STACK #133 Nov 2016

MUSIC

NEWS

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MARTIN COURTNEY

YOU AM I: TIM ROGERS

even with a track like the phenomenal lament Daemons – which references wild behaviour and the awful troughs to which it can lead – he’s telling stories. “I think [ Daemons ] is for anyone who feels they’ve got the potential to go under, yet they still keep prodding the bear,” he says. “First of all, make sure you’re not hurting anyone else. That’s the number one priority. Then keep appraising that, and then start thinking of yourself.” He hints where this protagonist and himself might intersect when he begins explaining that the bear-prodding isn’t an excuse for anybody: “The thought that you need to be miserable to create good art, I think, is a crock of shit,” he says. “But I found great solace in anything that’s been going on in my life that’s been depressing, knowing that you can use art to help yourself and to help people around you. Not use the pain of the situation necessarily, and being manipulative that way, but as an escape; just to give yourself respite so that you can reappraise your behaviours. "Making [music] has definitely been an immense help, and I think the rest of the band would agree that if we’re having a bad time, hurtling along somewhere and psychologically imploding, that the phrase ‘Thank Christ we’ve got a show tonight’ has often been deployed.”

Q1/ In opening track Awake there’s an immediate sense of contentment. Do you think worrying about what can happen is as destructive as worrying about what already has happened? Sure. I think that song is kind of about how you can't really spend too much time thinking about what has already happened or what's going to happen in the future. There's no past or future, only right now. I'm not sure I fully subscribe to that, but I liked the opening line, "The past is past is just the point,” so I went with it. Martin Courtney, of New Jersey band Real Estate, has just released his serene and bucolic new album Many Moons , which revolves around themes of putting nostalgia to bed and appreciating the present moment. Q2/ Are you more aware of time's passage now that you are a father? It's true there are a lot of references to time passing on this record. That's something I only realised after the album was done. The fact that I became a dad while making these songs definitely plays into it, and getting older, and just that the album itself took so long to make. Q3/ Where in New York was the beautiful Northern Highway clip filmed? That was pretty much all filmed in Beacon, NY. I just was loving how overgrown and lush everything is up here in the summertime. There's also a lot of abandoned industry up here – old train tracks and factories. I liked the idea of having the video just be a series of shots of nature reclaiming places that had been used for a time by people. It almost has a post- apocalyptic vibe, though that wasn't the intention. Q4/ Did you write Vestiges first, or have these tracks had discrete, staggered timelines during the last 12 months? Vestiges was one of the earlier ones, but they were all finished at their own pace. For example, the fist song I wrote was Focus . I wrote the music for that one in early 2013, before I wrote anything for the last Real Estate record even. Q5/ Are there secret lyrics that go with the flautist’s melody in title track Many Moons , or did you always intend for it to be an instrumental? I guess at first I was thinking of writing words for that one, but pretty early on I decided it would work better as an instrumental. I was just going through a heavy Nick Drake phase at the time, and I'd wanted to use flute in a song for a long time.

P orridge = breakfast comfort food. Hotsauce = fiery, giddy-up food. Porridge and hotsauce = with all affection, wake your arse up food. You Am I’s new album, Porridge and Hotsauce , is well titled because Tim Rogers and his crew embody a kind of happily vicious energy – throw in a last minute session at Daptone Records and you’ve got a warm and wry blues-rock earworm. “Well hell, when someone says you can get a week at a studio that you love both aesthetically and technically, then we’re the kind of middle-aged idiots who will do that,” Rogers tells STACK. The frontman says that some tracks have been resuscitated from years ago; stand-out One Drink at a Time – whose roaming chords still manage to make some weird, innate sense – was birthed in the ‘90s. “That’s the oldest one of the bunch,” he says, “because I started writing it in 1998 when I was living in Los Angeles. I had these chords together and didn’t show it to the band because I thought it sounded a little too much like ELO.” Luckily he discovered that bandmate Davey Lane was also an ELO fan, whilst the pair were “typically out on the hack one night” and came across a jukebox. “I wanted the music to be upbeat, because the protagonist and his true love are probably gradually destroying themselves, but it’s the way that they want to do it, and I feel very affectionately about this protagonist, whoever they may be.” Rogers mentions his ‘protagonists’ often, and

Porridge and Hotsauce by You Am I is out November 6 through Inertia

fat freddy's drop: toby laing

long – it’s become more of an institution! – that to be able to take our time in the studio made the songwriting process really enjoyable.” Bays is a wonderfully percussive outing for the group, and Laing says that's a direct result of having that time to “zero in on the basics” of each track. “I think sound quality is something we are all particularly interested in, just because we have now had the experience of playing on some big stages,” he explains. “There are certain tunes, that when you get them on the big system like we did at the Alexandra Palace in London last year – 10,000 in a lovely big hall – the experience of playing is completely different.”

A s trumpeter Toby Laing acknowledges, New Zealand groovemeisters Fat Freddy’s Drop are a big draw on the European festival circuit: the seven-piece now regularly hemispheres, offering up that delicate/brash mix of Afrobeat, soul, jazz, reggae and dub which turned heads way back when Midnight Marauders crept through your stereo. However, this year they retired to their divide their time between the northern and southern

Wellington studio to write and record their fourth studio album, Bays . “Close to 100 percent of the songs came out of extended studio sessions, whereas what we usually do is go on the road and grab a few minutes during a soundcheck to work on something,” Laing tells STACK NZ. “It was luxurious, you know, to plan these sessions and jam for hours. Obviously you have to go back and comb through it, but Fat Freddy’s have been together now for so

Many Moons by Martin Courtney is out now, through Domino

Bays by Fat Freddy's Drop is out now through The Drop/Remote Control

NOVEMBER 2015

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