Straight to Video
Rock Art Rock
See more in the Rock Art Rock gallery.
polls
Loading ...
Exploration Team
Exploration Team
We Are Birds, We Are Trees
(Self-released, 2008)
You just never know what to expect when you listen to a “side project.” While you might love the sound of a certain band, there’s simply no guarantee that a recording made by one of those members with another group of people will have the same magic to it. So much of a band’s success or failure is founded not on the talent of the individuals in it, but on the voodoo that occurs when those people come together and create. Side projects are a gray area at best, and this is often particularly the case when you’re devoted to the original band.
Of course, it does happen sometimes that the listener gets lucky. These are the times when you forget who you’re listening to (in a good way), and the very idea of attempting to make a comparison falls away. The so-called “side project,” relegated by human nature to a dark corner, sprouts legs and frees itself, becoming a lovely random occurrence that won’t stop running circles in the mind, proving once and for all that the musician(s) behind it are creating something real and lively that can stand on its own two feet. Such is the case with the new album We Are Birds, We Are Trees, released by A Weather guitarist Aaron Krenkel and a group called Exploration Team.
To be technical about it, Exploration Team could be said to predate A Weather, so calling it a side project is somewhat unfair. The group has been in some stage of development since the early 2000s, when Krenkel and childhood friend Ben Licciardi began working on songs long distance between Milwaukee and Washington, DC. In 2005, when Krenkel and his wife Alynn Nelson moved to Portland, they made the decision to push the group further, and eventually pulled together friends Becky Wolf and Zach Okun to complete the line-up. Even as A Weather came together elsewhere, the songs for We Are Birds, We Are Trees were written by Krenkel throughout 2006 and 2007. The album is currently being self-released and is available in a select few independent record stores in Portland. In the near future, it will most likely be available in part or in full via the website of A Weather’s record label, Team Love, and perhaps elsewhere online. If the record’s merits have anything to do with whether or not it will become widely available, you probably don’t have long to wait.
We Are Birds, We Are Trees has a lot to notice upon first listen, but for anyone who’s listening closely, the lyrics will no doubt take the front seat. Krenkel proves himself to be a startling songwriter, stringing together images in a way that seems effortless, making surprising leaps of metaphor and detail to form a stream of consciousness that is positively organic: “You move, the sheets make sounds like waves / I make a shore out of my legs / And arms / And throat / For you.” Delivered in Krenkel’s hushed, husky, peaceful voice, the words bask in warmth. It was Emily Dickinson who said “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Krenkel’s lyrics, at their best, don’t just take the top of your head off; they turn your brains into blue sky.
The album is, in some ways, a study in contrasts, with almost-sunny, soaring melodies sharing the ride with songs of hushed introspection. While every track has its moment of transcendence, it is the rainy songs, the bedroom musings, where Exploration Team truly shines. Perhaps the strongest track on the recording, “Rest”, manages to create, in barely three minutes, an emotion identical to the one I experienced last week when I pulled out and read through the journals I kept in my early 20s. It’s almost scary. Heavy with nostalgia and deceptively simple, the song carried me back to those late-night Denny’s conversations, sitting across the booth from a loved one who didn’t love me back, or maybe an unloved one who did… I don’t remember anymore, but it hardly matters. “Rest” is what your writing teachers are talking about when they say that the true life of a story lies in the seemingly insignificant details: “Your corduroy pants on / And knit cap / How I love these days / If only I could welcome all the rest.” The song conjures up the familiar, swelling-in-your-ribcage sort of feeling you get from remembering a time when you couldn’t wait for the future to come… and then it came too fast.
We Are Birds, We Are Trees is a beautiful record. It’s a skilled accomplishment, moving through a complex range of emotion and memory in a mere 10 tracks. The journey is never rough or jolting, and in spite of their immediacy and weight, the songs never manipulate; they are simply loaded with the kind of empathy that occurs when music (and a musician) is telling the truth. A line from the track “Safe and Sound” states, “So how we find the courage to be found / To hold an un-lost item.” In We Are Birds, We Are Trees, Krenkel and Exploration Team are digging up things you didn’t realize you’d lost, making them un-lost, and then delivering them back to you in a way that you want to hear again and again. When it comes down to it, there’s nothing else I ask of a record.
Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]
Read more articles like this:
Flashbacks in Shakermaker’s Fabled Front Porch Sound
I’ve never been to Chapel Hill, but when I listen to Shakermaker, I can’t help but imagine what it’s probably like. I can picture the kind of city that must have inspired and given birth to music like this: A leafy green city full of streets lined with Victorian-style rental houses. And inside the houses the wood floors are scuffed by secondhand furniture and nice sound equipment, and people gather on porches a lot to try out new guitar riffs. And, when 9pm or so rolls around, everyone finds their way to the local venue to support the local bands. The venue is, of course, filled with girls in dressy black skirts, and shy boys who are actually really good dancers, if you get up the nerve to ask them.
Don’t correct me if I’m wrong about all of this, okay? Shakermaker puts me in a really warm headspace, and it’s something I’d like to hang onto for a little while.
Thoroughly intelligent, charming, and melodic, often deceptively easy to listen to, the music of Shakermaker has been shaking up the local scene in Chapel Hill since the early 2000s. Members Mitch Eubanks and Jesse Moorefield have been friends since they were both members of the same high school marching band. The two got together after school to rehearse (non-marching band) music together under the Shakermaker moniker. “We often would have parties over at my house while my dad was away on business,” says Moorefield. “One time we got caught, and my dad banned us from practicing in our living room. With no place to practice, we kind of disbanded.” Years later, after college and a move to Chapel Hill, Eubanks and Moorefield met up with Brian Toomes and Jeff Feasel, and solidified the current line-up. The four played early shows at local venues like the now-defunct GO! and Cat’s Cradle, where today Moorefield is a production manager.
A Weather: Gray Skies are Beautiful
Sometimes the sound of a band carries with it an entire suitcase full of atmosphere, an echo of the place, time, and even the climate where the album was created. While it certainly doesn’t always rain in Oregon, the band A Weather brings to mind what most of us think of when we imagine the Pacific Northwest. Their album Cove, released on March 4th on Team Love Records, is a cool breeze off gray water; it’s a subtle masterpiece of hushed harmonies, introspective lyrics, atmospheric melodies, and the feeling of summer storms sweeping down city streets. It’s a sound that puts you down exactly where you are, smiling on the curb, watching the clouds overhead scudding by. In short, it’s a distinctly Portland album.
And so it should be. A Weather is the product of five Portland-based musicians: Frontman Aaron Gerber, singer/drummer Sarah Winchester, bassist Lou Thomas, guitarist Aaron Krenkel, and guitarist Zach Boyle. On some songs they bear more than a passing resemblance to the late Carissa’s Wierd, with the same basis in complementing male and female vocals with a shuffle of moody rhythm. But the resemblance is only a passing one; the truth is A Weather has a distinct sound that isn’t quite like anything else. From the first track to the last, the songs are surprising without dropping out of character; they sound like something you’ve heard before but couldn’t place, like something you were searching for without realizing it was missing.
The members are old pros even while they’re young faces; all have been involved in previous music projects from early ages. “The first band I was in was called Grey Vision,” says Gerber, who grew up in Maine. “I was 14-years-old and X-Files was at the height of its popularity. We were a pretty bad grunge band. The singer was a twentysomething Navy guy who had all the angst that I, as a 14-year-old, should have had but didn’t. When Grey Vision ground to a halt in ’97 or so, the drummer, Jon, and I formed a new band with a couple of friends. I was thankfully finished with grunge music and getting into stuff like Shudder to Think, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth. Jon turned me on to the whole ‘slowcore’ movement (I’m not sure if that is the proper appellation), bands like Bedhead, Yo La Tengo, Galaxy 500, Ida, etc. So we started playing this sort of stuff. Long, flowing, fuzzy guitar songs with fleeting moments of mumbled lyrics.”
