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By Rudy Klapper, October 28, 2008 12:30 pm

Veteran L.A. musicians blaze their own proudly old-fashioned musical path, tour with Neil Young

“This whole thing has been really fun,” said singer-guitarist Russell Pollard of L.A.-based folk-rock band Everest while at a pit stop just outside Portland, OR. “Just being able to play for our fans and be on the road with some really great guys, it’s just the kind of experience we were hoping for.”

“Fun” is quite the understatement to describe the recent run of success Everest has encountered since releasing their debut album Ghost Notes on Vapor Records back in May. An amalgam of musical creativity and instrumental talent from a number of SoCal bands, such as Sebadoh, Earlimart, the Folk Implosion, and the Watson Twins, Everest got together as most bands do; a group of friends just trying to make music that appealed to them.

“We all knew each from the touring scene in L.A. and along the west coast,” Pollard explains. “I had played drums in Sebadoh and I had talked with some of the other guys [guitarists Jason Soda and Joel Graves] on tour and jammed with them at some point or another, and we kept in touch. And when it felt like the bands we were in wanted to go in a different direction or didn’t work out for whatever reason, it just felt right to go out and try our own thing.”

Everest certainly had no preconceptions of what they were trying to do when it came to figuring out their new sound. “The recording process was really a blank canvas,” Pollard said. “We came in there with some material that I had been working on and other songs we just kind of bounced off each other. We all played different roles in our previous bands so it was cool to branch out.”

While Pollard professes a love for ‘60s psychedelia and groovy kraut-rock, Ghost Notes calls to mind more of one of Pollard’s favorite contemporary bands, My Morning Jacket. From the Southern-rock tinge of the haunting opener “Rebels in the Roses” to the rollicking drive of “Trees” to the almost hymn-like qualities of “The Future,” Ghost Notes’s blend of Americana-roots rock, soul, and simple burning guitar rock is the kind of record that only comes out once in a while, and the band knew it.

“There was a really good vibe during recording, and the studio [the late Elliott Smith’s personal New Monkey Studio] was just the perfect atmosphere,” Pollard said. Plenty of Ghost Notes’ vintage guitar-rock feel can be attributed to Everest’s proclivity towards more old-fashioned recording methods.

“Nothing digital,” Pollard swore. “It wasn’t really a conscious choice, but analog, tape machines, etc. is just what we’ve grown up using. I wouldn’t know how to even use Pro Tools,” Pollard laughed. “But we think it really helped let the personality of the band come through. Instead of working everything out a million times and making sure every drum hit was just on or whatever, we just captured the essence of a band playing live.”

Everest’s big break came, however, when Neil Young’s manager caught a listen to one of their demos, visited at recording, and decided to take the record within only a few days. “It was surreal,” Pollard said. “He [Young] invited us to come on his European tour, and from there the whole process was just very organic, very natural. But at the beginning it was pretty crazy, because I think I speak for the whole band when I say Young was such a hero to us.”

 All veterans of the music business, they’re not letting their run of good luck interfere with what they set out to do: play for themselves and for their fans. “I think the heart of what we are is when we play live,” Pollard said. “So just the chance of being able to play in front of some major audiences music that really shines live, it’s awesome. We’re a live band first.” Everest should have no trouble getting in front of people anytime soon; they are currently again on the western leg of a U.S. tour that started September 14th with Young and Death Cab for Cutie.

“Honestly, I feel like we’ve been blessed,” Pollard said. “This has just been everything we could ask for and more, and we’re just excited to be playing.” For a band with as much musical savvy, creative chemistry, and such determination as Everest, it looks as if they’re not going to need much else anytime soon. 

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By Rudy Klapper, September 17, 2008 12:00 pm

San Diego indie rockers trip out to the desert, come back with gold

It’s nothing new for an up-and-coming band to look back on their musical predecessors for inspiration; some of indie rock’s most recent and brightest stars have staked their burgeoning careers and built some impressive reputations on stylizing themselves on their elders. The Arcade Fire had Springsteen, Franz Ferdinand had Orange Juice, Interpol had Joy Division, and now out of southern California comes Delta Spirit, a band that showcases a sound that has certainly been done before, but in this newest incarnation sounds fresher than it has in years.

