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sinceileftyoublog · 1 year ago

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Oxbow Interview: Falsely Simple

Photo by Phil Sharp

BY JORDAN MAINZER

I get the sense that after all these years, the artistic collaboration among members of Oxbow is all but intuitive. The San Francisco experimental rock band, started as an offshoot from Palo Alto hardcore band Whipping Boy, has been making genre-averse noise music since 1989. Starting with the abrasive and bleak Fuckfest and culminating with the comparatively subdued and soulful Love's Holiday (Ipecac) released earlier this year, the Eugene Robinson-fronted band have developed an artistic voice over eight records that's cohesive in spirit and approach even if not always in sound. Whether they're working with no wave poets like Lydia Lunch, legendary vocalists like Marianne Faithfull, or full-on orchestras, Oxbow toys with space and raw emotion, focusing on the oft-uncomfortable relationship between silence and screams. All the while, Robinson sings about life, love, addiction, death, suicide, and violence, inspired by moments in his life but left ambiguous enough for listener interpretation.

Yet, it's that second in the list--love--that upon a surface listen, you might not hear on many Oxbow records. Sure, you can't really understand what Robinson is saying at all on early albums, let alone singing about. The band's longtime label Hydra Head did not, in their early pre-Internet days, send lyrics books along with the records themselves. But according to Robinson, love's always been a key component of Oxbow. What's new on Love's Holiday is the sonic and thematic clarity with which Robinson and the band dive in. "It's falsely simple sounding stuff," bassist Dan Adams told me over the phone earlier this year, "especially for people expecting Oxbow to be dirty and grimy and noisy." At the time of our conversation, before the album was released, Adams was unsure how fans and critics would receive it. It's gotten rave reviews from both per usual, and it seems like it could even be a gateway record for people not used to Oxbow or abrasive music in general.

The band put together and recorded the basic tracks for Love's Holiday just before the pandemic; they wouldn't see each other for a year and a half before returning to the record. During the pandemic, guitarist Niko Wenner suffered an injury, joblessness, and the death of multiple family members, including his father. He also had his second child. While Love's Holiday is by no means about these events or even directly inspired by them, you can hear the confused interplay between grief and joy throughout, as manifested by the instrumentation. Robinson's quintessentially pained bellows, Wenner's slurred blues guitars, and Greg Davis' pummeling drums rub elbows with elements with traditionally lighter timbres, like orchestral instrumentation and choral vocals. Kristin Hayter (fka Lingua Ignota) lends her voice to "Lovely Murk", embedding itself among Davis' deliberations, Adams' wiry bass, and shimmering synthesizers. A 15-person choir features on piano ballad "All Gone" and "Gunwale", the perfect juxtaposition to Robinson's baritone and Wenner's distortion, respectively. Don't get me wrong: Love's Holiday is an Oxbow album through and through, with a song like "The Second Talk" and its choppy rhythms and back-and-forth vocalizations reminiscent of back catalog highlights. But it feels like by being forthright, Robinson and company have become the truest versions of themselves.

Oxbow are in the middle of a West Coast tour celebrating Love's Holiday, playing San Francisco's Great American Music Hall tonight and finishing Sunday at Mohawk in Austin. When I spoke to Adams earlier this year, the band was rehearsing, figuring out how they'd adopt the songs to the stage. Their approach wasn't much different this time around: "Practice them a bunch, get on stage, and play them," Adams quipped. In reality, the challenge is stripping down the songs, "taking advantage of the space and sparsity," according to Adams. "It really is a fairly stripped down record in terms of what's going on," Adams said. In essence, they're doing to the studio recordings what Love's Holiday built on from previous Oxbow records: emphasizing the subtleties and the depth of Robinson's voice.

Below, read my conversation with Adams, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: How do you think Love's Holiday is unique as compared to your previous albums, and how do think it's a continuation of them?

Dan Adams: We were freer to give in to the sparsity and simplicity more than we have ever in the past. Yesterday, I listened to a couple of more recent records, and these are cleaner, simpler songs. One thing I really enjoy about that is they put the voice so far up front in terms of the quality of voice and the timbre and emotional content. It's much more exposed than the records have been in the past. I think that's a great thing.

It's very consistent with what we've done in terms of being a fairly transparent expression of emotional material. It's intense. It's complex, I guess, but...in ways that are much more subtle. It's a sensible trajectory from The Narcotic Story and Thin Black Duke. I don't think any of us in the band feel like our trajectories are a one-way pass. [laughs] I think we've always enjoyed doing what feels right at the time we made the music and following our whims and where we are in life, and so on. It's the music we were making at the time, as Niko was writing songs and we were hashing them out in the practice room. It's impossible to predict what the next round of material will be like, although in this particular session, we recorded a whole bunch more music at the same time, so we probably have another record using the material from the same process, which will also be pretty fun. Some of those songs are kind of similar, and some are very different even though they come from the same genesis.

SILY: Does the voice being more upfront on Love's Holiday place a greater emphasis on the lyrics?

DA: That's an interesting question. I think the lyrical content has always been extremely important and a driving factor. I also know Eugene has said quite a bit that he's intentionally written much less, much sparser lyrics for this record. In a way, you could say that's emphasizing what is there. On the other hand, I think it comes down to how the lyrics are delivered, and how well you can hear them. How clearly they're delivered by Eugene [and] how much space the band leaves for those lyrics. I think it's really up to the listener how much work they want to do to find out what the lyrics are about. In some of the older records, it was hard to figure out. In some cases, there were records that came out years before our lyrics books were published where people couldn't figure out what the lyrics were. In this case, they're both available and easier to hear.

SILY: In the lead up to the release of Love's Holiday, Eugene has talked about how the band has always written "love songs," so these themes shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. But in the context of what you just said, that the lyrics in the past were less physically accessible, it might seem like a newfound theme to a lot of folks.

DA: Yes. I think that's right. Eugene's described it as trying to lay it out there and make it obvious after so many years of people not getting it. My interpretation is that because the music has at times been pretty strong, noisy, loud, big, and dissonant, things we've enjoyed and continue to enjoy folding into it, it's almost like typecasting. People hear that and assume that's the element being conveyed in the lyrics. There's complexity and subtlety. These are not simple topics, and Eugene [was frustrated] that people weren't doing the work to understand and find it. So this is a time to make it a little bit more obvious and tell people in advance what we're doing. That's what Thin Black Duke was about as well: short-circuiting people's assumptions about what our record was going to be like and explaining to people what we're doing rather than having people use the old simplistic interpretations of what we're about.

SILY: During the making of Love's Holiday, Niko had a child but also suffered the loss of multiple family members. Can you recall a time when something familial that has happened in a band member's life has contextualized a record as much as his life changes did for this one?

DA: I think so. We've been at this a long time. Everybody's had major things happening in their lives that have directly affected records. First marriages for several people before the seconds, kids at various stages showing up, parents dying, and so on. What's probably more important is how as everybody's gone through this and gotten older, we've interpreted [life events] as they come. Similar [events] might mean different things to you at different phases of your life. It's a continuum.

Certainly, if you hear Eugene talk about the first record, that was very much about very intense things going on in his life. That was part of the whole reason for the existence of the band. It shows where our heads are at the time: If we're in a different place, we're going to make different music.

SILY: You've talked about how working with Joe Chiccarelli for the third record in a row has provided a consistency to allow you to be freer. Do you have specific examples of where the continuity allows for that freedom?

DA: We've felt the freedom to trust Joe more to make decisions and follow his lead. On the first record with him, there was a lot more tension. We weren't as comfortable relinquishing control of certain things. We've always had a pretty heavy hand on everything we make. It's been a great thing to allow what we make to be shaped more by his reaction to it, to allow him to be contributing ideas and getting the hell out of the control room and letting him do his thing. [laughs] He's learned a lot more about what we're about. For some reason, he's been very interested in what we do and very respectful of it. He's internalized it more and been able to take it and run with it. That doesn't mean he's written half the songs and done a whole bunch of stuff like a lot of producers do. If you listen to our rehearsal recordings as we've figured stuff out, it's fairly similar. But some of his little ideas about what sounds [good] here and what sounds [good] there, where to change the mix or drop a beat or cut a section out, he's got great sensibilities. We were very happy to follow his lead in a lot of cases.

SILY: At what point during the process did you decide to hone in on what I hear as one of the main sonic trends in the record, the choral singing?

