popwreckoning

Bear In Heaven is an experimental indie-rock band from Brooklyn, New York whose latest album Beast Rest Forth Mouth was recently released to significant critical acclaim, even receiving Pitchfork’s much-coveted ‘Best New Music’ designation. After being personally blown away by the album, I rushed to get an interview with frontman Jon Philpot to find out how Bear In Heaven began and how it feels now to be in a rising indie band. The interview was conducted just a couple days after the Pitchfork review.

Marc Z Grub, PopWreckoning: So tell me about your week, Jon.
Jon Philpot, Bear In Heaven: My week? My week has been pretty crazy.Lots of interviews with web people and people from magazines and also lots of emails from people in Europe, which is cool.
MG: Was it like the Pitchfork review went up and suddenly the phone started ringing?
JP: Essentially, yes. I am as amazed as anybody about how incredibly powerful Pitchfork is. And I’m happy to have received the good side of it. It’s really cool. I never knew it existed like this.
MG: Yeah, this sort of ‘OMG, Pitchfork is so powerful!’ thing keeps coming up with bands I talk to. It’s pretty amazing. So, this [album, Beast Rest Forth Mouth] is your second album, right?
JP: This is our second full-length record and we also have an EP that I did on my own way back before any of the guys that are in the band were presently in the band. And there’s also a dance EP we made for this record out of [the song] “Wholehearted Mess.”

MG: So can you tell me how Bear In Heaven originated?
JP: It started basically with just me. I was making bedroom-style music but kind of pushing it a little as far as what I was trying to record. Then people kind of got excited about stuff that I was doing and then I got a record out – that little EP I was telling you about – called Tunes Nextdoor To Songs. And then the guys joined the band: the guys that are in the band presently. We lost two members – one is David Daniell, who’s actually gone on to a really successful solo experimental guitar kind of career. He moved to Chicago and started doing that. And then the other fellow is James Elliott and he played with School Of Seven Bells for a while. I think he actually recorded on their Alpinisms record and then he also has the really fruitful kind of awkward dance music project that he’s doing too [ed. Ateleia]. And then the four of us that are left just kind of kept going.

MG: And how did the four of you get together?
JP: [Keyboardist/Guitarist] Sadek (Bazarra) and I are friends from Atlanta. We actually dated the same girl, that’s how we know each other, oddly enough. Not at the same time though, at different times. [Guitarist] Adam (Wills) and I worked together at a studio, at this kind of video-making studio and then when I moved up to New York, he moved up kind of shortly after and we just maintained the friendship. And [drummer] Joe [Stickney] and Adam actually went to school together, so that’s how those two guys knew each other. And then we just kind of started playing altogether. Actually, we got a practice space and it was all the people that I told you about, minus Joe, and we were playing music without a drummer for like, a long while. And that was kind of weird but we were doing it, we were playing. And then Joe came in and we were like, “oh, now we’re a band.”

MG: Has having a full band changed the way that you write and changed the way that Bear In Heaven sounds?
JP: Yeah, it did, I mean it limited the palette in like a good way because before it was like you’re just making music and you think about, “oh, what sound could I put here” or, “what sound could I put there” and “do I know anybody who plays cello or harp or trumpet or something” and you just put all those people on the record because that’s what was going on. And your pallet is super wide or at least my pallet was super wide, you know, I knew all these people doing different stuff.

Now that we’re like a band and want to make music that reflects what we’re doing live, it’s limited the palette and made us sort of more cohesive I think. But we still have these weird elements of what I was doing in the past or something. Like when we started playing altogether, we were playing the songs I had recorded on my own. We were kind of trying to translate them in a weird way. We had synthesizers and samplers and we were trying to translate these weird very personal-time songs, none of the timing was in any kind of normal counts or anything like that. It was basically like a cluster fuck. But that, I think, that kind of helped us learn to do things more efficiently, but also kind of keeping some of the weird ridiculousness that I guess I was doing on my own. Basically, I didn’t really know what I was doing: just kind of experimenting.

