Interview: Seventeen Evergreen love ATP Festival and Chicks

November 7, 2008 · Filed Under Features, Interviews, Live · Comment 

Seventeen Evergreen land in London for a one-off show and talk to Beren Neale about their debut album, floppy cheese and those lazy Pavement comparisons.

Seventeen Evergreen are a San Francisco band, but their explorative music can be linked to no terrestrial region. Having fed a lifelong passion for all things unearthly, drifted around the West Coast of America when growing up and soaked in influences from their travels across Europe, the delicate, magnificent music of Caleb Pate and Nephi Evans is more akin to finding a spider’s web in the corner of a moon crater than any current trend.

Since the US release earlier this year of their debut album Life Embarrasses me on Planet Earth, the two have visited London only twice. But the band is familiar with the city, as Caleb lived here in 2001. It was during this time, after an enjoyable but fruitless search for new musicians, that he returned to San Francisco with Nephi to regroup, refocus, and “make Seventeen Evergreen a more serious proposition”.

Why the move back to San Francisco? Is there a scene that you identify with there?

Caleb: Maybe if they’ll have us. It’s a very hipster-driven, cliquey scene. There are a handful of really cool psychedelic bands, noise bands, but I’m probably more into some of the indie hip hop stuff in Oakland… A handful of bands we like: Deerhoof, The Papercuts, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound. They’re a Comets On Fire kinda band - heavy psych, buzz stuff.

It sounds like an All Tomorrow’s Parties line-up…

C: ATP is the best festival I’ve ever seen. I went to the Tortoise one, and it was amazing – Boards of Canada, Television, Yo La Tengo, Lambchop. That was 2001, around the time I lived here.

I regret missing the one Steve Malkmus curated.

C: He should have read all the erroneous reviews that we sound like Pavement, and he would have invited us.

Just googling you guys you see…

C: Pavement 1,000 times!

I thought I’d sneak that in there, subtle like.

C: You did a good job - I normally don’t talk about it. (Journalists) can be very lazy. Like, the Pavement thing is understandable because of geography, and the way we speak possibly. But Pavement is like the older brother of everyone that plays music. We happen to come 90 minutes away from where they come from (Stockton, CA), but I think to say that our music is derived from them… I think that’s slighting.

Nephi: I don’t think that our music has been influenced by Pavement at all. They’re just another band which I like. If we’re writing ideas and I hear something that’s too similar, I’m very aware of that.

C: To a fault we’re this way. Jokingly, I tried to rip of Dexy’s Midnight Runners, cos I thought it’d be funny, and put it in this song and he (Nephi) had such an issue with it that I had to write a completely different part real quick. I’m not self-conscience in that way - he perhaps a bit more so. But, I don’t think we’re particularly good at ripping off other bands, because it’s better what we come up with.

There’s a strong otherworldly theme through the album…

C: I think that the album definitely encapsulates some of my youthful obsessions. As long as I remember I was always really interested in the moon and space travel and aliens and these sorts of things. I have so many illustrations that I did when I was a little kid drawing spaceships.

Talking about illustrations, I remember some questions I emailed you before about zines, and you mentioned something about Floppy Cheese…

C: Nephi reminded me of that actually, cos I showed it to him long after I made it. It was a zine that an old friend and I did together. Basically, really bad music reviews, fake skateboard contest coverage, photocopied vinyl dudes made by Fisher Price (?) Just a really juvenile thing.

What inspired that?

The inspiration was my uncle had written a play called Floppy Cheese, which was based on this (living) blancmange idea - very Monty Python sort of vibe. I was like 11, right. So at one point we recited it and that became the title of the zine. Actually, me and my uncle used to do some really bizarre early electroacoustic music together using reel-to-reel tape machines, glasses and water and all kinds of things. His name’s Eric Simonson. He’s a composer. Why did you ask that? I was interested why you’d ask that.

I’ve got a friend that runs this zine… It was just a shot in the dark. What other art mediums inform your music?

C: Chicks!

Chicks?

C: That’s what’s on my mind at the moment.

Any luck in London?

This time? Not as many. I’ve seen London as virtually a smorgasbord in the past. This time I haven’t really been vibing on it.

