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Grand Archives
Discography:
The Grand Archives CD 2008 |
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Grand Archives present an idea, an idea of sunny pop that can be pretty and spooky at the same time, but is a labor of love throughout. They also present "Crime Window", one of the most polarizing (and also best) songs of the year. And there's plenty of history, with lead singer Mat Brooke being a former Band of Horses member and all.
So when we piled into their touring van after a show, a bottle of JD went around as we got down to the nitty gritty on the band, the songs, and everything else that needed to be said. Okay, we talked almost not at all about BoH, but really, are you aware of how hard it is to ask people the questions that everybody expects you to ask them, especially when they pertain to 1/5 of the band?
We'll stop now. Here's the interview. It's good.
30: When did Grand Archives become an idea or a band, an actual unit?
Mat Brooke: I guess it became an idea...
Ron Lewis: It's not quite human yet.
Mat: Jeff (Montano) and Curtis (Hall) here, they were playing some music together. And I had just opened up a bar, and kinda got out of the Band of Horses game, and wasn't doing shit, really, except for working really hard at running a bar. And Jeff kind of busted my nuts, and said, "Why don't you come and check out what me and Curtis are doing, and play with us?"
And he had to bust my nuts for a couple of days, and finally...We have a practice space in Seattle that I've had, one of the nicest practice spaces you'll ever see. I've held onto it for about ten years. And so we're like, "Okay, let's go over there," I might as well strum a guitar if I'm paying the rent.
And then, I started playing with these dudes, and it was unbelievably fun. And it was kind of like, after our first practice it was a done deal, we're gonna be a band.
30: Do you still hold onto the bar?
Mat: I do. It's going on about two and a half years now. The first year was rough, but now it kind of runs itself, and the employees can take care of themselves while I'm away. Me and my girlfriend run the bar, we own it, run the bar together. When I'm away, she takes double duty.
Curtis: And so yeah, then the three of us were playing for a while, and then I was like, "I know this guy Ron," because I had played with Ron. Ron had a solo project that he was playing with a full band. And I sat in with his band for a while. When the three of us were playing, we were like, "We kinda need this guy that can fill it out, that knows a little keyboard, knows a little guitar, that can sing, sort of an everyman."
Ron: I ran into you one night at the Mo Bar.
Curtis: And I ran into him one night. And he was playing with so many other bands, I just figured he was too busy. But he was like, "Fuck yeah, dude! Let's get together and play."
So I told these guys, "You gotta hear this guy Ron, man, he's a player." So he came down, and it fit pretty quickly.
And then, when we were ready to play a live show, we had recorded. We were trying to work out the songs that we had recorded for the live setting. We were like, "We kinda need that one more little piece." So our good friend Thomas (Wright) that we'd all known, and the other guys who had played music with him, they were like, "Let's just bring this other dude in, and that'll fill it out."
Jeff: And he ended up being a big piece.
Curtis: Yes, he's our acoustic, percussion guy.
30: The show surprised me, because listening to the record, it doesn't seem like you guys would be a three-guitar band a lot of the time.
Curtis: No, we have many guitars, many guitar players.
Mat: We tend to overproduce a little in the studio, we'll try to stop that.
Jeff: On this record it might be a little more toned down.
30: So it's been you four guys since the first record, you recorded the first record together?
Curtis: And Thomas too.
Mat: We recorded the demo, then we added Thomas, and then we recorded the first record.
Curtis: Since the very first show we played it's been all five of us. We brought Thomas in mainly as a live guy, and then we just decided, the five of us got together so well that we were like, "Let's just keep all five of us."
(The band offers me some whiskey, I turn it down)
30: Then for the songwriting, how has that gone? If you three were the start...
Mat: That usually works like, either myself or Ron will come into the practice space we got going, and basically bring the most skeleton of a song. No guitar parts, just folk chords.
Ron: Structures.
Mat: And then everybody wraps their brains around it, and you get your hooks, and your bridges, and your structure, and how long the song's gonna be, and who's gonna sing the high, who's gonna sing the low, who's gonna sing the mid. So seriously, songwriting, in this band, which is kinda what makes this band one of the more fun bands I've ever been in, it's more collaborative. There's no front man, there's no, I don't know...It isn't like everybody sits around waiting for one guy to show up and say (adopts a dopey, pretentious voice), "Ok, I've got the next record, everybody learn it really quick." It's written together. And that's what helps us get along so well on tour, right? (laughter)
Curtis: Couldn't agree more.
30: I guess this next question is more for Mat. You're comparing this as more fun to other bands you've been in, and obviously Band of Horses are a pretty high profile thing. Was there any big shift coming from that to this?
Mat: No, I mean, I don't wanna...Every band I've been in has been fun. But this one's just, it's different in a way, the music's less dramatic. It's a little more free-spirited. That's kind of a hippie word to use. I guess the definition of "more fun" changes with age. Everything changes with age, as far as songwriting, music you like to listen to.
