All posts by John Fortunato

MORNING BENDERS REACH DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT WITH ‘BIG ECHO’

Interviews

You don’t need to have a sunup hangover or dawning erection to ‘get’ the Morning Benders sly moniker. One of the coolest baroque pop units to hit the scene since the Elephant Collective went South ‘round 2000, this spellbinding SoCal quartet integrates orchestral labyrinths with quixotic lyrical melancholia in a dearly Epicurean manner.

Though founding front man Chris Chu started his first band during college in Berkeley, California, he never intended on being the main singer-songwriter.

However, when the laptop recorder hooked up with a few fellow Bay Area artisans (settling on bassist Timothy Or, drummer Julian Harmon, and soon after, Chu’s brother Jonathan), the Morning Benders were ready to go beyond the escapist dream-pop comprising two formative ’06 EP’s.

A meritorious full-length ’08 debut, Talking Through Tin Cans, surged forth with sparkling melodies that resonated inside surrealistic catacombs, greeting a readied underground audience immediately. Its rudimentary production, possibly the source of the album’s satirizing ‘Tin Can’ reference, added a distinctive primitivism somewhat reminiscent of ‘90s indie wunderkinds, Neutral Milk Hotel. Comparisons to the Shins easygoing tunefulness are merited and the engaging Beatles harmonies (via XTC on sympathetic alleviation, “Patient Patient”) never falter.

Returning to the studio with more gumption and finesse for ‘10s ambitious allegorical anodyne, Big Echo, the Morning Benders fashion fresh stylistic tones without abandoning the recreational adolescent guilelessness that got ‘em on the map.

On opening cut, “Excuses,” spiffy Spanish guitar winds its way into Spaghetti Western faux-strings as subtle South of the Border folk harmonies gently sway. ‘60s-styled rock guitar reinforces the acoustic-strummed uplift of percussion-doused mediation, “Cold War,” where pots, pans, forks, spoons, toy piano, and timpani underscore a hand-clapped chorale that’d maybe suit Crosby Stills & Nash. Chu’s high-registered hushed tenor navigates across unhurried dirge, “Pleasure Sighs,” a sullen death march nearly as ominous as haunting guitar-stammered lament, “Hand Me Downs.”

Chu’s impressive contextual designs may be rooted in simple Chamber pop eloquence, but so are Dr. Dog’s – another worthy contemporary band banking on steadfast traditionalism and ably plying engagingly dulcet harmonies to ringing melodic intrigue. He embellishes the Morning Benders latest compositional batch with a truly refined classicism, pitting contemplative quietude and somber ethereality against the ascendant existential rage fueling the fieriest fervency consuming Big Echo.

I spoke to Chu via phone one muggy summer afternoon.

Who were your early musical influences?

CHRISTOPHER CHU: When I was growing up, it was ‘60s music like Pet Sounds and the Beatles. As I got older, I listened to everything. When we were making Big Echo, I listened to a lot of Talking Head, Kate Bush, Big Star and Blur – even new music by Dirty Projectors.

Were you shooting for hypnotizing dramatic grandeur with Big Echo?
 
 I had some semblance of an idea in my head. But more than that, my goal was to go in the studio and take advantage of what that space had. So it’s all the result of using the space we recorded it in and the old gear they had and the mood that unified the theme.
 
You had self-produced Morning Benders debut. How did Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor help transform the second album through his knob-twisting techniques?
  I actually planned to produce the second album as well. We started recording in San Francisco, but when we were finished tracking the album and had all this tape I was deeply in the middle of it all, wearing all these hats, and couldn’t get any clarity or objectivity listening to it. Around that time, I sent some of these songs to Chris and he wrote back saying he’d help mix it. That was the perfect role we needed him for. So he got involved in the mixing stage and had us focus in on what we were looking for – choosing some of the sounds and making it crisper, stronger and more dynamic.

Morning Benders have been compared to the Shins, but I think your compositions are headier, developing more complex twists and turns.
 
