The Body Rampant just dropped a new EP, Transient Years. And prior to the EP’s drop, the experimental rock band took SXSW by storm. The group took the time during the festival to chat with PopWreckoning about how they formed, where they got equipped with their well-known paper mache mask accessories and more. You can check out the full interview with the band below:
PopWreckoning: How did you guys meet and form the Body Rampant? J.M. Lopez, Vocals: I was playing an acoustic show back home and met our bass player, Dylan [Schleifstein]. He was playing in another band. I was in northern California at the time and moved down to LA with this kid, Dylan, and we just recruited basically all the members on different outlets. Me and Jacob [Nichols] had been in touring bands, previously in the past, like hardcore bands, stuff like that. We kind of knew each other–recruited him. Found Ryan [Sabouhi], our other guitar player. off Craigslist. Ryan Sabouhi, Guitar: Yeah, Craigslist: a really good outlet for several different things – selling shit, etc. JML: Then we found our drummer, Mike [Thomas]. He’s just a rockstar. We knew about him from basically everyone in town, you know what I mean? Mike Thomas, Drums: Word of mouth JML: Yeah, word of mouth. He’s a smoking drummer. We’ve got a good lineup. We’re pumped.
PW: How did the masks on stage thing come about? MT: Basically,JM knows this guy, Duane Flatmo, who is just this incredible artist and he actually made all these masks out of paper mache. It just catches the eye with an alter-ego kind of thing. JML: A lot of the breweries and local companies, he does art for them – murals. He’s a world famous artist – he’s been on the Tonight Show and shit. I just, well, he’s a local in northern California, where I’m from, so I’ve just always seen his stuff around. We just hit him up with our music and he liked it and was down to work with us.
PW: Did you draw any influence from other bands that use costumes/masks on stage? Jake Nichols, Guitar: We don’t really use them on stage, so it’s not like we’re the KISS Army or something like that. RS: We just use them to basically get our name out there and have this kind of huge thing going. Dylan Schleifstein, Bass: I think we use them because it enables us – when we put the mask on it gives us the freedom to go out and do what we want and not worry about what else is going on JML: Our bodies are basically rampant when we have the masks on – we can do what we want. We can get nuts. When we’re on stage, we still get nuts, but we’re a little more ourselves.
PW: What can people expect from your live show? RS: Energy. Energy for days. We’re like a pop band, alternative rock band, but we like to rock. JML: We hate when bands just stand there and they’re not loud. We like to be really loud and move around a lot. MT: A lot of involvement. You want to get the crowd as involved as possible: best way to bring them on. JN: We just try to have fun with our live show.
PW: Sounds great. Now you have a new EP, Transient Years. Tell me about that and how you came up with the album title? JML: The album title is kind of loosely based around the masks as well because they’re transient – and it’s like when you’re stuck in time in one place and you’re doing nothing for so long – it sounded cool too. The album comes out April 5. We’re pretty stoked on it.
PW: Who would you say are some of your influences on the album? DS: So many. RS: We have varied, but similar musical styles. Casey Bates–we got to work with on a lot of the songs. Definitely working with a producer who had that much input and had worked with so many other big bands that could coach us to be as on point as possible. Musical styles? Could go for days. Anybody’s who’s good. DS: We listen to hip hop, oldies, metal, grind – everything. RS: You’d never know that by listening to the CD. A lot of different artists we listen to have to do with our style.
PW: So who are some of the people you’ve been checking out at SXSW? Have you had much time? MT: That’s the problem when you’re a band at southby, you don’t have time to see your favorite artists. We tried a couple times. JN: Saw Wiz Kalifa – that was awesome. JML: Saw The Limousines – they were sick. Mike, did you see anyone? Mike was the drunkest, haha. MT: Dude. I probably did, but I don’t remember. The Stroke s- I wanted to see the Strokes really bad. DS: Saw the singer and drummer walking around. He was so dirty. haha. MT: He gets paid basically to be that way. DS: If i was him, I’d get that dirty. JML: Girls love that.
PW: So what’s after South by for you? JML: We are during a lot of online, commercial stuff.