MG: I was trying to think about how to describe your guys’ sounds in terms of influences or likenesses to other bands and I was having a really hard time doing it. Where would you say the Bear In Heaven-sound comes from?
JP: There are so many things that have shaped [the sound]. I guess Talk Talk was a really big influence at one point; those guys were making really cool music. I think everybody in the band would say something different though. I really like Jerry Butler. You know, it’s been funny reading people trying to figure out what we’re doing and we’re not trying to do a thing that sounds like something else, we’re just doing our thing. Does that make sense?
MG: It does, because you guys really do not sound like any one other band or thing in particular. I thought you guys definitely sounded very 2009, but I couldn’t point to any one band or movement in particular and say like, “They’re trying to do that.”
JP: Yeah, like it’s not because we don’t want to. I mean, like we know we sound like whatever else is going on, there is definitely that, [but] there’s not really a point in trying to be like another modern band necessarily. We’re just trying to do what we do naturally and [we’ve been] kind of way under the radar for a long time so we just kind of kept doing what we were doing. A lot of times we’ve failed. We’ve had a lot of failures and also some minor successes here and there and we’ve made friendships in the music community that we value. We’ve been around playing for about five years, but I don’t know. I heard one guy on Facebook or Twitter or something compared us to Moroder and Toto.
MG: Giorgio Moroder?
JP: Yeah. (Laughs)
MG: I guess that’s not a horrible comparison, but any band that I’d try to compare you to, it would be like, “not reeeeaaaallllyyyy.”
JP: Yeah, we come from such a wide background I guess. I mean all of us independently come from such a wide listening background, it’s stuff that it’s just gotten in our brains and we don’t even know what the hell it is anymore. There’s a lot of stuff that I really like, like you can definitely put Jerry Butler and Talk Talk down there, those guys are great. But if you talk to Adam he might tell you there’s some RnB thing that just hit him hard or something like that. Oh, and Prince. Prince is great.

MG: You all said you come from different background, what kind of background would you say you come from?
JP: Musically, uh– a late bloomer. I didn’t start playing music until late in the game, but when I did start playing I was really into minimalism and experimental music and that kind of stuff. Not necessarily like pop tunes, though strangely, the older I get the more I really like pop music and rock. Don’t get me wrong though, I’ll still listen to some ‘out’ electronic shit and I think that that’s kind of where my heart will always be. I definitely have to say when I heard about Tony Conrad and that band AMM, I was like, “This is music?” I mean, it was confusing that that could actually be music.

MG: How old were you when you started playing music?
JP: I probably was 19, maybe.
MG: How old are you now?
JP: I’m old. It’s kind of funny. I’m 35.
MG: Oh wow, it took a long time to get to ‘Best New Music,’ but you got there.
JP: (Laughs) Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I mean I’ve been in other projects that have kind of just totally gone under the radar and weren’t even for this particular crowd at all.

MG: You said you guys had a lot of failures, could you tell me about maybe about a couple of your massive failures?
JP: Well, as far as live shows go, one of the bigger failures we had was when we headlined at The Knitting Factory. That was a terrible show. It was one of those shows that we were like, “Jesus Christ, are we gonna continue this?” But we pushed through, thankfully. We ended up having a good show a couple weeks after that. But that show in particular was terrible. It was the night of the Palin-Biden presidential debate and everybody’s eyes were glued on the television. Nobody came out to that show, maybe five people in total. It was a pretty rough experience. And then I guess, you know, not to put any hate on the last record we did (Red Bloom Of The Boom), but we were just making music that we kind of had to get it out, get it out of our system. These like long songs and they were not necessarily for everybody-
MG: Pitchfork still gave you a good review on that one though, they gave you like a 7.8, which is pretty legit.
JP: Yeah, yeah, no, we were really gracious that we got that. That actually helped too. But you know, that record was more of, like, we just had to get that record out of us. And it was good that we did. And it’s weird whenever I listen to it, there’s like so much space and we just were taking our time. But in this climate, it seems like the attention span just isn’t there on a record. All the songs that you hear on this record were at one point over seven minutes so we’ve cut it back and you know, we’re trying in a way to make it fun for us and fun for the audience. We’ve definitely learned a lot over the course of trying to make these songs the way that we want to make them and the way that we do make them.

MG: And how else is this album different from the last one?
JP: It’s just more ‘honed in’ on what it is we’re doing. I think we are actually ‘figuring it out.’ We’re figuring out our process; we’re figuring out our systems. We’re kind of a nerdy band a little bit, we’re kind of pecky, but it’s been kind of fun, it really has and it opens us up to doing different sounding stuff, I think. We want to make stuff that not just us would enjoy.

MG: So what’s next for Bear In Heaven? What are you guys feeling in terms of your next step?
JP: Music videos and then going on tour as much as we can. And between all that, just kind of get back to writing and stuff like that, which is cool. We’ve always had more songs written and recorded than are out so we finally caught up with ourselves. [We can finally] take the stuff – like a freakin’ hard-drive full of sketches – and be like “alright, those ten, make something.”

MG: Are you feeling like you’re going to be making any stylistic changes?
JP: I don’t know, we’ll just feel it out. We’ve not like had a plan like that ever, so we’ll keep hopefully just stumbling along. Maybe we’ll land on something good.