(laughter) It’s hard to say how the songs come about because it’s always different. For me, the songs do get worked out early on and stay in my head and I try to find a mood. Especially with Big Echo, a lot of the songs when I wrote them, I had an idea already what the sound should be and the amplitude and the space it needed to be recorded in.
 
Did you choose “Promises” as the first single because its climactic choral crescendo, reminiscent of the Beatles via Apples In Stereo, was less complex than the arguably better and more exhilarating “Excuses”?
 
We put out those two songs at the same time (prior to the albums’ release). I’m hesitant to say why one became the first single over the other. The idea was to take two songs we wanted to do something with – one was the video and the other an MP3 – and give them away. I really wanted to pitch the first two songs and not take the record out of context. That was my main impulse behind that decision. I figured if we had to give it away on MP3 in this day and age, we’d use the opening two tracks so when people got the album they’d continue on their on way.
A non-LP track, “Go Grab A Stranger,” caught my attention on-line. It sounded like “In The Court Of The Crimson King” on a drunken Radiohead bender. 
I’ve had that song for awhile. I wanted to put it on Big Echo, but I was never happy with the arrangement we did. We could never figure it out exactly. I had the chance to go back in the studio a few months ago and finally got something I was happy with. There’s a lot of dark songs on Big Echo, but that had a combination of darkness and aggression I really didn’t think fit the record.
 
One of the more aggressive Big Echo recordings was “All Day Day Light,” an enthusiastic guitar rocker.
 
I wrote that to sum up the feeling you get when you realize how insignificant you are in the scheme of the huge world we live in and how much is going on and being experienced. There was the double-edge sword where you feel anonymous but comforted by the fact you’re not alone. People have been dealing with that all the time. I was thinking about Talking Heads when arranging that.
 
Your mixture of loud and soft as well as dreamy mysticism versus nightmarish realism exemplifies the shift in dynamics taking place on Big Echo.
 
There’s usually these dynamic curves to the songs that are accentuated in the studio. That’s where I have the most fun building songs.
 
How have the new tunes developed live?
 
We’ve been playing mostly Big Echo songs, changing up the arrangements. We knew there was no possible way to re-create the album so when we play live we had to switch it up. The live show’s more blunt and to the point – more epic – bashing people over the head to keep it exciting. I get the songs from so many places. We took the title, Big Echo, because it matched the sound of the album and the way we recorded it. Big spaces we wanted to embrace – that roominess with echo. We also wanted the title to reflect how we pulled the music from all these different places and times. We wanted to take all these different types of pop music and throw them into space and see how they bounce and echo off each other.
 
What’s the local Berkeley scene like these days?
 
To be honest, we’re removed from that doing our own thing. I love Berkeley but it lacks venues outside the pop-punk Gilman Street scene that Green Day came from.
 
 
 
 

 

 

MIKKELLER I BEAT YOU IMPERIAL INDIA PALE ALE

Beers A-Z

Spiffy ‘I Beat yoU’ hop measurement moniker aside, convincing hop-rooted ale counters sharp grapefruit-peeled pine resin bittering with vibrant peach-pear-apple-pineapple tang and syrupy maple-spruce sapping. Floral-spiced mango-papaya tingle increases engaging fruited sweetness to creamy caramel malt center. At a staggering $7 for 12-ounces, it’s still worth the price for taste and buzz.

LEFEBVRE HOPUS ALE

Beers A-Z

Arousing Belgian-styled strong ale with loud carbolic blast gains red-fruited resilience above funky farmhouse yeast fungi and brusque white-peppered herbage. Tangy cherry, apple, peach, and nectar illusions plus ancillary lemon-seeded white grape souring flutter through floral grassy-hopped bittering to nut-roasted bottom. Wavering buttered pecan backdrop keeps mild alcohol astringency at bay. Well-defined Belgian IPA maintains robustness.