PW: What’s your favorite social media outlet to reach out to your fans? JML: Facebook. DS: Facebook’s where’s it’s at. JN: There’s been a lot of cool things we’ve seen popping up at SXSW and a lot of people approacing you about it. Everyone’s trying to build the new Twitter. MT: The new iPhone app. JN: We usually use Twitter and that goes to everything else. we like to keep it simple. post to Twitter.
You can follow the Body Rampant on Twitter here and find out more from them on Facebook here.
His MySpace page reads like that of a scrappy Brooklyn any-kid who makes music for his friends from the unassuming far corner of his childhood bedroom, next to a pinup of Tom Petty and a wide-eyed girl he might be in love with. The self-tweeted “Rambling Man” doesn’t have that many “friends,” a mere 3,968, is still grateful for small NYC club gigs, and cites both Biggie and Pavement as influences, but his music begs a much bigger bio than his profile suggests. One listen to “Buriedfed,” from his eponymous 2008 debut will destroy you. It’s the best of Dylan’s rawness, the starkness of Hemingway, and reminds me of the hometown lyrical longing and driving guitar momentum that is so inherently Springsteen. Up until now, I haven’t come across a voice that so accurately portrays the hope and fear that is the underbelly of change defining our generation. Like a memoir unfolding in real time, playing parallel to us, Miles is your spot on soundtrack.
On Summer of Fear, produced by TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone, and a little help from the boys of Grizzly Bear, out October 20th on Saddle Creek Records, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson sings us a dark, dark story of the anxiety that accompanies the risk of dreaming in uncertain times. A hazardous balladeer compared to his peers, Robinson swims all the way out, far past the buoys, through scratchy, shaking whispers and blood curdling screams looking for answers to questions most of us are afraid to ask, doing things we know we shouldn’t, just to remind himself of the feeling, a lyrical cutter trying to make a mark deep enough that he never forgets.
The Summer of Fear is the story about the summer of 2007, when Robinson, beat up and reckless, mounts the greatest fight of his life tackling the catastrophe of heartbreak, the saltiness of something new, the satisfaction of anger, and the hope of redemption. Robinson say’s “Listening to it now…It’s like someone banging on a door really hard, until they start throwing their shoulder into it….then someone on the other side simply opens it and on the next lunge the solicitor goes hurtling across the threshold. It’s well produced, but there’s a lot of frustration and rage on the record. Every song has a point of catharsis.”
“Summer of Fear Part 2″ is easily the most arresting track on the album beginning with a carefree little whistle that you swear you’ve heard a thousand times, that you know you’ve hummed before is anchored by a riff as melancholy and infinitely as sad as a great Pumpkins song, Robinson makes a plea for what was, desperate for the memory. “I said knock-knock” a voice in the way back calls, “who’s there?” Robinson screams, “You said you’d never forget…you said you’d never forget.”
Surrounding lyrics and Robinson’s strum is a complex orchestration to the music with hidden whispers, fuzzy guitars, warming choirs, and miscellaneous trinkets of sound, creating an audio scrapbook that will last forever even if the memory can’t. While The Summer of Fear may have been his biggest battle to date, I have a feeling Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson has quite a few more fights left in him and I’ll be damned if I miss another.
Tracklisting:
01. Shake a Shot
02. Always an Anchor
03. The Sound
04. Hard Row
05. Trap Door
06. The 100th of March
07. Summer of Fear pt. 1
08. Death by Dust
09. Summer of Fear pt. 2
10. Losing 4 Winners
11. More than a Mess
12. Boat
In the early 1970’s, the term “singer/songwriter†became synonymous with artists like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Carly Simon, among others, all of whom just happened to reside in Southern California’s Laurel Canyon. Along with soft-rockers like The Eaglesand Fleetwood Mac, these artists wrote intensely personal and lyrically strong pop with shades of folk, rock, and sometimes jazz and country. Their records are meticulously produced: polished, smooth, earthy, and acoustic, and the musicianship was always top notch. Some of these records were phenomenal (Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Joni Mitchell’s Blue); some were not, regardless of what Rolling Stones says (James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James, The Eagles’ Hotel California). Times were good. Cocaine, sex and cash flowed freely and the California sun was shining high in the sky. But then came punk rock and the 80s and everything changed.