Founded by bassist Jon Jameson and drummer Brandon Young of the now-defunct Noise Ratchet, a much more abrasive, punk-influenced group, the lineup was completed when friend and novice guitarist Sean Walker joined up and future vocalist Matthew Vasquez was discovered, according to Jameson, “singing and playing guitar by the train tracks.” Multi-instrumentalist Kelly Winrich started as the band’s producer but later joined up within their first year; the official band bio states his duties as “plays piano, hits a drum, sings, hits a trashcan, plays guitar and a high strung guitar.” A diverse group, but one, bassist Jameson says, that has one goal: “to be found in the lineage of honest and true music that has found its way through every current of music history.”

A bold claim, to be sure, and one that isn’t exactly the easiest thing to accomplish for a band that has yet garner any major label attention. Their sound is a little difficult than most current bands to pin down, although Delta Spirit themselves officially label themselves as “Other/Thrash/Visual” with tongues firmly in cheek on their MySpace, the band draws from a number of widespread influences.

“We were born in the ‘80s, grew up in the ‘90s and have parents from the ‘60s, [and] we are proud of the bands that are making great music now,” Jameson says. “Maybe it’s like the Waterboys [a Celtic folk-rock band] covering Harry Nilsson.”

A few listens to the band’s lead single, “Trashcan,” shows a clear affinity for the Waterboys as well as similarities to perennial ‘80s folk-punks the Violent Femmes, with singer Vasquez’s ragged, whiskey-soaked vocals painting a soulful picture of American life while a barroom piano playing a jangly tune and the powerful thump of the drums conjures up an image of Delta Spirit getting down and dirty in a seedy dive somewhere in the Southwest.

Ode To Sunshine, the band’s debut album that Spin declared “impresses mightily,” is a diverse collection of sounds that alternately rock with indie rock fervor and connect with the heartfelt intimacy of ‘60s folk. Recorded in a cabin in the deserts of eastern California, Jameson says it reminds him of everything from “sun, saunas, and dogs” to “Old Crow and Coke and Eli Thompson.”

“I think that before when we were looking at the album it felt kinda heavy to us and serious,” Jameson explains. “About the big things in life . . . but I think we realized that the true feeling of the album also included what we were feeling while making it and recording it and that those bits of summer and excitement and wonder break through every once in a while . . . the light and the dark.”

For a band just starting out in a music industry that looks anything but certain nowadays, it takes quite an impressive sound to leave a mark, but Delta Spirit and Ode To Sunshine seem to have all the right ingredients for success. And from a group as talented as they clearly are from an area that eats young, promising musicians for breakfast, they also seem to have just the right attitude.

“There is a feeling of possibility in our age,” Jameson says. “We feel that same possibility with our band. We don’t want to forget about the most important thing for us, which is simply making good music, but that does include being aware of what’s going on in the world as well as what’s going on in our own heads and souls. We just want to be honest about ourselves.”

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By Rudy Klapper, April 14, 2008 12:00 pm

One-man show goes on tour in support of new record

The do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic has been around for decades in the music industry, exemplified by such diverse bands as hardcore rockers Fugazi to Welsh weirdos Super Furry Animals, but native Angeleno and Say Hi frontman Eric Elbogen has taken the DIY ideal to a whole new level.

“I’ve always just worked better on my own,” Elbogen said over the phone while driving somewhere in central Oklahoma. “All the bands I had been in earlier always ended in some argument or another.”

“Working on my own” is an understatement in Elbogen’s case. Having started what was originally called Say Hi To Your Mom in Brooklyn in 2002 as a one-man band, Elbogen chose to forgo the traditional route of studio recording and played straight onto a computer he built himself, performing the majority of the instruments and vocals.

“It takes me about eight months to a year to make a whole record,” Elbogen said. “Lately I’ve been drawing in some other people [like drummer Chris Egan and keyboardist Jeff Sheinkopf] to tour and sometimes record with, but for the most part it’s just me and the computer.”

You wouldn’t know it from listening to the music, however. A mainstay of the indie lo-fi movement, Say Hi plays a lush brand of quirky synth-pop that sounds like the product of a dozen musicians, much less one. It’s Elbogen’s introspective and often eccentric lyrics that make him stand out, however, with their last album, Impeccable Blahs being entirely about vampires.

“I don’t really know how I come up with my lyrics,” Elbogen explained. “I write everyday and when it’s time to start the record, I pick the ones that stand out to me and throw away the shitty ones.” Their latest album, The Wishes and the Glitch, turns more to the personal side of things, with songs like “Zero to Love” speaking more about relationship problems than ever before.

The shift seems to have resonated with fans, which has made The Wishes and the Glitch the “best received record so far,” according to Elbogen. “So far on the tour the new songs have been gone over pretty well.”

Elbogen’s one-man show doesn’t stop with just making the music, though.