Bear In Heaven: website | myspace

The second night of Butch Walker’s month-long Wednesday night residency at Hollywood’s Hotel Café was quite a bit of a party. I’ve lived in LA for close to a year now, but I still get excited at celebrity sightings, and Butch’s collection of famous friends did not disappoint me in the slightest. In attendance that night were Jeremy Piven, Derrick Whibley (of Sum 41 and Avril Lavigne-marriage-drama fame), and not in the VIP section but in the crowd with the rest of us plebians, Alex Solowitz, best known for his portrayal of Mickey Parke in the faux MTV boy band 2ge+her. Damn, I love Los Angeles.

Tonight, Butch would be treating the crowd to a live, stripped-down rendition of The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Lets-Go-Out-Tonites. He played the album straight through, no deviations aside from his usual shtick; references to the ‘97 hit “How Bizarre” by OMC, comparing his riffing and soloing to every Led Zeppelin song that ever existed, while consequently singing “baby, baby, baby, baby!” much like Robert Plant does on every other Led Zeppelin song. You know. The usual.

He did make up for missing a song the previous week, treating us to “#1 Summer Jam,” and resolving to not miss a single song from The Rise and Fall… Pausing for a minute in the musical revelry, he talks about the forgiveness that his hardcore fans give him for his wackiness, refers to himself as being compared to Jason Mraz with tattoos, and tells us how sometimes, he wants to be filthy, stinkin’ famous. And then things happen like the YouTube video of him recording his version of “You Belong With Me” from the previous week, and he gets torn the hell up, and he realizes that he likes his little bubble. And he loves his hardcore fans. It’s good to be loved.

Getting close to the end of the album, Butch pulls out his big political song, “Paid to Get Excited,” and flat out admits that he had no idea what he was thinking when he wrote the album. Or why he wrote a political song. After playing through the first two verses and choruses, he also admits, “I don’t even like this last song! So I’m gonna do something different,” and segues into Dramarama’s “Anything, Anything,” which is a KROQ favorite and absolute staple.

In my mind, that was the cover of the night. However, soon after, Walker busts into Pulp’s “Common People,” and I honestly think I was one of five people in the entire audience who knew the song. Still, as great a song as it is, I’m not sure if it was Butch’s best choice for a cover. Shatner did it better.

Finally, the highlight of the entire night was the unintentional encore. As he’s leaving the stage for the night, someone holds up a cake with a candle in it and the crowd begins singing “Happy Birthday,” as Walker’s 40th birthday was on the Saturday to follow. That just set him off in a rockin’ mood and he did not want to stop. Calling up Hotel Café regular, Jim Bianco, the boys jam a little bit more, treating the crowd to the title track off of Jim Bianco’s latest album, Sing. I will totally and completely admit to loudly singing the harmonies from the crowd on that one. Continuing on, the boys bust out into a cover of Prince’s “Kiss” with Ari Gold himself, Jeremy Piven, joining them on the drum set….sans cymbals and with woodwhacks instead of sticks.

I have yet to be disappointed by one of these shows these month. I know that everything says its sold out, but they’ve been selling a small number of tickets at the door. Come on down and join the fun, and GET THERE EARLY!!!!!

Butch Walker: website | myspace | Sycamore Meadows review | interview with | @ grog shop | @ hotel cafe: night 1

Back from his stint with Natalie Imbruglia, John Garrison now sets out to embark on his second solo outing. With ambitions that have lead him to James Blunt and Leona Lewis, John’s sophomore piece takes in all his travels and embodies them into Departures. PopWreckoning’s Thomas Starks caught up with him to talk a little about writing about ex’s, huge harpsichords and Prince.

John Garrison: Hello, Thomas.
Thomas Starks, PopWreckoning: Pleased to meet you John, How are ya?
JG: Nice to meet you, too….Nice to meet you as well.
TS: So you’re in the UK right now right?
JG: Yeah I’m in London right now, yeah.
TS: I really appreciate you taking my call so late, I apologize for the latency. So are you on tour right now?
JG: Um…I just got back from Italy actually this morning, I was playing guitar for Natalie Imbruglia.
TS: How did that go?
JG: It was good, and I just got back, so it’s back to focusing on me now.
(John reservedly laughs as though it’s a foreign concept to self appease)

TS: I bet it’s good to be home now. Do you live in London then?
JG: I’m kind of…yeah, most of the time I’m in London. I was in New York City for a while but these days I’m in London.

TS: So you have a new LP out.
JG: I’ve got a new one yes, it comes out next week, yes next Tuesday.