Fair enough. Going back to another answer from a previous question - about how you wanted to “give back more than you get.” What did you mean?

C: I think it’s nice to give back, to try to express yourself in a way that you think needs to be expressed. I’m not speaking about giving back to the public or listeners. I’m actually speaking about giving back to the musical canon. Because (assumes mock lofty tone) the people will be enriched eventually by us enlarging the canon… I mean, giving back to ‘the people’ is simply giving them another Strokes. That’s all they want, right? They want another Killers, Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, you name it.

N: We’ve had comments from people, like ‘I was driving home to one of your songs and…’

C: … I totalled my car listening to your record’. We have various stories: ‘I had driven home from my wife giving birth to our first kid, listening to your record.’ It’s kinda like, wow, people live to our music.

That must be satisfying, as that album was entirely your own vision, with no interference…

N: Absolutely. We did everything [on the album] ourselves.

C: We had no label interaction when we made the record. We weren’t signed to anybody. We released it ourselves first and then we found labels coming to us later. They’ll probably be interested in working with us more closely on album number two, but we’ll see if we want to take their advice. We definitely learnt a lot from making it and I think the forty or so songs we’ve written for the next record illustrates that.

End of interview.

It’s time for the guys to get ready for the gig, and Nephi leaves to catch the end of support act Kyte. After some rambling chat with Caleb about psychedelic folk-rock innovator Merrell Fankhauser, we too head over. Entering the venue, we’re both stopped in our tracks by the music being played down the corridor: ‘Bud-ids-no sac-ah-rah-fiees’ wails a disturbingly familiar voice. “Not a good Billy Joel”, says Caleb. “That’s Elton John” I politely correct him. “It’s Billie Joel!” he demands. Although not my finest hour, I assure him I’m not mistaken, as I bought the track on its release in the 90s. “It’s Elton!” he concedes with a grin, and we launch into a unique rendition: ‘Col col heart. Hrr-dun-by-yoo’. “Hey!” exclaims Caleb. “You’ve got to put this in your piece. This is your end.” And so it is.


Life Embarrasses Me On Planet Earth

Lucky Number 2007, Audio CD, £11.99

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Interview: The Parlotones - rock’n'roll South African-style

May 2, 2008 · Filed Under Features, Interviews · Comment 

Khan Morbee – it’s the kinda name that makes me think of men in animal furs and war paint, swinging fake weapons about and hollering ‘BATTLE METAL!” at each other. Calm down though – Khan Morbee is actually the frontman of South African indie-rock-types, The Parlotones. There’s not a Lordi-esque jockstrap in sight, just rousingly accomplished indie rock’n’roll.

“Myself and [Neil Pauw, drummer] were introduced by a mutual friend who knew we liked similar bands, we got together and ‘jammed’ a few times soon realising we needed additional musicians.” It’s an age old story, only instead of coming together in a grotty bedsit in Camden, the embryonic form of The Parlotones developed in South Africa. “[Neil] had played in a band previously with [Paul Hodgson, guitarist], and our bassist [Glenn Hodgeson] (who at that stage was really a pianist), happened to be the brother of the guitarist and he took over the reigns of the only instrument left to complete the package.”

“We are fans of The Beatles, Queen, Radiohead and more recently Coldplay (although we never knew of them when we named ourselves) and noticed a connection with Parlophone records, so we slightly morphed the name in an attempt to tempt fate.”

Of course, when a band is fairly established in one territory and trying to break into others, it can cause bizarre release schedules, even in this day and age when it is possible to download a band’s album before they’re even aware they’ve finished it. Which is why the band is only getting round to promoting their ‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ album here, while the follow-up is already out in South Africa.

“[Radiocontrolledrobot’] was our first proper recording in which we did 18 songs in 2 weeks. We have obviously been promoting that album since [2005] and now we are sort of multiple-personalities, having to promote different albums in the different territories. I’d like to think that as musicians we’ve obviously improved, so playing them here seems almost effortless. The songs have been given a breath of fresh air playing them to brand new audiences and winning them over one by one. It’s an exciting challenge…”

“The idea is to release [‘A World Next Door To Yours’] abroad next year and then do a simultaneous release with the third album, so that we’re not having to do this disjointed promotional thing. We’re recording an unplugged session back home in May, we’re very excited about it. It will also give us a chance to delay releasing another album in SA so that we can correlate the third release.”