“I made the first record [2002’s Discosadness] and shopped it around for a while, but no one wanted to release it,” Elbogen said. “So I decided to do it myself.” Elbogen started up Euphobia Records to self-release his work, and received a crash course in the business of setting up a label and distribution.

“For the first couple of albums I was still figuring out how everything works, the business aspect, and around the third record I started feeling comfortable about it,” Elbogen said. “Now I know what I need to do when I release a record and so on.”

So being in the unique position of being both a working, touring musician, producer, and the head of a record label, Elbogen has been quick to catch on to the trends that are currently turning the music industry upside down. 

“We released The Wishes and the Glitch online six months before it hit stores,” Elbogen said. “It was a pretty successful sales technique and definitely helped with cutting costs.”

Elbogen cites Radiohead as one of his biggest influences, along with perennial alternative rockers Pavement, and believes that the record industry is inevitably headed to an online-only retail stage that Radiohead’s In Rainbows already pioneered. Elbogen agrees, however, that it will take a long time for the industry to change.

“Mp3s have helped us gain fans, of course, but they mostly hurt in the long run,” Elbogen said. “I think everyone is still trying to find out what works best, and the music companies take a long time to figure out anything.”

Elbogen, however, has never concerned himself with what the rest of the music industry is doing, and it doesn’t seem likely that Say Hi will let the cumbersome bureaucracy of the record business slow them down from doing what they love. Say Hi is what music is at its heart: simple, unrestrained creativity.

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By Rudy Klapper, February 22, 2008 12:00 pm

New York post-punk band dumps RCA, begins work on 3rd album

By the dawn of the new millennium, the fabled music scene of New York City had fallen into decay. Clubs were closing, fan attendance was down, and cash-strapped bands were disappearing into 9-to-5 office hell. Things looked pretty bleak.

That’s when a few upstart graduates from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn decided to try something different from their normal routine, and start a band. “It was pretty much a chance gathering,” stellastarr* bassist and back-up vocalist Amanda Tannen said. “I saw Shawn [Christensen, stellastarr*’s vocalist] on the street one day and he invited me over to jam. And it just went from there.”

For those not familiar with stellastarr*, the band found fame in the alternative/garage-rock revival that arose in New York City in the early 2000s. But whereas the Strokes were the scene’s ultra-hip rockers, Interpol catered to a slightly more gothic, much more depressed clientele, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ gave hope to women rockers everywhere, stellastarr* from the very beginning just seemed like a band that was there for the pure fun of playing music.

“Only our guitarist [Michael Jurin] wanted to be a musician when he was younger,” Tannen said. “I had played cello in high school but I had never played ‘rock music.’ I was pretty much forced into it,” she said, laughing. “But everything just clicked when we played, so we decided to keep on doing it.”

Picked up by major label RCA in the music industry’s scramble to capitalize on the “New York” sound’s success epitomized by the Strokes, stellastarr*’s self-titled debut album radiates the members’ newfound excitement for playing music. Firmly rooted in the post-punk, indie-rock tradition of bands like the Rapture, the album also shows a fixation on the new wave scene of the 80s, most apparent in Christensen’s yelping, emotional vocals and the often bright, poppy guitar lines exemplified in popular single “My Coco.”

Although boosted by their scene’s burgeoning popularity and the backing of a major label, Tannen insists that their jump from relative club obscurity to headlining concerts across the country was a long and hard-fought one.

“We played constantly, at least once every two weeks but usually more,” Tannen said. Word-of-mouth also played an important role in building their fan support: “We would put up our stickers in the back of every cab we took around the city, and then people would meet us and be like, ‘hey, I’ve heard of you guys from somewhere,” Tannen said. “We put our hearts into all of it.”

Their work paid off, as stellastarr* received generally favorable reviews from the indie press and their tours garnered enough attention to convince RCA to support them for a second album, which eventually became Harmonies for the Haunted.

It was around this time, however, that tensions between the band and their label arose, a familiar story to many bands that have been catapulted into the big leagues of the music industry.

“The label was breathing down our neck looking for ‘the single,’ and by the end of recording Harmonies and the accompanying tour, we were just done with the whole process,” Tannen said. Declining sales for their second album and a general lack of support from RCA all contributed to the band’s decision to drop their label and strike out on their own.

“It was good and bad at the same time,” Tannen said. “It was awesome how we got to write what we wanted and how we got to work with no guidebook, no system in place, but that whole fear of being on our own was pretty strong. Also, we all had to get day jobs again.”

Nevertheless, the band’s energy remains high as they record their third album in Brooklyn, demos of which can be heard on their Myspace page.

