interview with nineteen forty-five
this is excellent. excellent. it gives a real insight into hunter and will (katharine doesn't say much here, though. and they managed to spell her name with a "y." but aside from that, this is magnificent.)
i'm wondering how i missed this in july 2004!!!! then i remembered, i was starting the IG 2004 west coast tour (a11 18 shows, so i had things on my mind).
man... i am excited about this one. i'm putting it in my memories.
Interview: 1945
John Seay
Friday, July 09, 2004
One interesting critique people tend to level at the field of politics, is that those people who possess enough intelligence and compassion to actually be capable of suitably running a government, are the people who are consistently least likely to run. I kept turning this idea over in my head as I spoke with Nineteen Forty-Five, a local band signed to Daemon Records who just recorded their sophomore release, I Saw a Bright Light.
My impression of the trio, Hunter Manasco on vocals and guitar, Katharine McElroy on bass and vocals, and the immortal Will Lochamy on drums and sex leopards, is that they just might be the smartest band in Birmingham-having probably close to five degrees between them, and enough wit from McElroy to frighten would-be rock critics like myself into nervous silence. Oh yeah, and they fucking rock.
This is the kind of band that should be parading through the streets throwing out their albums like poisoned shooting stars into the unsuspecting hearts of every chubby, sweaty fan of slow, dumb rock music. They should be chasing after a better label and building an even bigger grassroots fan-base. And yet you get the impression that just maybe the guys in Nineteen Forty-Five are a little too smart or too grounded to fall for the whole "I-wanna-be-a-rock-star-and-save-music" thing. This band seems perfectly content to stay signed to Daemon, a small label with little distribution and pull in the industry, and record and release very well realized rock albums to those people who care to listen.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to neatly explain Nineteen Forty-Five’s mindset without any real evidence to back up my claims. After all, they did just release the best local album I’ve heard this year, and an album that holds up pretty well even for national acts. And, for a band that’s only really been active for three years, there is time yet for mass radio takeover.
The band initially formed in 2000 around Manasco and McElroy, and Lochamy was recruited shortly thereafter. Almost at once they began demo-ing the songs that would get them a record deal before the band had even reached their second month anniversary. As legend has it, a mythic dog with head of bird delivered the demo to Amy Ray, of Indigo Girls fame, who owns the label Daemon, to which McElroy’s other band, 3 Finger Cowboy, was signed. Ray called from the Dallas airport to enthusiastically inform the band that she intended to sign them.
The band quickly recorded their first album, Together We’ll Burn like the Autumn Leaves (2001) at friend and bedtime confidant Daniel Farris’ studio, Denial Labs. A collection of songs ranging from the almost punk fervor of "Whore Next Door" to the keening cry of "Anja," the album read like a manual for mourning played at 90 rpms. The album’s tone of lament was inspired by the unrelated and back to back deaths of several of Manasco’s friends. Though this is the kind of fact that most rock critics love as it allows them to pin every move the band makes to it, it does provide background from which to interpret parts of both Together We’ll Burn… and their new record, I Saw a Bright Light.
If Together… is music written by someone stuck in a tragedy, I Saw… plays like someone learning to move on. The album, to me, is primarily about change, particularly change related to love. Whereas Together… seemed hasty at times, I Saw… is more confident, more studied, but just as fresh, as well as being more effective than their first album. Lyrically, the I Saw… is far superior to its predecessor-which is more a testament to the heights Manasco reaches on this album than it is an indictment of their first album.
The opening lines to the album’s first song, "She Takes Drugs," sets the standard for the rest of the album: "She takes drugs / and moves into the trees / and looking like a ghost / she’s now a form of snow."
The album, by song-writer/singer Hunter Manasco’s own admission, is a concept album-not the kind of sprawling epic you would expect from a band like ELO or even Radiohead, but a record that possesses a subdued sense of wholeness and relevancy that unites the songs. All of the songs are love songs, and most of them, if not all of them, are bittersweet at best, downright depressing at worst.
However, saying "at worst" doesn’t imply that these songs fail due to their dark lyrical content-drummer Will Lochamy paraphrases one rock critic who enthusiastically told the band, "Your album makes me want to kill myself-and I mean that as a compliment." Lyricist Manasco is able to infuse his songs with something most song-writers miss by a mile: a general pathos and, though the album often deals with subjects such as death, at the same time it gives a little glimmer of hope, something that everyone can relate to independently of anybody else.
