The Oranges Band: Saved by the buoyancy of citrus
Wednesday 22 November @ 14:46:09 |
  BY STEVE McPHERSON
The Oranges Band’s 2005 release, The World and Everything In It, is perfect summer road trip music. Unified by a hazy, lo-fi luster, the record skips across influences on nearly every other song, from the Spoon-fed minimalism of opener “Believe,” through the Chuck Berry-esque swagger of “White Ride,” and on to the spy music exotica of the title track’s opening chords. Ringleader Roman Kuebler isn’t really all that worried, though.
“It’s almost like for every song I could name the specific idea where that came from,” says Kuebler by phone from his Baltimore apartment. “Sometimes that’s not the case, but I would say with 75 percent of the stuff I can reference the band or the song. Right now, we just did a song that was kind of supposed to be a bit of an ESG [a seminal Bronx R&B group—Emerald, Sapphire and Gold] kind of thing, but I kind of ripped it off of a Peter Gabriel song, and then it got a little bit of a Clash thing going on. Somehow in the end it sounds like Spoon. I’m not sure how it happened, but it literally started with me trying to gank this Peter Gabriel idea and then it went through the wringer. I’m not against being straight-up about where things are coming from. I’m not that interested in being original; I don’t know what original music would sound like.”
 Given how generally un-derivative The Oranges Band sound, it’s a refereshing admission, but it’s hardly out of character: Kuebler’s a student of music. Running through his musical background, he’s gone through phases of listening to punk, old school rap (“Which, of course, at the time was not old school,” he points out), R.E.M., Pavement, Polvo and countless other indie rock bands, not to mention sampling R&B greats like Otis Redding. You might think that someone with such broad taste, who’s currently working his way through an mp3 archive of the Billboard Top 100 for each year from the past 50 years, would make music that would manifest an almost manic eclecticism, but you’d be wrong. Kuebler’s unswerving ear for a great melody guides him through the stylistic jungle, while his general tenacity lets him weather the lifestyle that goes along with being a professional musician with a day job.
“He wore his keys on a string around his neck (still does),” writes Craig Finn (yes, Craig Finn of hometown heroes Lifter Puller and current It band The Hold Steady) of Kuebler in The Oranges Band’s bio, “which suggested that he might misplace them often. His demeanor and attitude were refreshing: he was determined and down for whatever.” Coming from Finn, you know “down for whatever” is high praise, but Kuebler’s determination has been put to the test over the last year, following the virtual dissolution of the band’s label, Lookout Records. Last fall, the label lost its real moneymaker—Green Day’s back catalog—and was forced to release the bulk of its staff and all of its bands. As of right now, the label function solely as a catalogue, and The Oranges Band, along with other acts like local rockers Hockey Night, are looking for a new home. Despite that, it sounds like the last year’s been pretty fruitful for Kuebler. He’s continued his work as a freelance graphic designer and architectural draftsman and has recently been working on demoing new tracks for the next Oranges Band album.
“It’s kind of taken the whole year,” he says. “It’s kind of odd that it takes that long, but I guess I don’t mind that, since it’s given us the time to reflect on it in a way that is comfortable to us. In the past, I’ve always felt pressured by time, and not having that pressure has been really kind of liberating.”
 If they felt pressured to make The World and Everything In It, it doesn’t show in the final album. Most of the time, when I’m interviewing a band that’s coming to town, I’ve only gotten to listen to their album a handful of times, so it’s a rare treat to have had a whole year to digest The Oranges Band’s latest, and here’s what I’ve found: You won’t find a better pop single to include on your next mixtape/movie soundtrack/whatever than “Open Air.” Not even if you went back and listened to Billboard’s Top 100 for each year for the past 50 years.
It’s got that holy grail of pop perfection: a blend of wistful and hopeful that makes you feel a little like you’re moving away from home; it holds forth the promise of all that’s to come while simultaneously making you long for what was. The lyrics detail the kind of summer that gets lost between school years. “Amber was 19,” sings Kuebler. “Lucky for us she looked 23 / She said that we could do anything and we did it all / We lived downtown / It was pretty punk for kids to live downtown / Pretty punk of us to get kicked out / But we didn’t care / At all.” You’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but I swear to god the whole song hinges on that line break between “But we didn’t care” and “At all.” Without that break, without that “At all,” you’d be left wondering if maybe they do care, just a little bit. Those last two words seem to clinch it, but when you put it into the context of the song, when you put it after that break, somehow you know they do care, and just a little bit. Just hunt it down, and kill if you must.
When I called Kuebler for the interview, I was expecting a 15- to 20-minute conversation, but we got off on a lot of tangents, and the interview spun out to nearly 45 minutes, covering everything from the gentrification of Kuebler’s hometown of Baltimore (he’s dismayed at the loss of character), his part-ownership of the rock club The Talking Head (which is under threat from developers), his experiences with Lookout Records, the sudden success of independent bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and our own Tapes ‘n’ Tapes and what that says about the music industry currently and many other topics. Unfortunately, I don’t have the space to cover all of it here. Besides, what’s really important is getting the facts straight in the All Music Guide.
The AMG’s entry on The Oranges Band (which is duplicated, with mistakes, on the Triple Rock’s website) contained a number of factual errors, including talking about the band in the past tense, spelling Kuebler’s name Kubler (he’s not related to Tad from The Hold Steady) and it didn’t include info on the band’s new bassist, Faye Malarkey. So Kuebler got in touch. “I hadn’t made any announcement that our old bass player had left,” Kuebler says, “and that we had a new bass player, and I didn’t know exactly how to do it, and that seemed like kind of an appropriate way. For a long time they had us listed in the past tense and I’d always try to get someone at our label to do something about that. I tried at least one other time to figure out how to contact them with no luck, but I finally found the hidden link. Now that I have an in there, every other week, I’m just gonna send ‘em a new update. It’ll be like my own personal All Music Blog.” ||
The Oranges Band plays on Sun., Nov. 26 at the Triple Rock Social Club with Story of the Sea and The Spirit of 76. 9 p.m. $6/$8. 21+. 629 Cedar Ave., Mpls. 612-333-7499. For more info on The Oranges Band, check out their website at theorangesband.com. For a transcript of the full interview, check out pulsetcmusic.blogspot.com.
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