Jeff: Perspective changes, overall.
Mat: Everything, so at the age we're all at right now, we're doing exactly what we want to do, and it's a lot of fun.
30: That was the question I wanted to ask is, when you're bringing all these parts from the four, or five of you, are you all coming from similar places, in terms of the music you're into?
Curtis: One of the things that makes this band so cool is that we all come from different places. Everybody comes from such disparate backgrounds. Mat's, obviously you know where Mat came from. Jeff played in a really heavy rock band.
Ron: I'm a total pop guy, you're a soul guy.
Curtis: I played rockabilly bands before. Thomas is a drummer, and that's another thing, we all play other instruments. So yeah, there's lots of different stuff to put in the pot. Not even just what we play, but the stuff we listen to.
Mat: It's the indie rock melting pot. (laughter)
Curtis:Well yeah, it is, kinda. It's a lot of different shit that comes together. Even stuff that, when you're writing stuff it's like, "Wow, I wonder what it'd be like if you just did this." I don't know what a D is, and he might not know how to play drums. "But what if you go 'ba-doom kush'?" And I'll go, "What if you go 'deh-deh-deh'?" We all work together like that.
Mat: It's kind of like if a giraffe screwed a squirrel and they had a baby. That's Grand Archives.
Ron: You end up with a rodent. A girrirel.
Mat: A squirraffe.
30: The record itself, the first song and the last song, to me they seem similar, melodically and chord wise. Did you guys notice that, is that intentional?
Curtis: Oh, like a wraparound?
30: Yeah.
Jeff: What's the first song, "Miniature Birds"?
Mat: No, it's "(Torn) Blue (Foam) Couch" and then into the last one would be...
30: "Orange Juice," which sounds like a shrunk-down version of the first one.
Mat: No, I guess it wasn't intentional. "Blue Couch" was written on a six-string guitar in standard tuning. "Orange Juice" was written on a ukulele, in, I don't even know if it was a real tuning.
Ron: It was Hawaiian tuning.
Jeff: The southern part of Hawaii.
Ron: The Maui side.
Mat: I guess that would be like, when you hear certain notes that you personally like, you go with them. I guess you call that a style.
Jeff: And "Couch" digresses(sic) in notes, or "Couch" digresses in chords, and "Orange Juice" goes up.
Mat: I think they're great bookends for the record, though.
30: Yeah, it works, it's reflective. To me the most interesting song, you guys originally finished the show with it (an encore ruined the moment. Sigh), was "Crime Window". I think, the first thing that's interesting about it, is that if you read all the reviews, everybody mentions it. A lot of people hate it, some people love it.
(Someone from the opening band, You Can Be A Wesley, comes by the van to wish the band a farewell.)
Mat: I got the story on "Crime Window." I'm sure you've read all the bullshit on the internet...
Jeff: "A clunker." (laughter)
Mat: Well no, (dramatic voice) "We played one show, and got signed to Sub Pop! And went on tour with Modest Mouse!" A lot of those things sound really extreme, but we live in Seattle, so we know everybody at Sub Pop. We live in Seattle, so we know Modest Mouse. These were just buddy favors, basically. It wasn't flash in the pan, like, "Who the fuck are these guys?!"
30: You're in the Seattle scene, you've all had past band experience...
Mat: Well yeah. So we played a show and of course our friends from Sub Pop came out, and of course our friends from Modest Mouse checked it out. It wasn't instant success, it was just friend favors, basically.
Ron: Yeah, it wasn't like one basement show and then you're on tour with U2.
Mat: But "Crime Window", so it is true, our second show was a giant place opening up for Modest Mouse. And then we went on a small West Coast, or no, a Midwest tour with them.
We were finding that our tunes weren't really waking up these young kids. We needed to write this, kind of, a bit of a rock anthem kind of thing, to close the show with. So that at we would at least hold a piece of memory in their minds somehow. And we did "Crime Window."
We wrote it, basically on the road, during sound checks on the Modest Mouse tour. And we did that song the whole tour and there weren't any words. The whole song was "ba-ba-ba-ba". And no one could tell, and no one knew the difference.
Curtis: It was like, "We're going to do it for two minutes, now you do it with us!"
Mat: Well literally, we just needed a closing song. And then it became the funnest song we had to play live. So then we wrote lyrics. I think we're all really proud of that song.
30: I personally love the song.
Mat: I understand why critics think it doesn't fit in on the record and all that. When we recorded it, we saved it for the last day of recording. So right before we got into the vocal booth to do it, everybody drank about a half bottle of Jack Daniels. We were just buttholes, just fucking slurring our words. But we wanted it to sound -- so it came through on the disc -- it sounds like a drunken party song. And I think we achieved a drunken party sound.
Jeff: We wanted it to sound like a Dropkick Murphys song.
30: Well there's Boston for you.
Jeff: There you go.
30: The lyrics to it, those seem tricky to pick up too.
Mat: Yeah.
30: Do you have a definition for a crime window, for example?
Mat: The crime window would be, that came from, that's the window in my bedroom. It's a particular block in Seattle where it's uncanny how many times there's a giant drug bust right there.
So it's like a hot summer day, and I want to keep the window open when I'm sleeping. But I can't because it's so noisy, because of all the sirens, and the crack whores, and everything.
There's weird references. The song, linearly doesn't actually mean anything.
Curtis: It's just random thoughts. Nobody knows what "Sweet jolly jammers and a Dugan charge" means. Well, we do, but that's an inside joke with the band.
Ron: The inside joke actually made it unedited to the final cut.
Curtis: That was part of the, "We didn't have lyrics for it so we were singing it." Sweet jolly jammers and a Dugan charge. And then we were like, "Are we going to put that on the record?" We were like, "Fuck yeah, we're gonna put it on the record!"
30: It was your closing song for shows all the time, and then you didn't close with it on the record. You decided to go with "Orange Juice", which kinda...
Mat: Just to do something stupid. Just to not go for the obvious bit.
Ron: Sweeten it up and be a little bit more optimistic with it too, I think was the thinking.
Curtis: And it felt like what you were kind of talking about earlier, it kind of bookends the record.
Jeff: It's almost like a "Thank you for listening" song. It's really short, a little tale.
30: That explains a lot about the song.
Curtis: I think if we closed the record with "Crime Window", it would have ended the record on that sort of aggro note, as opposed to going "YEAH!" and then, "Thank you."
Ron: It's our jazz hands.
Curtis: It's the wind-down, you know, (mimics a machine winding down).
30: Do you have plans to write any more anthems or was that just a one-time thing?
Mat: I think in December, we're gonna to get back in the studio and get that second record knocked out. We got about enough songs.
30: I noticed you played some new songs tonight.
Curtis: Yeah, we played a couple of the new ones.
Mat: The whole fun about playing music is that it's a job where you can literally do whatever the fuck you want. And so, I almost feel like we've been pigeonholed as the "sunshine band". So, shit, maybe the next record will be about fuckin' death and doom. And you know, it probably will, just to avoid being pigeonholed. Or maybe it'll be triple happy. You never know. It's kind of just not wanting to fall into any clichés.
Ron: Triple LP of sunshine and death.
Mat: Sunshine and Death, that's a good name for a record.
Curtis: Or maybe we'll write a concept album about the Black Plague or something.
Ron: With a positive spin.
Curtis: Yeah, good things that came of the Black Plague.
Ron: Population reduction. An economy boost.
30: You get a pretty good response to "Crime Window" live, right?
Curtis: Oh yeah, people dig it. It's fun to play live.
Mat: It translates better live.
Curtis: But like you said, there's just as many people as like it that hate it. It's really polar. People really dig it or people really don't fucking like it at all.
Mat: I think if you have a record, where there isn't at least something that a lot of people hate, then it's not a real record. Then it's just like a fucking Britney Spears record.
Curtis: There's people that don't like Britney Spears.
Mat: You gotta throw a cog in the system somewhere, you can't just polish it up. Drink a half bottle of Jack Daniels, record a song, and put it on the record, and even if you know it stinks, it balances the shit out.
30: What were you listening to at age 17?
Curtis: At age 17, that would've been in the late '80s. I was listening to a lot of hip-hop, a lot of punk rock, and still probably classic rock, everybody listens to it. Alternative crap too, in the '80s it was still your Cure, your Smiths, your bands like that.
But also it was the golden age of hip-hop of the late '80s, with those seminal records that came out. Like the first Eric B and Rakim record, the first EPMD record, the second Public Enemy record. So hip-hop was a huge deal to me at the time. And yeah, all the punk rock bands. I'm from California, so your Circle Jerks, and 7 Seconds.
Mat: That's a pretty long answer.
Curtis: Well, he asked.
Mat: Pick one!
Curtis: That's what I was listening to. Next!
Mat: I'd like to single out two records. Niandra Lades by John Frusciante, and Floodland by Sisters of Mercy. Those were what was killing me when I was 17.
Ron: Descendents' Enjoy for me, the roll of toilet paper. "Orgo fart". And uh, Big Star and Jane's Addiction at that age.
Jeff: You totally took mine. Mine was Descendents and Wu Tang Clan.
Mat: Thomas's, who's not here, was Fugazi and Fugazi.
Ron: And he still listens to Fugazi.
Mat: And if he didn't have anymore Fugazi, he'd go out and buy new Fugazi.
Jeff: He'd put on a Minor Threat record.
Mat: Or listen to Egg Hunt.
The Grand Archives Review
interview on 2008/06/16 by Dan Shvartsman |
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v.3.00.34 © 2002 - 2008 by -30- and stargraphX.com