But to merely focus on the bands lyrically dark style is to miss the most exciting part of Nineteen Forty-Five. The band is equally fueled by the pounding, rock drumming of Will Lochamy, and the impossibly simple and devastatingly precise bass lines of Kathryn McElroy, who also provides backing vocals the like of which haven’t been heard since Xene and John Doe harmonized in X, and the feeling of which hasn’t been matched since Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham (yes, that’s a Fleetwood Mac reference, elitists). And McElroy and Lochamy lock together with more precision than they use to build NASA space stations. Nineteen Forty-Five churns out catchy pop, perhaps much like what Rivers Cuomo should have written after Pinkerton.
I sat down with the assembled 1945 to discuss the new album.
FB: You guys recorded your first album with Daniel Farris, and recorded this one using your own equipment at your house (Hong Kong School of Sound). How did those experiences differ?
H: It’s always more relaxing to record in your own studio-but certainly Daniel was able to get a much better, more professional sound than we were. However, recording on your own equipment, on your own time, you can spend two hours on a guitar track, which is what happens to me every time I try to do anything.
FB: Is having the luxury to spend that much time on a track good, or is it sometimes better to be pushed to churn something out faster?
H: For me it’s better to have more time, because it takes me that long to get something I’m happy with-I’d hate to put Daniel or anyone else for that matter through the torture of me sitting there messing around for two hours, playing different things.
W: There were a lot of things with the drums-we recorded the drums so fast on the first one, and there’s a lot I wish I could change, whereas on this one, out of everything there’s only one thing I would have liked to change, and it’s not even a mistake, it’s just something I do differently now.
H: Was that the drum part on Aurora Borealis?
W: Yeah.
FB: Hunter, your lyrics strike me as being very literary. Who are some of your literary influences?
H: John Fante-who is just a god-and really most of the others are derived from him or are secondary from him. But it’s really not influences; it’s not even the same realm. You can do things in music that you can’t do on paper and you can do things on paper that you can’t do in music. In music, if you’re striving to convey some kind of meaning, it’s gotta be really subtle or it’s gonna be cheesy-and people tell me all the time that what they like the most about our songs is that they’re meaningful, yet subtle and not in your face and over the top.
FB: Nevertheless, it strikes me as more valid a question to ask you your literary influences than your musical influences, as far as your lyrics go.
H: Yeah…oh, David Berman [of the Silver Jews]-his poetry. But he would be the only person who does something like I might want to do.
FB: This is a lyrically dark record…
W: I wanted the album to be called Someday I’ll End It All, after the song but…that’s a bit too dark.
H: Well, you can say things in a song that you wouldn’t say otherwise…it’s just a matter of context, really.
FB: In this case, you are referring to the context of the music-how do your lyrics juxtapose with your music?
H: People have noticed that…musically we can be pretty poppy…
FB: Rock chords, and whatnot.
H: Right, but all popular music-you can’t do anything original or at least not very original musically. There is always someone somewhere that’s doing the exact same thing you are and so we can differentiate ourselves by having better lyrics.
FB: So you use your lyrics as a foil to the music?
H: I dunno-I write the lyrics as I write the music, and it’s great when they work together well…
W: One thing I like about our band is that we’re different. I’m a rock drummer, and a lot of the songs aren’t standard rock songs and the drums can make them more that way. If it were basic, lighter drumming, it’d be a much different album-it’d bring it down.
FB: Though this record does seem to have a dark side, are there places in the album that are more hopeful than others?
H: Well, they’re all love songs…
W: About me. [Laughter, naughty thoughts]
H: They’re all love songs about Will. There’s always some hope in love songs-there’s gotta be something there or it’s just…
FB: Two of your favorite subjects are love and death. How are these two subjects related in your mind? [Laughter] Sorry, that’s a pretentious question.
H: I try to write about things that are meaningful, that an intelligent person can interpret as being skillfully done. These are the things that strike the target. Something inherent in loving a person is that someday that love will end, no matter who or where you are. It’s a limited thing, and it’s a thing that motivates people to do the things they do. Most people lose sight of the fact that it’s a finite situation.