“The third record is a little more aggressive, very poppy,” Tannen said. “It’s got a bit of an ‘in-your-face,’ sarcastic vibe to it. Oh, and there’s definitely going to be party music in on this,” Tannen added. “We’re putting an emphasis on party music.”

With no label-supported distribution system in place for their upcoming album, will the band try something akin to Radiohead’s revolutionary “downloadable album, pay whatever you want” approach?

“I think it’s great that Radiohead did that,” Tannen said, “but only a band like Radiohead could do it. They’re huge, but for up-and-coming bands or bands that don’t have that kind of support like us, the traditional way of selling CDs is what you gotta do.”

While the future may look bleak for indie bands and the music industry in general, Tannen insists that it is still possible for future rock bands to succeed.

“If you are doing what you really want to be doing, and you really love what you’re doing, then you’ll be good,” Tannen said. “There’s not much payback for creating, but if you keep at it and you keep loving it, things will work out.”

For a band that built their reputation on hard work and persistency, stellastarr* is proof of what your mom always said: dream big, work hard, craft ridiculously catchy songs, and you’ll succeed.

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By Rudy Klapper, January 1, 2008 12:00 pm

Indie-pop band mixes equal parts Kierkegaard, Numan

(Originally published: 10/26/07)

Cloaked grim reapers. Banging gunshots resounding across the stage. Psychedelic neon spandex costumes. Death by mime.

While many people may picture the above scene and think of a particularly bizarre Cirque du Soleil production, they might be surprised to learn that these are just a few of the set pieces in your average Of Montreal concert, and some of the tamer at that.

“We design 100% of our own sets,” guitarist Bryan Poole said. “Right now, the pieces are very Gary Numan-inspired. And they take hours to set up.”

Rolling Stone magazine describes Athens, GA-based Of Montreal’s latest album, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? as “funked-up indie pop that mashes together David Bowie’s space theatrics and Prince’s sexual hedonism.” Even such a ridiculously disparate definition does not even come close to conveying the full stereophonic experience of an Of Montreal album, and it is perhaps this musical richness that has steered the band toward even greater popularity.

Arising from the Elephant-6 recording collective of such influential power-pop bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, the Apples in Stereo, and the Olivia Tremor Control, Of Montreal languished in obscurity for almost ten years in what singer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Barnes called the “indie ghetto,” unable to break through to any greater fame than cult status.

The band, which has been recording since 1997’s Cherry Peel, owes much of its resurgence to Barnes, who writes all of the material and comes up with most of the set designs.

“Of Montreal is Kevin’s baby,” Poole said. “He usually writes all of the songs as well as the music, especially on the last couple of albums.”

Moving away from the Kinks-inspired ‘60s psychedelia of their earlier years, Of Montreal’s latest albums show a trend towards electronica and dance music awash in synths and drum beats while still retaining the absurdist lyrics and whacky vocal stylings that are Barnes’ signature.

 “The first six years or so were tough,” Poole said. “Satanic Panic in the Attic [Of Montreal’s 10^th album, released in 2004] was when people really started coming out to our shows,” Poole said. “We gained a lot of high school fans and it basically spread through word-of-mouth.”

With Panic and their second-to-last album, The Sunlandic Twins, selling over 70,000 copies combined, an impressive feat for any indie band, and a recently-aired Outback Steakhouse commercial featuring their music, Of Montreal is definitely a band on the rise. But it’s their live shows that have propelled them to live legends and indie must-sees.

“We’re influenced by all sorts of things,” Poole said. “Sly Stone, the Beach Boys, Funkadelic. Kevin’s brother Dave really helps with the theatrics as well. Expect a party.”

Of Montreal’s work is not over, however. “We’re going to go into the studio after Thanksgiving,” Poole said. “The new album [tentatively titled Skeletal Lamping] is probably going to continue the trend of our last three.”

“Kevin’s already written about forty to fifty songs,” Poole continued. “You’ll probably hear a few of them at the show.”

When asked when the album might drop, Poole said, “We’re hoping for a release date next fall. We’re already a good ways through the album artwork.”

A band that, according to Poole, was “on the verge of calling it quits” a few years ago now has one of the fastest-growing fan bases in alternative rock and is swiftly building up a reputation as one of the most progressive and entertaining bands playing today. Not to mention they put on a live show that is probably the most extravagant outside of Las Vegas.

“I’m very happy with where the band is right now, and the crowds at our shows are only getting bigger,” Poole said. “I think we’re going in the right direction.”