“I think with ‘A World Next Door…’ we’ve settled on a Parlotones sound that is distinctly ours. Both albums, and albums going forward will always reflect our energetic side as well as our gentler side. I think this is largely due to the fact that influences range from Simon and Garfunkel to System of a Down – we’ll never go to those extremes but will try sit somewhere comfortably in between”

And The Parlotones aren’t afraid to make their influences as clear as an invisible window pane, with recent single ‘Louder Than Bombs’ being “unashamedly a direct reference to [The Smiths] greatest hits album” of the same name. “We are all big fans and we used to throw indie parties back home where we would have friends playing all the indie classics, we would play and the parties were called Louder then Bombs, we even had flyers made with Louder than Bombs big on the front.

“We wrote a song called ‘Louder than Bombs’ as a sort of ode to that moment in our lives. Lyrically, it expresses our desire to ‘make it’ with the refrain ‘Finally it’s happening…’ Weirdly, it was written when things were starting to ‘happen’ (well, what we thought was happening) for us back home and it’s getting a bit of mileage over here – needless to say we’re holding thumbs” That means ‘crossing their fingers’, for those not au fait with SA slang.

The video for ‘Louder than bombs’:

[”src”:”http://www.youtube.com/v/L9JGTFlEKRg&hl=en”,”wmode”:”transparent”]

The band is back in South Africa at the moment, gearing up to record a show on May 8 for their first DVD release. It’s a startling comparison to their relatively small profile in the UK “We have experienced this anonymous existence when we were starting out back home so we don’t feel that out of place…it really makes the sweet moments that much sweeter and we appreciate every step of the journey.”

The band’s popularity back home led them to be one of the bands playing the much derided Live Earth at its South African-leg. Looking back, does Morbee think the whole worldwide event now smacks somewhat of environmental tokenism?

“I really don’t know – the world loves to panic about ‘something’, whether its war, crime, terrorism, bird flu etc. I don’t really know how much of its fact or how much of its fiction, or how much of it is designed by authority to induce a sense of their purpose and existence as the big brother who steps in to fix it.

“Our level of panic is all relative, people in London say crime is a problem, which I find laughable coming from Johannesburg…but then again, I’m sure someone coming from Lagos would find crime in Johannesburg laughable. I don’t really know the real answers but will try to assist whenever there is a perception that something needs to be fixed, i.e. our big stance back home in assisting with HIV/Aids charities and our involvement in Live Earth.

“My only concern is that a loud noise is made initially and it soon peters off into returning to old ‘more comfortable’ habits whilst the hob knobs deliberate on end how to fix the problem so as to not impact the profit machine to intensely – who’s actually running the show? The intentions were good and we were honoured to be a part of that process. I just hope the noise continues and results in real action, not just a couple of windmills peppered across the continent for decoration”

So why is it that while hundreds of identikit indie-twerps in tight jeans (aka the XFM daytime playlist…) somehow prosper, while bands from South Africa are virtually unknown over here? Geographical distances are increasingly irrelevant now thanks to this invention called ‘the internet’.

“In the past, we didn’t have the technology to compete on quality, sanctions were in place for many years, and unfortunately politics stifled arts and culture into a sideline hobby, not to be taken too seriously - and heaven forbid, be considered a career.

“Our currency is also weak making the necessity of touring difficult. There’s also a inferiority complex that seems entrenched whereby we tend to think everything from overseas is bigger and better evident even today where ‘BIG’ international bands who sell way less than local artists [domestically in South Africa] are placed higher on a bill. The verdict is still out on whether it can be done and we’re going to give it our best shot”

“ If all else fails we’ve enjoyed the journey thus far and that’s worth its weight in gold.”

The video for ‘Dragonflies & Astronauts’:

[”wmode”:”transparent”,”src”:”http://www.youtube.com/v/kYO5MnrRlu8&hl=en”]

‘Radiocontrolledrobot’ is ether set for imminent release, or has already come out, depending where you happen to live in the world. It’s easier if you just go check the website, yeah?

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