FB: How does the title play into the overall feel of the album? Could one interpret the album title, I Saw a Bright Light, as referring to a near-death experience, or maybe to a spiritual awakening, as in "I saw the light"?
H: Well, it’s a concept album and the title is meant to highlight that, and yeah, the near-death thing ties into that. But if you type the title into google.com, the majority of the things you get are about aliens…which is completely irrelevant.
FB: Aliens are never completely irrelevant. Okay then. Moving from the album title to the first line of the song, "She takes drugs"-how does that image serve as an entryway to the album?
H: That’s one of the lyrically strongest songs on the record. Certainly that song is a trial by fire for the listener-you can listen to that song and know whether or not you will be able to tolerate the rest of the record. Our lyrics tend to be more of a collage, so you don’t really know what’s gonna happen next. I usually try not to analyze our stuff ‘cause it’s a black hole when you start thinking about it too much.
FB: Your freshman year English teacher informed me that the first paper you wrote for him was on Nine Inch Nails…[Laughter, embarrassment, lunch money stolen] How have you changed since that paper?
H: I’ve grown up. That was many years ago-almost three degrees ago. When you’re a freshman in college, you try to get through your assignment by writing about something your professor knows nothing about, but it screws you in the end because he has the record at home. I think I got a ‘C’ on that paper.
FB: What albums in your record collection have you recently decided you don’t like anymore?
K: When I was in High School I really liked Bauhaus and Joy Division and I can’t listen to that now at all ‘cause its too depressing. And now I’m in this band with all the death lyrics.
W: Oh, God-
FB: His album was a bit too secular for me.
W: There’s always the Vines album. That’s just a fucking coaster.
H: I would have to say Toad the Wet Sprocket. I was a hardcore fan-to the point that I had my ticket stubs framed and everything.
FB: Has anyone decided yet if ‘Toad’ is being used in that band name as a noun or a verb?
K: You know, Coldplay is another band I thought I would like but that record makes me feel angry.
FB: What’s coming up next for you guys?
H: We’re gonna tour with Nirvana.
FB: Finally, what was your stance on the Bob Riley tax package?
H, K, W: Who’s Bob Riley?
source - there are photos!
*sigh* i heart them so much. especially lately.
i'm wondering how i missed this in july 2004!!!! then i remembered, i was starting the IG 2004 west coast tour (a11 18 shows, so i had things on my mind).
man... i am excited about this one. i'm putting it in my memories.
Interview: 1945
John Seay
Friday, July 09, 2004
One interesting critique people tend to level at the field of politics, is that those people who possess enough intelligence and compassion to actually be capable of suitably running a government, are the people who are consistently least likely to run. I kept turning this idea over in my head as I spoke with Nineteen Forty-Five, a local band signed to Daemon Records who just recorded their sophomore release, I Saw a Bright Light.
My impression of the trio, Hunter Manasco on vocals and guitar, Katharine McElroy on bass and vocals, and the immortal Will Lochamy on drums and sex leopards, is that they just might be the smartest band in Birmingham-having probably close to five degrees between them, and enough wit from McElroy to frighten would-be rock critics like myself into nervous silence. Oh yeah, and they fucking rock.
This is the kind of band that should be parading through the streets throwing out their albums like poisoned shooting stars into the unsuspecting hearts of every chubby, sweaty fan of slow, dumb rock music. They should be chasing after a better label and building an even bigger grassroots fan-base. And yet you get the impression that just maybe the guys in Nineteen Forty-Five are a little too smart or too grounded to fall for the whole "I-wanna-be-a-rock-star-and-save-music" thing. This band seems perfectly content to stay signed to Daemon, a small label with little distribution and pull in the industry, and record and release very well realized rock albums to those people who care to listen.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to neatly explain Nineteen Forty-Five’s mindset without any real evidence to back up my claims. After all, they did just release the best local album I’ve heard this year, and an album that holds up pretty well even for national acts. And, for a band that’s only really been active for three years, there is time yet for mass radio takeover.
The band initially formed in 2000 around Manasco and McElroy, and Lochamy was recruited shortly thereafter. Almost at once they began demo-ing the songs that would get them a record deal before the band had even reached their second month anniversary. As legend has it, a mythic dog with head of bird delivered the demo to Amy Ray, of Indigo Girls fame, who owns the label Daemon, to which McElroy’s other band, 3 Finger Cowboy, was signed. Ray called from the Dallas airport to enthusiastically inform the band that she intended to sign them.