The last two years, however, have seen an inordinate number of contemporary artists releasing albums hearkening back to the sound and style of those old Laurel Canyon songwriter albums. It’s hard to say when it started or with who, but artists and bands as diverse as Jason Collett, Conor Oberst (aka Bright Eyes), Gonzales (producer of Feist’s The Reminder), Ben Kweller, David Vandervelde, Wilco and She and Him have all recently come down with cases of what I have termed “Laurel Canyon Syndromeâ€: a desire to recreate in whole or in part the sound of the songwriter-focused soft-rock, folk, alt-country or acoustic music made popular in the early 1970s.
Why? Well, there are numerous possible explanations. Many of the aforementioned artists are now in their 30s (some even their 40s) and grew listening to Fleetwood Mac and James Taylor on the radio, or had parents who would endlessly play their Jackson Browne vinyls while their children unknowingly soaked it all in. For some, those records would come to define what music meant to them. “When you listen to most of the records that really had an impact on you, they always seem to be from a different era,†said Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy in an interview with Pitchfork in reference to Wilco’s last album Sky Blue Sky, and its notable 70s-influenced sound. “I still don’t think that this record sounds as good as that period of music. I still don’t have any clue why. All I’m saying is I feel like we’ve gotten close enough for it to be comfortable to listen to.â€1
The Laurel Canyon Syndrome could also be related to the recent indie-folk boom (as seen by the success of Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes last year) in that in both cases modern audiences are turning towards more earthy, acoustic material. “I think it sort of speaks to a larger idea that people are being more and more drawn towards organic sounding music, especially in light of the so-called “digital ageâ€, you know?†said Tony Dekker of Toronto-based folk band Great Lake Swimmers in an interview I did with him for the Dalhousie Gazette. “I think that having music that sounds really organic and that traces its roots back to – not necessarily a simpler time, but something that has been passed on for centuries before the dawn of the recording – I think it allows people to connect with it on a deeper level, I guess.â€2
Another possible explanation is that in today’s world of indie rock, for better and/or worse, many bands and artists no longer write songs with the same discipline and emotional resonance with which the Laurel Canyon songwriters debateably represented in its peak form. Jason Collett, in an interview with Scene Point Blank said, “That’s the basic difference. [Broken] Social Scene [note: of which Collett is also a member] tries to take the form of a song and turn it inside out and upside down, I still am attracted to something that’s ultimately a traditional form.â€3 In today’s world of indie rock, we don’t have songwriters on the level of Lennon,Townsend, or Dylan: writers who not only knew how to compose a timeless melody, but to accompany it with lyrics that had weight and meaning. Sure, songwriters like Sufjan Stevens and Okkervil River’s Will Sheffmay compose lyrically inspired modern semi-masterpieces like Illinoise and The Stage Names, but has either of them – or anyone else of this generation for that matter – composed anything as genuinely moving and foundational as “Won’t Get Fooled Againâ€, “Imagineâ€, or “Tangled Up In Blueâ€?
It seems as though ever since Dylan defined the modern concept of the songwriter in the early 60s, those who want to be taken seriously as songwriters (not musicians, but specifically songwriters) have favored a more acoustic approach that allows people to focus more on the lyrics and less on the rhythm and drive of the music. As things have worked out, many of the serious songwriters of the 60s now sound amazingly dated with the exception of Dylan, Paul Simon andLeonard Cohen. Phil Ochs, Fred Neil, and even Tim Buckley simply sound too troubadour-y for modern tastes, but for some reason “Running On Empty†is still a kick-ass song. So is “Go Your Own Way†and “You’re So Vain†and everything on Court and Spark. Which is probably why we still hear artists trying to replicate the sound of those records. There have always been great songwriters, as there always will be, but it seems as though now, if you want to create an album that’s highly personal, lyrical and earthy sounding, the albums that set the precedent were the ones that came out of Laurel Canyon.
Photos:
Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward of She & Him (top right and left, respectively): Jessica McGinley
Ben Kweller (center): Bethany Smith
Conor Oberst (bottom left): Dese’Rae Stage
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