Birds & Batteries
Audio: Star Clusters (MP3, 4.32mb) Download Now
By: Birds & Batteries Website
Album: I'll Never Sleep Again
I'll Never Sleep Again, the new album from Birds & Batteries, has been in my car stereo for weeks. And although I keep telling myself that I need some variety, it never happens. There is so much detail and subtlety to hear in this album, it's near impossible to get sick of it.
Rich guitar and bass tones, funky electronic synths and beats, pedal steel, horns, violins and violas – it sounds like the description of a schizophrenic compilation album, but Birds & Batteries do it. They manage not only to make each song mesh within itself, but the entire album is an unbelievable journey that has absolutely no potholes.
The four core members, Mike Sempert on guitar and vocals, Julie Thomasson on electric piano and synths, Jill Heinke on bass and Brian Michelson on drums, form the foundation upon which many more sounds and great musicians stand. These special guest appearances on their new album include Neil Thompson from Low Red Land on pedal steel, Katrina Weeks from The Music Lovers on Viola and Daniela Gesundheit from Snowblink singing on select songs.
Last week, while the band was in Detroit in the middle of their national tour, I spoke with Sempert, the band's mastermind. There is no doubt that this man is pure talent - everything from his speech to his description of the minute processes of editing exuded passion. And even when some crazy lady started yelling at him for parking his giant red van in her neighborhood (hilarious, but I felt bad for him), he was composed and polite.
We started by talking about how B&B managed to merge two seemingly polarized genres – country and electronic - and pull it off.
"For me, it's less about a concept band, it's more just about how I prefer to arrange these songs, and these two genres seem to keep working their way in," he said. "I've always found the pedal steel and synthesizers to have a lot in common, and I like to experiment with sort of a middle ground between the two."
But Sempert admitted that this juxtaposition has its challenges – for recording and particularly for translating the songs to the live stage.
"The application of the songs to a live setting is a group effort and an experiment," he said. "Every tour and every show is a little different."
While they use a laptop computer to fill in some of the sounds during the live shows, Sempert said his ideal band would be a very large one, which presents yet another challenge for touring and availability. For local shows, the band chooses larger arrangements with horns and strings when they can, but even then it ends up being different from the record.
--
The album starts out in a surprising and refreshing way – with a cover of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold." Sempert said he was aware that they might raise some eyebrows with such a cover, but ultimately decided that it didn't matter to him.
"It ended up being the first B&B song that really came together in the live show," he explained. "It had a certain weight live that was really exciting, and people really responded to it as the type of listener that is comfortable enough with the music that they like, and they can say, 'I love that song,' and it's not so much of an issue that we're covering Neil Young. ...
"I really felt like it set up the record thematically as this journey and these travels, and I think that the concept of a Heart of Gold has evolved for me as a listener of the song and now a performer of the song."
Sempert mentioned the irony of having Neil Young, the king of near-improvised recordings, as a jumping-off point and at the same time trying to create a very polished and heavily edited record.
"I don't think [a song] is like a sculpture where you say, 'oh, I just made it worse'," he said. "If you're saving your sessions, you can always go back and recapture whatever it was.
"I think there are some bands that what they do live is special enough that it's documenting, but I think that's sort of a rare thing. For everyone else who doesn't necessarily have that sort of incredible luck, I think you need to be willing to put the time into it. It's not really art at that point, but it's craft."
Sempert produced and arranged the album himself, and said much of the editing was done at home, while he was off the studio clock.
"If I had had another couple of weeks to put into this record, I would have found more things to change."
I, for one, am glad he didn't. In my eyes, there is nothing to be changed.
--
When I asked Sempert about his lyrical style (a question that many musicians hate, with good reason), he laughed and said, "can I get back to you on that?" The album comes with a lyrics insert, which I am so grateful for on the rare occasion that a local band does it.
The lyrics range from poetic and very distinctively country ("Blazing trails through Appalachia / All the trucks of Tokyo / And all my blue jeans are dying / Telecasts from Mexico") to casual storytelling ("Graduation was bleak, and I was drunk enough to speak / So I offered you a haircut: your mohawk was looking sad enough / You said you liked it that way").
While common elements are present: nature, experience, space, ocean; it's still quite a challenge to pin down what kind of man these thoughts are coming from, and what they ultimately mean. But the mystery is always the most exciting part, and this album is definitely no exception.
Go get the album on CD Baby and make sure to catch Birds & Batteries when they return to the Bay on Oct. 29 at The Knockout.
~E
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