The band quickly recorded their first album, Together We’ll Burn like the Autumn Leaves (2001) at friend and bedtime confidant Daniel Farris’ studio, Denial Labs. A collection of songs ranging from the almost punk fervor of "Whore Next Door" to the keening cry of "Anja," the album read like a manual for mourning played at 90 rpms. The album’s tone of lament was inspired by the unrelated and back to back deaths of several of Manasco’s friends. Though this is the kind of fact that most rock critics love as it allows them to pin every move the band makes to it, it does provide background from which to interpret parts of both Together We’ll Burn… and their new record, I Saw a Bright Light.
If Together… is music written by someone stuck in a tragedy, I Saw… plays like someone learning to move on. The album, to me, is primarily about change, particularly change related to love. Whereas Together… seemed hasty at times, I Saw… is more confident, more studied, but just as fresh, as well as being more effective than their first album. Lyrically, the I Saw… is far superior to its predecessor-which is more a testament to the heights Manasco reaches on this album than it is an indictment of their first album.
The opening lines to the album’s first song, "She Takes Drugs," sets the standard for the rest of the album: "She takes drugs / and moves into the trees / and looking like a ghost / she’s now a form of snow."
The album, by song-writer/singer Hunter Manasco’s own admission, is a concept album-not the kind of sprawling epic you would expect from a band like ELO or even Radiohead, but a record that possesses a subdued sense of wholeness and relevancy that unites the songs. All of the songs are love songs, and most of them, if not all of them, are bittersweet at best, downright depressing at worst.
However, saying "at worst" doesn’t imply that these songs fail due to their dark lyrical content-drummer Will Lochamy paraphrases one rock critic who enthusiastically told the band, "Your album makes me want to kill myself-and I mean that as a compliment." Lyricist Manasco is able to infuse his songs with something most song-writers miss by a mile: a general pathos and, though the album often deals with subjects such as death, at the same time it gives a little glimmer of hope, something that everyone can relate to independently of anybody else.
But to merely focus on the bands lyrically dark style is to miss the most exciting part of Nineteen Forty-Five. The band is equally fueled by the pounding, rock drumming of Will Lochamy, and the impossibly simple and devastatingly precise bass lines of Kathryn McElroy, who also provides backing vocals the like of which haven’t been heard since Xene and John Doe harmonized in X, and the feeling of which hasn’t been matched since Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham (yes, that’s a Fleetwood Mac reference, elitists). And McElroy and Lochamy lock together with more precision than they use to build NASA space stations. Nineteen Forty-Five churns out catchy pop, perhaps much like what Rivers Cuomo should have written after Pinkerton.
I sat down with the assembled 1945 to discuss the new album.
FB: You guys recorded your first album with Daniel Farris, and recorded this one using your own equipment at your house (Hong Kong School of Sound). How did those experiences differ?
H: It’s always more relaxing to record in your own studio-but certainly Daniel was able to get a much better, more professional sound than we were. However, recording on your own equipment, on your own time, you can spend two hours on a guitar track, which is what happens to me every time I try to do anything.
FB: Is having the luxury to spend that much time on a track good, or is it sometimes better to be pushed to churn something out faster?
H: For me it’s better to have more time, because it takes me that long to get something I’m happy with-I’d hate to put Daniel or anyone else for that matter through the torture of me sitting there messing around for two hours, playing different things.
W: There were a lot of things with the drums-we recorded the drums so fast on the first one, and there’s a lot I wish I could change, whereas on this one, out of everything there’s only one thing I would have liked to change, and it’s not even a mistake, it’s just something I do differently now.
H: Was that the drum part on Aurora Borealis?
W: Yeah.
FB: Hunter, your lyrics strike me as being very literary. Who are some of your literary influences?
H: John Fante-who is just a god-and really most of the others are derived from him or are secondary from him. But it’s really not influences; it’s not even the same realm. You can do things in music that you can’t do on paper and you can do things on paper that you can’t do in music. In music, if you’re striving to convey some kind of meaning, it’s gotta be really subtle or it’s gonna be cheesy-and people tell me all the time that what they like the most about our songs is that they’re meaningful, yet subtle and not in your face and over the top.