(Departures is now available)

TS: Yes I believe that is Nov 10th.
JG: That is correct, yes. It’s called Departures.
TS: So what is going to be your launch single from this LP?
JG: The single is entitled “Let’s Run.” It’s the first track on the record and I shot a video for it. It sums up the album really for me.

TS: So where did you record Departures?
JG: Wow, it was recorded all over the place actually. I started in London, put the vocals on in New York, and then I was actually on a world tour playing bass for James Blunt so I kind of did all the little bits and pieces in hotel rooms and really where ever I could. It was very much an “All Over The World” recorded album.

TS: Now did you do any pretrack on your own? Like when you were playing bass for James, were you in the tour bus at all doing pretrack?
JG: Absolutely, most of the times I did it in the hotel rooms, but when we were on the bus, there were a couple of tracks where I actually worked on them in my bunk. Whenever we were on bumpy roads or where ever we were, I did a lot work in the bed.
TS: Did that help the writing at all, did it influence you, or was it all there before you were on the road?
JG: No, No, it definitely influenced me quite a lot. When I recorded the tracks, when I first had the ideas for the songs, they were much more basic, and then traveling around the world, doing it on laptops, actually using audio from different places. I used a percussion track that I put on from a hotel room in Moscow, then I recorded the drums in London, did the vocals in New York, it really was all over the place. I think it added to the sound.
TS: So this is truly a global LP then?
JG: Yeah it really is, it really is. It’s been recorded all over the world.

TS: So “Departures” is fitting completely.
JG: Well that’s basically why it’s called that. That’s the one word I saw more than any other. A lot of the songs are about when I moved to New York from England, yeah it’s all about movement. There’s the tracks “I Leave on Friday,” “Let’s Run,” you know? “Go.” All these songs about going, moving and moving. I just thought “Departures” was just a fitting title really.

TS: So what is your next move then?
JG: Well, we made a video for “Let’s Run.” I did that in France a few weeks ago and it’s out on “YouTube” and it’s out on a few TV stations. The next real step is to launch the album next week, I have a show in London next week too, just getting out there and playing it to people.
TS: If someone had to ask what genre that you felt that you fit in, what would that be?
JG: I guess technically I’m a singer/songwriter, but I’ve been in bands before, I just write songs and record them the best I can. If it’s genre, It’s a difficult one, I usually go on what other people say, it’s difficult to tag yourself you know. So I always just call it “Melodic Indie Pop.”
TS: That’s a fair answer, it’s kind of a trick question. I’m a musician myself, so I get it.
JG: Ahhh, you are, then you know what I mean then. How you hear yourself and how others hear you are often quite different.
TS: It’s often the most difficult question one has as a musician.
JG: Absolutely, and even though I’ve had that question so many times, it’s sort of still difficult. When you have a song idea, when you’re thinking of lyrics and when you’re writing about ex girlfriends and such, you don’t think about what genre you are, you just write as best you can, you know? It’s really a question for the people.

TS: Let me ask you a question, when you were on tour with James Blunt and then working with Natalie Imbruglia, do you include these artists when you write? Do you consult with them at all, or do you just kinda stick on your own?
JG: No I don’t. I completely keep it to myself, especially with James. I don’t even mention nothing really. I like to keep the two things separate. I guess it would be great to write with someone else like that eventually. But the nature of being a session musician. That’s basically your job. Unless they come to me and say “Hey we need help with a song.” I’m just gonna get on with my job, whatever that job might be. I think of the kind of professional outlook you know? Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if they came to me and said “Let’s do some writing.” That would be great, but not just yet.

TS: So as a session musician, do you enjoy doing that and do you multitask with instruments?
JG: I do a bit of everything really. I played bass for James Blunt, played bass for Leona Lewis on her album, but then for Natalie I played guitar, whatever people need basically. I’m quite fortunate, I can play quite a few things, I’m a musical guy to have around the studio.

TS: Speaking of studio, in your LP Departures, how many instruments were you involved with?
JG: Instruments. Well, I do like to get other people in. I brought a guy called Karl Brazil on drums. He plays for Robbie Williams. He played for James Blunt, too. So even though I do play a lot of instruments, I actually on this record, I made it a point of getting other people in. On my first solo record I played actually everything on there, and now when I listen back to it, although I really love the record, it sounds like one person, too much like one person. So on this record I got different drummers, guitarists, keyboard players. I think it kind of adds to the sound of it all. I worked with a producer this time and he helped. I think all musicians have to have that “Self Indulgent” record, and mine was my first one.

TS: So what is the most interesting instrument you have ever worked with on a record?
JG: Well on this record I played an electric harpsichord. It was a huge long harpsichord with a glass top. I plugged into an AC30 guitar amp, it was fantastic! It was the strangest thing.
TS: That is probably the coolest answer I have ever gotten.
JG: To be honest, me and the producer got to the studio, we were just looking at this thing. It was huge! Sort of a massive thing, and we were just like “Well, obviously we have to get this on the record somewhere.” We literally went through the whole album, track 1, no, no can’t get it in there, track 2, no, and eventually we squeezed it into track 5.
TS: And what is that song called?
JG: “Alexandra and Annabelle” The main rif is the electric harpsichord.

TS: Nice! So are you the type to have a main CD Release party, or are you just gonna go all out, every show a CD Release?
JG: I’ve got a show next week in London on Monday, so that’s kinda like the release party. I like a good party. I’m a musician, we all do. So I’m gonna do the gig, have the new CD with me and then crazy partying with everybody else.

TS: Well thank you so much for your time John and I have one last question for you. If you got the opportunity to work with anybody that you wanted, who would that be?
JG: Ok, well right now, wow, that’s a good question. I would love to have Prince produce a track with me. I grew up listening to Prince, I’m a huge fan, even though my music isn’t particularly “Prince,” I think the way he sees music, the way he looks at stuff, I think guided me, so I would love to work with him.
TS: He is quite a talented individual as you are my friend. I appreciate your time, and you have a great show on Monday.
JG: Fantastic. Thank you, Thomas, I appreciate you for calling. Thank you very much for having me.

John Garrison: myspace

It’s rare that an artist can just float into a jaded music scene and calm it down for a minute, make it take notice, and remember what it meant to just groove to the beat. We had the pleasure of catching up with such an artist, and her name is Diane Birch.

Thomas Starks, PopWreckoning: Good Afternoon Miss Birch, How are you? I’m Thomas Starks with PopWreckoning.
Diane Birch: I’m good…I’m good. Sorry I’m in a cab, can you hear me?
PW: Yes I can, sounds like you’re on the move.
DB: (chuckles) Yeah, always.
PW: So where are you now, as in what city?
DB: Right now I’m in New York City.
PW: Now you just finished a tour am I correct?
DB: Yes I did, whew. Glad to be back in New York. I missed it.

PW: I bet. So I’ll get right to it if ya don’t mind? Now Bible Belt is your “debut” LP am I correct?
DB: Yes it is my first record.
PW: Now is that with a label? Meaning do you have any underground works as well, like an unlabeled LP before this?
DB: Oh no, none recorded anyway, this was the first.
PW: Really great first outing by the way. “Nothing But a Miracle” is truly a great song.
DB: Aww, thank you, I really appreciate that. We worked hard on it.

PW: So you’re a bit of a world traveler, where do you call home?
DB: Well, my parents moved us around a lot. He was a pastor, but I would say Portland.
PW: That’s kind of my old stomping grounds. I love the Roseland. So you have a bit of a worldview but also I read that “Valentino” was written about an imaginary friend, I love that.
DB: Well, I spent a lot of time on my own growing up, certainly. I don’t have imaginary friends now, just something I did. I liked creating.

PW: That’s fair. So is that a part of your process, in writing, I mean? I was listening to the contrast in songs, I played “Fools” and “Nothing But A Miracle” back to back about 10 times.
DB: Yeah I wrote “Fools” first, and about a year later wrote “Nothing But A Miracle” so there was a big difference in feeling over the year.

PW: So you certainly ran the gamut of emotion of the year then huh? I respect that. So did you think when you were playing in Prince‘s living room that you had finally arrived?
DB: Ya know, it was less that, and more that I felt validated. Here I was writing these songs, and someone comes along and wants me to play them. I began to say to myself “I can do this.”

PW: So what’s the next big project for you, sometimes artists immediately go back to studio to keep it rolling. Is that your case as well?
DB: Oh mentally, I’m on my 7th record. I know that’s really far ahead and I tend to do that, so I’m trying to “live” in this record right now. It’s hard because I’m always moving forward.
PW: Well I have to say I truly admire this record, you put a lot of honesty and heart into it, I respect that.
DB: Well, thank you. That means alot.

PW: So I promised I would only keep you for 20 minutes and I will remain a man of my word, but one last question Miss Birch. Since beginning this record and now, what is the most memorable moment to date?
DB: Wow, there are so many. I’d say being on Letterman was pretty amazing.
PW: Well. I thank you, Miss Birch for talking with me and I want to encourage you to keep doing this as long as you can. We need more of you. I hope you have a great rest of the day.
DB: Thank you, Thomas, and take care.

Diane Birch: website | myspace