HIGH PLACES SQUARE OFF AGAINST ‘MANKIND’

Interviews,

Challenging folk-derived electronic duo, High Places, tie artificial percussion sounds and syncopated disco beats to scintillatingly climactic acoustical dreamscapes with the same glistening pastoral splendor that kept Kate Bush “Running Up That Hill.” Learning the bassoon at an early age before joining a few local musical troupes, heavenly vocalist Mary Pearson once believed her high vocal register conflicted with the prototypical rock compositions her former band mates constructed. But she simply managed to adapt.

A Kalamazoo native, Pearson originally met Classically trained multi-instrumentalist (and Pratt Institute educator) Rob Barber through mutual friends while finishing a music degree at hometown institution, Western Michigan University. Barber initially made Pearson a 3-hour mixtape featuring psychedelic-influenced ‘60s combos such as Incredible String Band and Jefferson Airplane alongside primitive Olympia-based lo-fi eccentrics, Beat Happening (and their rudimentary post-Nirvana brethren). Pearson claims unheralded Hawaiian guitarist Bobby Brown’s obscurity, The Enlightening Beam Of Axonda, proved indispensable as well.

Settling in New York City during 2006, the delightful keyboard-manipulating duo developed the creative urge to make homespun music without obsessing over details. Utilizing bright and pastel musical colors to envelop their intriguing textural atmospherics, High Places debuted in ’08 with formative singles compilation, 03/07 – 09/07, issued months ahead of the formal self-titled long-play entrée that’d create a widened underground buzz. The latter contained warm-weathered travelogues like tropical calypso spellbinder, “Vision’s The First,” and tribal Techno transience, “From Stardust To Sentience.” It served notice to the indie scene pronto.

Now living in the warm comfort of Los Angeles with Liars front man, Angus Andrew, Pearson’s muse seems to have benefited from the journey West. Her wispy melancholic melodies and operatic mezzo-soprano hold firmer against the massive polyrhythmic percussive pileups.

Oft-times, she dazzles listeners with the same rapturous urbane lilt and lighthearted approach as glorified diva, Kate Bush. In tandem, Barber’s drum machines, treated samples, and turntable twists weave synthetic tonicities to Pearson’s clear-voiced hush-toned sentimentality. On top of that, exotic elements such as chimes, kalimba, clanged pipes, clinked glass, and bongos frequently embellish Pearson’s spellbindingly serendipitous affectations.

On 2010’s moody seasonal treatise, High Places Vs. Mankind, High Places again cast a spell, devising a serious headphone experience out of hazy windswept sketches given shady titular descriptions tersely congruent to the verbose “On A Hill In A Bed On A Road In A House.” Pearson’s echo-laden lipstick-traced whispers resonate through disco-sliced silhouette, “The Longest Shadow,” a vibrant opener with a liquefied groove. Middle East percussion flavoring accents cooing ballad, “She’s A Wild Horse,” and eerier mantra, “On Giving Up,” dips into danceable New Order machinations. The remainder drifts into dewy meadows, ethereal catacombs, and cryptic jungles with equally exquisite results.

As boyfriend, Angus, tended to outdoor gardening, I spoke with the gracious Pearson via phone in early June.

Why move away from the fertile Brooklyn scene to the cozier comforts of sunny L.A.?

MARY PEARSON: There’s a lot of inspiring artists in New York City and it’s incredible to think how many albums they’ve done. There are incredible museums too. We didn’t pick up so many sonic influences, but instead, created an environment that was a retreat from all the hustle and bustle. We’d talked about moving to California because we loved the landscape. We have friends there from touring. The decision for me was a mental health one to get out of the cold weather and dark nights of winter. Plus, Rob likes to surf. We’re so inspired by nature, but nearly every song in New York was about being completely away from people. What you don’t have could be very inspiring to your art. Being slightly unhappy is always good for business. When we moved to L.A., I wondered how I’d compose music being at such a lovely place without sounding like hokey bubblegum music. That was something to figure out. I don’t know if the new record is so much inspired by Los Angeles as it is just spreading out.

There’s a moody seasonal theme threading High Places Vs. Mankind.
 

 

 

Maybe we created it from what we don’t have out west – bad weather and four seasons. Our music has a lot of recurring themes, at least lyrically. There’s also the idea that the music we wrote in New York City was creating our ideal environment. So being in L.A. is reverse escapism.

I’d be remiss to not ask if you were a fan of Kate Bush’s dramatic Classical pop arrangements.
 

 

 

Any women making music would be honored getting compared to Kate Bush. It’s not intentional. I played in a rock band in Michigan. I was kicking and screaming not to be the singer because my voice was so choral-y. I thought it should be a dude singing. It’s taken awhile to accept the voice I have and do what I’m doing. On this record, I figured out how to write in a vocal range that suits me better in a key that’s easier to find. It’s a learning process.

Could High Places drop the synthetic electronics and go completely acoustic if need be?
 

 

 

Yeah. We’re interested in the whole idea of acoustics versus electronics. We get called an electronic act but neither of us feel that’s what we do. We saw it more as two people filling in spaces with electronics to take care of ourselves onstage. We like the idea of an acoustic record. The whole thing with us is the duality of inorganic versus organic. This record goes deeper into the idea of the natural world versus manmade things. Live we use samples.

It’s a great headphone experience.
 

 

 

We like to use a lot of stereo ideas so the sound bounces around a bit.

Syncopated disco beats juice up a few of the more accessible tunes.
 

 

 

That wasn’t a conscious decision. But we both really love dance music and wanted to have a few unabashed dance songs on the record. The record is supposed to be about the life cycle of a person. It feels like different chapters in a book with dance beats going against challenging experimentation. For us, High Places wasn’t about a specific sound. It’s more about what happens when a collaboration between Rob and myself results in all the tracks working together to form a complete story.

What’s up with “Constant Winter” and its verbose family tree thesis?
 

 

 

I had Tom Waits in my head. I remember him in the Jim Jarmusch movie, Down By Law. I was thinking of someone leaving home to lead a new life but maybe being conflicted about starting a family while still wanting to be wild. It’s a bit of a universal feeling about turning into an adult. Is it made by choice or does it just happen? That song’s more of a rock number.  

Perhaps the following track, “On A Hill In A Bed On A Road In A House,” with its cadaverous profundity and distant voicing, exposes that loss of freedom best.
 

 

 

That’s a bit more introspective. It contains my favorite beat Rob made.

Did Joni Mitchell’s lyrical prowess serve as inspirational in any way?
 

 

 

She’s my go-to inspiration. I always liked the Canadians – Neil Young. My sister and I performed Joni Mitchell songs in high school and I do some at soundcheck. Her storytelling is impeccable. I also listened to a lot of Jazz. Rob was into punk and hardcore. When I was in college I was into folk-punk acoustic stuff. I did house shows with homemade instruments and honest heart-on-the-sleeve lyrics. Early on, High Places straightforward lyrics were noticeable. Growing up, my mom was a music teacher and my grandfather was a university choral music instructor. I fought the theatrical influence but ended up in a lot of high school musicals. So there was Classical music around offsetting my Weezer and Green Day rock stuff.

Obviously, there’s an appreciable theatricality informing many High Places tunes.
 

 

 

We’re real interested in not being confined to rock clubs – the whole idea of playing art galleries and mixing different art forms together. A theatre piece would be great. We were thinking of doing incidental music for plays. I’d always sung in choirs so it’s hard to take the choirgirl out of me.

How’s the current Michigan scene looking?
 

 

 

In Kalamazoo, scenes pop up then die quickly. The noise scene in Michigan is still alive and kicking. Awesome Color. I was proactive there. Great café scene and moped riders. Brooklyn bands like Japanther and Matt & Kim loved coming through. Unfortunately, a lot of people moved away since Michigan suffered with the bad economy and housing market. The paper and auto industries are tanking. Still, Detroit’s always interesting. Many empty lots left have become farming areas. That appeals to artists wanting cheap rent.