Saddle Creek Slowdown
When it comes to indie rock, there’s just something about the Midwest. Not better or worse than other places, but irrefutably different: The fact is that a four-track recording never sounds quite as visceral as when it’s being created in a suburban basement in the middle of nowhere. You might walk into a concert anywhere in the country and see young people of all ages wrapped up in what’s going down on stage, but in the Midwest there’s a level of desperation to it that doesn’t exist elsewhere—a feeling that the world might stop if the music does. It has to do with the helplessness of being in flyover country, where nothing is supposed to ever happen, but plenty does, of course. It’s something that, say what you will, you just don’t get on the coasts. And it’s at least a partial explanation as to why, when I moved to Omaha in the early 2000s, I found myself knee-deep in a burgeoning underground music scene that would rapidly become not-so-underground.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t high-budget, it wasn’t commercial, and it wasn’t always fun. Sokol Underground, which was the Omaha venue of choice for local and touring bands alike at that time, was a filthy, smoky basement with a narrow stage at one end of a long, skinny room. There within existed plenty of drama, plenty of sticky floors, and plenty of graffiti in the bathrooms. And the plastic-bottled beers were pricey, too. But for all of that they had some damn good music and, for a number of years, there was nowhere better to be on a Friday night. There was a sense there, as I’m sure there was at thousands of venues in thousands of basements all over the place, that we had something going on that nobody else knew about or could possibly understand. And, in a way, that was true. Because while most of the local bands achieved fame in the realm outside fairly quickly, they still played the hometown shows like it was someone’s birthday party. Sometimes it was.
Things are different now. People have moved away (including myself), tastes and times have altered, and the bands are all grown up. Bright Eyes played Letterman, and the Faint play good-sized ballrooms instead of striking fear into the hearts of smoke detectors with their fog machines inside the walls of Sokol. But while I might admit to a sense of nostalgia for those years that passed as quickly as our early-20s tend to, there’s typically a plus side to so much change. And this time is no exception.
Baby Walrus: Masters of Multi-Instrumentalism
The self-titled debut album of the band Baby Walrus was released by Slumber Party Records on February 5. You may not know it yet, but that’s excellent news for you.
Baby Walrus is a group of three young musicians out of Omaha who have been playing together since 2005, and they’ve gained a considerable amount of attention on their local scene. While such a thing isn’t uncommon, what is rather unusual is the fact that all of that attention has been overwhelmingly positive. A quick glance around the internet reveals that anyone with anything to say about the Omaha scene has listed the band at or near the top of the best up-and-coming local music. The group is in the perfect position to be releasing their debut, and it can’t possibly be long before people well outside the boxy borders of Nebraska are listening.
The history of Baby Walrus is short and simple—so simple that the complexity of their sound may be surprising to those who believe that intellectual music takes a very precise and pre-planned collection of musicians. Each of the three members has a history in the Omaha scene; two of the three, John Voris and Chris Senseney, were formerly members of Le Beat, an experimental art-style band that garnered its own amount of local prestige. In 2005, Le Beat’s bassist departed and the two continued as a duo for awhile before adding long-time friend and fellow musician, Dylan Strimple, to the group. Voris and Strimple had also played together previously in Saddle Creek Records’ Son, Ambulance. “We’d known Dylan for years and had talked before about playing together, so it was a natural choice,” says Senseney. The result of this friendly grouping is a cohesive, winningly original, practically affable sound that’s easy to love. And love it people do.
Freewheelin’: Bob Dylan vs. Conor Oberst
A surefire way to upset the most level-headed music critic is to refer to a young artist as “the next Bob Dylan.” It works every time. I should know; I’ve rolled my eyes at the comparison myself. It’s the kind of thing a reviewer says when they’re trying to make a deadline. It’s the type of thing a person will say when they don’t 
know much about Dylan beyond “Like a Rolling Stone.” Let’s face it: the Dylan comparison is a pretty heavy one to carry. It’s even kind of cruel when you think about it. Who wouldn’t collapse under that kind of weight? On the other hand, what’s good criticism without some devil’s advocacy? So, for argument’s sake, if nothing else, let me stand one of my favorites up in front of the firing squad and say this: I can understand why people have been calling Conor Oberst the next Dylan.
Still reading? Good. You’re more patient than I’ve been with other writers who’ve tried this.
Now, let’s be fair. If anyone understands the epic proportions of Bob Dylan, it’s me. I was locked up in my bedroom at age 12 listening to Blood on the Tracks and, more years later than I care to admit, will still argue the merits of Self Portrait ‘til I’m blue in the face. I realize that comparing anyone to Dylan is, on some level, an exercise in compromise. I realize that it’s no longer the ‘60s and that music has changed irrevocably from those days; I also realize that Dylan had something to do with that change, which is a mark of status that’s almost impossible to replicate. With that in mind, in order to make even a halfway legitimate point, it’s absolutely necessary to lay some groundwork and prove that I know the scope of what I’m claiming.