FB: Nevertheless, it strikes me as more valid a question to ask you your literary influences than your musical influences, as far as your lyrics go.
H: Yeah…oh, David Berman [of the Silver Jews]-his poetry. But he would be the only person who does something like I might want to do.
FB: This is a lyrically dark record…
W: I wanted the album to be called Someday I’ll End It All, after the song but…that’s a bit too dark.
H: Well, you can say things in a song that you wouldn’t say otherwise…it’s just a matter of context, really.
FB: In this case, you are referring to the context of the music-how do your lyrics juxtapose with your music?
H: People have noticed that…musically we can be pretty poppy…
FB: Rock chords, and whatnot.
H: Right, but all popular music-you can’t do anything original or at least not very original musically. There is always someone somewhere that’s doing the exact same thing you are and so we can differentiate ourselves by having better lyrics.
FB: So you use your lyrics as a foil to the music?
H: I dunno-I write the lyrics as I write the music, and it’s great when they work together well…
W: One thing I like about our band is that we’re different. I’m a rock drummer, and a lot of the songs aren’t standard rock songs and the drums can make them more that way. If it were basic, lighter drumming, it’d be a much different album-it’d bring it down.
FB: Though this record does seem to have a dark side, are there places in the album that are more hopeful than others?
H: Well, they’re all love songs…
W: About me. [Laughter, naughty thoughts]
H: They’re all love songs about Will. There’s always some hope in love songs-there’s gotta be something there or it’s just…
FB: Two of your favorite subjects are love and death. How are these two subjects related in your mind? [Laughter] Sorry, that’s a pretentious question.
H: I try to write about things that are meaningful, that an intelligent person can interpret as being skillfully done. These are the things that strike the target. Something inherent in loving a person is that someday that love will end, no matter who or where you are. It’s a limited thing, and it’s a thing that motivates people to do the things they do. Most people lose sight of the fact that it’s a finite situation.
FB: How does the title play into the overall feel of the album? Could one interpret the album title, I Saw a Bright Light, as referring to a near-death experience, or maybe to a spiritual awakening, as in "I saw the light"?
H: Well, it’s a concept album and the title is meant to highlight that, and yeah, the near-death thing ties into that. But if you type the title into google.com, the majority of the things you get are about aliens…which is completely irrelevant.
FB: Aliens are never completely irrelevant. Okay then. Moving from the album title to the first line of the song, "She takes drugs"-how does that image serve as an entryway to the album?
H: That’s one of the lyrically strongest songs on the record. Certainly that song is a trial by fire for the listener-you can listen to that song and know whether or not you will be able to tolerate the rest of the record. Our lyrics tend to be more of a collage, so you don’t really know what’s gonna happen next. I usually try not to analyze our stuff ‘cause it’s a black hole when you start thinking about it too much.
FB: Your freshman year English teacher informed me that the first paper you wrote for him was on Nine Inch Nails…[Laughter, embarrassment, lunch money stolen] How have you changed since that paper?
H: I’ve grown up. That was many years ago-almost three degrees ago. When you’re a freshman in college, you try to get through your assignment by writing about something your professor knows nothing about, but it screws you in the end because he has the record at home. I think I got a ‘C’ on that paper.
FB: What albums in your record collection have you recently decided you don’t like anymore?
K: When I was in High School I really liked Bauhaus and Joy Division and I can’t listen to that now at all ‘cause its too depressing. And now I’m in this band with all the death lyrics.
W: Oh, God-
FB: His album was a bit too secular for me.
W: There’s always the Vines album. That’s just a fucking coaster.
H: I would have to say Toad the Wet Sprocket. I was a hardcore fan-to the point that I had my ticket stubs framed and everything.
FB: Has anyone decided yet if ‘Toad’ is being used in that band name as a noun or a verb?
K: You know, Coldplay is another band I thought I would like but that record makes me feel angry.
FB: What’s coming up next for you guys?
H: We’re gonna tour with Nirvana.
FB: Finally, what was your stance on the Bob Riley tax package?
H, K, W: Who’s Bob Riley?
source - there are photos!
*sigh* i heart them so much. especially lately.