Hush Hour INTERVIEW BY DAVID SIMUTIS
They've got a vintage organ sound, brushed drums, extended quiet passages, droning guitars and simple, repetitive song structures. Oh, great. Another Indie Pop band. But instead of adding to the faceless glut, the American Analog Set stick out because they take the elementary and common to uncommon levels. What can't be pinned down in describing the American Analog Set's third album is the spirit behind the music. Mopey art-school boys and girls crank this kind of stuff out semester in, semester out, trying to imitate Stereolab and Galaxy 500. The Austin, Texas-based band has graduated from that cliché. The group's fourth record, The Golden Band, sounds like its influences but drifts and wanders away from them, subtly exploring other options. There is a whole sub group of American Indie Rock that bases its aesthetic on performing quietly and slowly. Bands such as Low, Bedhead and Codeine have turned the volume down to invite listeners to get closer. Nuances are easier to discern when every sound is carefully placed and considered. To a certain extent the American Analog Set fits in that company. Songs move only a bit faster than heartbeats and drummer Mark Smith never falls into Rock conventions of playing too loud or too much. "That's just the way we play," says the band's singer/guitarist Andrew Kenny. "I can't remember the last time when one of us had to ask each other to turn down or play slower, it's usually, 'Can you turn up?' or 'Can we pick this up because it's really dragging?' I just think we got lucky that we all got together and like playing the way we play. We just did that when we first started playing and we decided that we liked it and instead of growing and changing, the band has decided to stick with what they've got." Formed in Fort Worth five years ago, the band -- which also includes keyboardist/vocalist Lisa Roschmann Keys and Lee Gillespie on bass, plus touring guitarist Shawn O'Keefe -- migrated to Austin partially because it's the home of the University of Texas and heart of the state's music scene. Thanks to cheap college housing, the group can rent a house in town with enough room to set up their own recording studio. Engineering their own records has a direct impact on the American Analog Set's aesthetic, says Kenny. "There are a few drawbacks," he admits. "There is the loss of fidelity. If you don't record in a really big studio, chances are that you're not going to have a huge-sounding record. Recording at home, our limitations are mainly sound and lack of engineering skills. I don't think that the quality of our band demands that we have a nice studio experience and lots of money to record. I think our recording skills are about on par with our musical skills. The pluses are just countless: The new record cost $78 to record, just the cost of the (recording) tape. You're not on the clock and you're not working with a fifth person wanting you to do this and try this and sing this. The best thing about it is you get all tied up in knots when you've been playing for six or seven hours, working on something and then you just say, 'You know what? We'll do this tomorrow or next week or next month.' It just doesn't matter." What's amazing about the seamless quality of The Golden Band is that it comes about organically. The group records and mixes the album on two reels of tape, one for each half of the album. "We kind of sequence everything ahead of time, then we go through and record everything on one piece of tape. The songs are recorded in sequence and mixed in one giant 20-minute block per side. So we pretty much know what's going to happen ahead of time." And when it comes time to mix the record -- setting the levels, equalization and placement for each sound -- it takes the entire band's hands to do the job. Incredibly, for a group whose records depend on carefully arranged sounds, they get the job done rather quickly and enjoy doing it this way. "Recording it all in one blob makes this giant piece," Kenny explains. "It's fun to mix because you need four people just to mix. When we get done, everybody's been holding their breath for 20 minutes and it's like, 'Ahhh.' " That they wait to exhale helps explain the tension in the music. For the better part of the six-minute-plus "It's All About Us," the group stays so far below the red line that guitar string scrapes and Kenny's breathing are audible. Sure, the drums come in just when it seems like the song should be over, but they don't trample on the buttery milieu. Combined with the omnipresent organ, they simply add texture. The song finishes as an instrumental, building tension as it slowly crescendos. Similarly the second track in the album's four-part centerpiece, "New Drifters," has vocals that are buried so deep in the keyboard miasma that only snippets are discernible and a loping, circular guitar line only offers more confusion. There's no quick score with music like this; it takes a certain amount of patience and endurance to find the meat, but it's well worth it. Kenny half-heartedly tries to defend the band's Rock credentials though, before backing off. "We rock a little bit. We pick up the pace, there's a song on every record where it's up-tempo," he says. "I've never had the urge to really get down and rock out. When I got my first electric guitar, I had a distortion pedal and a little amp that I used to crank up and I just stopped doing it one day and never did it again. I gave away my distortion pedal to someone who really wanted it. I don't want to say that I never looked back and gave Rock music the finger -- I listen to some loud music -- but it wasn't something that we wanted to play." |