Let Golden Animals Take You Home
Sometimes you can tell what a musician is going to sound like simply by looking at his or her photo. Judging on appearance alone, Nick Cave couldn’t really do anything but sing graveyard songs in a voice like a dirt road. Kurt Cobain didn’t have to open his mouth to prove that he was the ultimate grunge rocker. If you’re like me and you like to play this guessing game, your first look at the duo performing under the moniker Golden Animals is likely to confuse your radar. These two solemn-eyed, river-haired, flower-children types with thrift store peasant blouses and arresting stares left me, at least, stymied for an instant categorization. What to expect from this band? Blues? Tree-hugging folk? Psychedelic rock? Four-hour instrumentals?
Carissa’s Wierd: Songs About Leaving
Carissa’s Wierd
Songs About Leaving
(Barsuk, 2002)
In the summer of 2003, not long before their abrupt parting of ways, Carissa’s Wierd (misspelling intentional) played a show at Omaha’s Sokol Underground. In the way such things often happen, I found myself attending a party later on that evening at the house where the band was crashing. What I recall most from that night—a night of beer in plastic cups and a hot July rain falling in the street outside—was sitting on the arm of a sofa in a noisy living room and having a conversation with the band’s vocalist, Jenn Ghetto.
To be fair, it was really Jenn Ghetto having a conversation with me. She did most of the talking, giving me the overwhelming impression that she needed someone to just shut up and listen for a second, and so that’s what I did. And because I didn’t have anything meaningful to contribute, as I so rarely do in such situations, I offered what we all offer when we want to make someone feel better: “I understand how you feel.”
Capgun Coup Move out From the Basement
If you pay a visit to Omaha, Nebraska, you might have a difficult time finding the Hotel Frank. It’s not listed in the phone book. If you ask for directions, one or two people might only remember it by one of its former monikers, like the Gunboat or the Jerk Store. Others, of course, may have no idea what in the hell you’re talking about. But if you find just the right person to ask, say, a twenty-something who looks like he cuts his own hair and maybe slept in his clothes, you might get a more helpful answer. The fact is the Hotel Frank, as it’s currently known (although probably not for long, since these nicknames are fleeting), is an innocuous brick duplex that also happens to be one of the hottest house show venues on the Omaha music scene.
And the distinction isn’t a new one. The duplex has been home to, and a stage for, some of the finest musicians to come out of Omaha in the past 10 years. Its basement was where the much-beloved Park Ave. held their final show, and where the much-underrated Desaparecidos held one of their first. Nowadays, although the bands have changed, the ideology hasn’t, and the latest group to set up camp at Hotel Frank is a little indie band called Capgun Coup.
“We knew some people from the suburbs that had moved down there and started throwing fucking crazy fun parties, and they suggested we move in to the vacant west wing of the complex,” says Sam Martin, lead guitarist and vocalist of the band, when asked how he ended up at this Omaha hotspot. “Soon after, we filled up the east wing with friends, too. I’m sure it’s the same now as it was when it was the Gunboat from an outside perspective; we just party, make art, and make music.”
Live Show Review: Monsters of Folk at Stubb’s, Austin
by: Brenda Paro
November 13th at Stubb’s BBQ, Austin
I’ll spare you the comparisons to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, or the Traveling Wilburys. I’m sure if you’ve heard of Monsters of Folk by now, you understand that this band, like the aforementioned (sorry, I guess I couldn’t avoid it), is made up of four already-successful, talented musicians, coming together to form, in popular vernacular, a “supergroup.”
It’s easy to see how this kind of thing could be a bad idea. Just because a few musicians are good at what they do, and maybe even share similar genres, doesn’t mean they’ll gel together into a cohesive whole. But when it comes to Monsters of Folk, as with CSNY and the Wilburys (sorry again), one thing is clear: This collaboration has some chemistry. I hate to rely on a cliché that’s been used in pretty much every MOF review thus far, but it’s the most concise way to say it: The coming-together of these musicians creates a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
read more
by: Brenda Paro
published: November 17, 2009
in column: It Shows
no comments yet
Tags: