At the Rialto Theater on Sunday, May 31, Brooklyn-based experimental bands Animal Collective and Black Dice will be dueling it out for who can be the louder band at a much anticipated month-ending concert.
Despite giving Animal Collective’s last album Strawberry Jam a deafening disapproval, I am pumped to hear songs off their newest release Merriweather Post Pavilion, (domino, 2009) named after the Columbia, Maryland venue; the likes of which The Who, The Dead, The Zep and 50 Cent have graced.
If you’d like to read something to get an idea of what the Animal Collective show will be like, my review from 2007 should suffice.
If you’re willing to shell it out this Sunday, showtime is at 8 p.m. and tickets are $21 for advance general admission prices and $23 day of show.
If you’re not in the mood to have your ear drums ripped out by means of your wallet on Sunday night, Windy & Carl is playing at Solar Culture Gallery at a comparatively cheaper $10 per head. This show will be equally amazing and hopefully the start time at Solar will be around 9:30 p.m. so I can catch all three of these great bands.
If you want to hear Windy and Carl before Sunday, hold a shell up to your ear, preferably from Lake Michigan, and hum, to the best of your knowledge, “Amazing Grace” in a breezy, free-form guitar melody. It’s enough to pacify a wolverine.
Windy & Carl are not only the calm to the rocky musical landscape, they are the ultimate rubdown, the soothing beginning to a stressful workweek. It’s the perfect nightcap to an otherwise uneventful weekend, so save your energy, and your money, and display some decadence downtown Sunday night.
It’ll be like an opera under the stars with Vortex 4 from our fair city opening up for Windy & Carl. Both shows are all ages.
Below, Windy Weber of Windy & Carl describes the ebb and flow of their music, some of their favorite bands, Michigan and the gut instinct it takes to acclimate to music while touring.
AZNB: Tell us a little bit about Windy & Carl especially the early years. How does it feel to still be making music for approximately 17 years with the same project?
WW: We started playing in the early ’90s and started writing our own songs in 1993. Our first 7” came out in the fall of 1993, and it was more basic, a little folkish, the songs had a definite song structure. As time went on we became more experimental in our writing and creation, and the music became more ambient. As for us making music for so long, it depends on the day – sometimes it seems we have far more to do, and other days it seems like we have done as much as we can.
Are you touring with anyone else right now? How is it being on the road as a husband-and-wife duo? It must be nice touring without a drum set.
WW: We are doing a number of the West Coast shows with White Rainbow and Nudge, both great bands on Kranky who we adore. They are great people, and even better musicians. We are very happy to be traveling with our friends.
It can be hard to be married and work together and do music together, and sometimes we are a great force against the world, and other times it takes all we have to not be fighting in front of others. It can be good; it can be tense. And that can change every few minutes depending on the stresses around us. And, since we’ve never had a drum set, we can only guess it must be nicer than touring with one. They seem big and bulky.
Tell us a little bit about the record store you run in Dearborn, Mich., called Stormy Records.
WW: The shop is about to be 10 years old. It takes up all our time and energy, part of why we have not toured in so long. We work hard and we enjoy being part of the music community and helping people find music that they love.
You just got done touring the Northeast with Benoit Pioulard. Tell us a little bit about the tour and the band Lambs Laughter, which is the collaboration between Windy Weber and Thomas Meluch of Benoit Pioulard.
WW: Tom and I started the Lambs project as a way to investigate new sounds and textures and work a bit outside the regular work we do musically. We’re hoping to record later this year and eventually get a record out, but that is going to take some time since we live on opposite sides of the country, and we would rather record together instead of exchanging tapes in the mail.
Some of what we make is noisy and rumbly – only soothing in a weird sort of way. And some of what we do is very pretty and intertwining, with bits of vocals and guitar playing that sounds more like classical stringed instruments. We had a very fun tour in the east, and played 11 shows in 12 days.
There were highlights in Toronto and Asheville, in the way of playing great shows. It was satisfying to tour as the three bands in a package deal because it meant that most nights we were the only people playing and that gave us great control over setting up our instruments and getting our settings correct and then not having to change anything around before we actually performed. It was also fun to have someone out with us, someone else to talk to and share the experience of touring. It resulted in a lot of great conversations and interesting situations. And a damn lot of amazing music. I’d do it again as soon as possible.
