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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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The Court & Spark: Bay Area Bliss
Thursday 11 September @ 14:19:04 |
 by Andrew Brantingham
“In terms of Americana stuff, it’s not really my scene,” avers MC Taylor, guitarist and vocalist for San Francisco’s The Court and Spark. “I’m not hip to the whole countryish thing.” It’s a strange claim to hear from the front man of a band that the music world has confidently filed under “Alt Country,” or “Americana,” or whatever it is these days we’re supposed to call anyone who’s ever picked up a banjo. “We didn’t say we were going to make a band with country and western influences, it just happened over time,” continues Taylor. But much more has happened in the years that the group’s core members—Taylor, guitarist Scott Hirsch, and drummer James Kim—have been making music together.
Bless You, The Court and Spark’s current full-length album, is a rich and cohesive amalgam of different sounds. Yes, it is shot through with banjo and pedal steel, and Taylor’s singing voice is shaped by a mellow twang. But different elements—jazz, blues, and West Coast pop—wind like morning glories round the record’s country roots. Bless You is the product of a band steeped in the traditional sounds of their locale but committed to a spirit of experimentation.
At the heart of the record are some beautiful, simple songs: “We start with the song,” says Taylor. “The most important thing is to be able to write a song that translates as a good song when you strip everything away.” And a few of them are recorded that way, stark and vulnerable. The ethic which seems to drive the record as a whole, though, is one of conscious transformation. “We certainly never wanted to be Civil War re-enactors in any way,” says Taylor. “We need to push things forward in order to make a record that will still be around in 20 years.” And push they do. Unexpected (and very un-country) sounds crop up behind the banjoes in “Pearly Gates.” Throaty guitars and horns peek through the interstices of songs that sound straightforward on the first listen. The album is allowed to bloom and breathe, opening into a dreamy, textural space (e.g., the seven and a half minute “Fade Out to Little Arrow”) that seems to mark the current incarnation of The Court and Spark’s sound. Bless You explores some familiar ground, but it does so with fresh eyes and ears.
Taylor’s approach to lyrics complements The Court and Spark’s expansive music. Again, he has an ear for the traditional and mines some of the veins that have always funded folk and country. “National Lights” is a shivering, country-soul ballad, in which Taylor (echoed by Wendy Allen’s silk-smoky drawl) sings, “Put on your stockings/Put on your shoes/Put on your makeup/Put on your blues.” It has the weathered feel of a classic torch song.
But more often, Taylor seems to shy away from the concrete. In the hazy soundscape of Bless You the listener encounters more image than narrative. “A lot of my writing can be sort of abstract,” he says. “I love words and I love being able to put words together to form sort of a picture, so I’m always much more leaning towards putting specific words together to paint a picture, as opposed to songs that tell a whole story.” Like the sounds on Bless You, the lyrics are suggestive of the traditions to which The C&S is often compared, yet ultimately prove to be too richly ambiguous for easy classification.
The Court and Spark seem to approach the creative process as a sort of musical alchemy—they don’t pretend to make music in a vacuum or to completely reinvent the forms with which they work. Instead they explore and recombine the sounds that surround them. “If you’re hearing things in the music that you might think of as inventive, it’s because we’re all listening to so many different things,” he says. “It’s not aping or copying the music, but it’s there. How do you get this stuff that has been proven to be great into a record? I think that’s what we’re trying to do.” Check out the band’s Web Site (http://www.dreamchimney.com/theCourtandSpark/) to see what they’re listening to in the van; you might be surprised—Gram Parsons is nowhere to be found and it’s the only place I’ve encountered Missy Elliot and Link Wray in the same paragraph.
Another important factor in the Court and Spark’s sound has undoubtedly been producer Scott Solter (who’s helmed widely ranging records for the likes of Okkervil River and the Jim Yoshii Pile-Up among others) who produced Bless You as well as the band’s first album, Ventura Whites. “He’s kind of a mad genius,” says Taylor. “He facilitates a recording in such a way that everyone gets excited about it.” By all accounts the relationship has been fertile, and The Court and Spark have solicited Solter’s help for their third full-length album, which they will be mixing in October.
The band has been pushing themselves further afield musically for the upcoming release, and from Taylor’s description, the new record will be eclectic and ambitious (as he put it, “even more of a mish-mash”): “It’s sort of funky, almost dubby, maybe with like a Burning Spear element. Some of it has horns, tape echo; some stuff is almost bluegrassy, with strings and little drums. There’s stuff that’s almost churchy, lots of church organs and pump organs.”
There is no set release date for the new album, however, because there is as yet no label. Taylor maintains that the labels the band has worked with thus far have been excellent, but, he says, “This whole band is our life. It’s hard to put the master of a new record into the hands of somebody who is working with a million different bands. The idea is someday to do it on our own.” For now, though, the Court and Spark have put together a limited-edition (400 copies) tour EP, culled from miles of tape containing live cuts, B-sides, and covers; it bears the imprint of their own Prophecy Connection label. Taylor sees the EP as an off-the-cuff counterweight to the band’s intensive studio efforts. It seems like a logical move; while it’s clear that they consciously perforate the boundaries of their art, one gets the sense that, all other things aside, The Court and Spark are still just a group of friends who love to make music together.
The Court & Spark play Wed., Sept. 17 at the Turf Club with And Every Bell & Whistle and Mechanical Bull. 9 p.m. Free, 21+. University & Snelling Ave., St. Paul. 651-647-0486.
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