DA: Our drummer Greg suggested we use voices instead of the orchestration we had been using on some of the earlier records. It was after a show we played at Supersonic Festival in Birmingham in 2017, where the promoters had talked with Niko and had the idea. They've always liked Oxbow doing special things for that festival. Niko had been thinking about choir stuff, and they asked us to put one together and perform with a choir. It was very difficult but very fun: a really great experience and interesting show. I think it made it clear that would be something very fun to explore. It wasn't a huge leap to decide to put choir back in the songs. It had been brewing for the past 4-5 years.

SILY: How did you come to work with Kristin Hayter on "Lovely Murk"?

DA: That's a good question. I don't know who got in touch with her or don't remember. Either Niko or Eugene, I think. [Maybe] Joe suggested it.

SILY: Were you aware of her before working with her?

DA: I was not. I find myself disappointingly out of touch with a lot of great music happening right now. I need new avenues to find this stuff. I don't search for music a lot on the Internet. When I explore, I usually listen to a couple really good local radio stations, but it's up to what they play and what I hear.

SILY: The band includes many instruments on "Dead Ahead" that contain interpersonal context or tributes to people that have since passed: instruments from loved ones who have passed, guitars Niko uses to play for his kids, even a toy piano you gave to Niko's kids. Were these inclusions a conscious starting point for that song, or was it something you decided on after the fact?

DA: I don't think there was any conscious thought. I'm guessing [Niko] was just playing around with it and happened to be using it at the time and went back to it. It's very consistent with how we've approached sounds we make: immediate inspiration, not too deeply thought out, grab something that's there because it seems like the right thing. If I had to guess--I'm interpreting how Niko works, since we haven't talked exclusively about this stuff ever--he envisions a lot of sounds in his head, sound qualities, timbre. He might be consciously aware there's a certain instrument he has in mind he wants to use, or it might be a subconscious thing to pick up the same instrument. He has a couple guitars he's had for years he still uses when playing in his house and working on new ideas. Nothing new there, I think.

SILY: Can you talk about the visual identity of the record?

DA: It's been a great process. The last record was the first for which we made any videos, because it seemed like they were getting more important for how people consume and find music. In that case, we contacted a few people and basically said, "We'll buy you a plane ticket to come over, we don't have much other money to support it, but pitch us an idea, and if we like it, we'll make a video." That worked with the videos with Chris Purdie. This time around, Eugene or Niko--I can't remember--felt it would be important to make videos for everything. We needed to figure out how to do it without bankrupting ourselves more than we usually do. We sent enquiries out to a bunch of people and asked them to propose what they might do for songs, and if we thought there was a chance it would turn out well, we said, "You're on." We paid people what we could, which wasn't a lot, but we let the directors drive [the entirety of] the content. They're very different. As all of them come out, it will be apparent how different they are. It was a great experience to see people give us finished products that were really surprising. It's been a really wonderful added creative process to participate in, to get that kind of feedback from others to see their visions.

SILY: What about the cover art? Did you give Aaron Turner the same leeway?

DA: Yes. He's worked with us enough where he understands our process and is willing to keep us in the process. In this case, he developed quite a few proposals, and there was too much back and forth as we tried to settle on what we wanted to use. He was extremely patient. Sometimes, our process is convoluted, inefficient, and painful. But he hung in there and developed a bunch of ideas till there was something we all thought was cool. All of his ideas are great. He's a very broad thinker as a visual artist and comes up with great artwork. In this case, the variety in ways made it harder to choose, so it took us a long time to settle on one piece of art.

SILY: What's next for the band?

DA: Trying to stay alive and keep doing what we do. We're always working in the now even if the now is a span of five years. We're focusing on what's on our plates. There's no grand elaborate scheme for where it's all going to go. Time changes all of our lives enough between records that it's probably good that way. Following, rather than leading, I guess, is a good way to put that. Circumstances drive what we do rather than setting a path.

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secretmellowblog · 1 year ago

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People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

#November 5th #november 5 2020 #the fifth of november #just a random ramble #November 5th 2020 is such an important day to me #it really is a holiday #but it does confuse me when I see people analyzing it primarily as a supernatural thing #instead of a ‘hysteria over an election reaches a breaking point when inane zero stakes fandom news comes out and we all latch onto it’thing #but yeah!!#this is my personal essay out of love for the holiday

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