It’s not uncouth to expect 90 plus minutes of W&C at a time. Is that how long you’re going to be playing every night?
WW: We tried to play that long and found that the audience does not have that much of an attention span, and neither do we. Besides that, it is physically difficult to play that long, so we have been doing about 70 minutes each night and it is working out really well.
How much of your music is improvisation compared with strictly written material? How do you play in both realms between writing songs and feeling where the music should be?
WW: This depends on the day and time. Our old material was much more composed than our newer material, and what we are playing on tour runs the gamut from old to new…often times it depends on the mood we’re in and where we’re hoping to take the audience. We simply listen to our bodies to know what to play and when. Often times it is a gut instinct type thing.
I’ve never been to Terrastock, but you have played a leading role in many of the festivals, which take place around the world. Tell us a little bit about the experimental music festival and where you have fit into the scene over the years.
WW: Phil Mcmullen runs the fest, which started as a companion to the magazine Ptolemaic Terrascope. We were lucky to be invited to the first one in Providence, R.I., in 1997 and became friend with Phil. The fest was amazing and we met many incredible people we are still friends with, and then we were invited back for every fest since. We represent the more ambient side of the fest (which has included performances by Landing, Grimble Grumble, Bardo Pond, Pelt, Lothars, and Ghost), and that gives good balance to the heavy psychedelic bands that play (Major Stars, Kinski, Paik, Mono). We are honored to have played all the Terrastocks, and can’t say enough good things about them and about Phil.
You are in a genre of music that lends easily to comparisons. You sound similar to bands like Stars of the Lid, Yume Bitsu and (my favorite) Starometska, but when it comes down to it, all of these bands are so different and individual. Do you ever feel pigeonholed? What do you think you have in common with the aforementioned similar sounding bands and where are people way off the mark?
WW: We love Stars of the Lid and White Rainbow (Yume Bitsu was Adam’s project before White Rainbow). We are very happy to be in their company in the musical realm and adore them as people. We can hear the differences in our sound musically, but for people who are not into ambient music I can see how we would all sound the same. It’s OK—we don’t make music for everybody. And I doubt any of us ever will. Bands on Kranky are pretty selective about what they release, and none of us make music for the masses.
What experimental bands are you listening to currently? Is there anyone new who has really caught your eye?
WW: Pontiak, Valet, Lyonaisse, there are a lot of them, but mainly bands on Kranky (we are a happy family—we all listen to each others records)…in the past year we have listened to a lot of music that is not experimental also, like Of Montreal and Fleet Foxes. We listen to a huge range of sounds all the time—free jazz, classical, some opera, heavy metal, Frank Zappa…
Last year was a productive year for you, having released Intelligence In Evolution (split LP with Heavy Winged) (Music Fellowship, 2008) and Songs for the Broken Hearted (Kranky, 2008).
WW: The music for the split with Heavy Winged was actually turned in, in the summer of 2007 but the vinyl had many mastering problems and it took two full years to materialize. It is such a cool record! The Music Fellowship label made us very happy with that release. The newest full length (SFTBH) was inspired by aspects of real life, of how hard life can be. How involved and how much work there can be in relationships. I can’t say the two of them had any connection inspiration wise, they just happened to coincide time wise.
You just released a compendium to your 2008 Songs release with Instrumentals For The Broken Hearted (Blue Flea, 2009). Tell us a little bit about the two albums and how they’re related.
WW: The tour album is instrumental version of five songs from the new Kranky full length—and they are completely different mixes. Then it has an unreleased song that was not included on the Kranky release due to time constrictions.
What else is on the horizon for W&C?
WW: No idea. We’re going to make it through this tour and then garden this summer, have a garage sale, visit with friends and run the shop. We probably won’t think about music for a while after being out on the road all this time—we’ll need a break!
Is there anything you’d like to say to Tucson?
WW: You have wonderful cactus!
Once again, Windy & Carl play Solar Culture Gallery this Sunday, May 31 around 9 p.m. The show is $10 and is all-ages, always.
