 story and photos by Steve McPherson
People get into music for all kinds of reasons: the girls (or boys), the money, the fame or for any number of dreams. But I’m willing to bet that most musicians quickly realize there’s something more intangible and difficult to pin down that makes music worth their time. It’s tough to frame correctly, but music—truly exciting amazing awe-inspiring music—makes you feel more alive. Call me sentimental, but there are certain elements in the things people make—the bowl of a well-designed lowercase “a” in a typeface, the dovetail joint of a piece of woodwork, the perfect grid of Manhattan streets—that nearly unhinge me in my admiration for human endeavor. And when music serves as your religion in as much as it makes you believe humankind is capable of true grace and beauty, what you hunger for are albums, songs, hooks, moments—whatever—that transport you. There’s no formula or exact science for this kind of alchemy, but you know it when you see it, so with that in mind, if you haven’t already met: Everybody, these are The Plastic Constellations and P.O.S. TPC and P.O.S., everybody.
 The
Plastic Constellations (Jeff Allen and Aaron Mader, guitars/vocals; Jordan Roske,
bass; Matt Scharenbroich, drums) and P.O.S. (born Stefon Alexander) are both
about to release albums (Crusades and Audition, respectively)
on national labels (Frenchkiss and Rhymesayers) and embark on national tours.
Mader makes beats for P.O.S. and other hip-hop artists under the name Lazerbeak.
P.O.S. appears on several tracks on TPC’s latest Crusades, helping
out with some gang vocals. But they’ve got connections that go all the
way back to junior high, and sitting down with all of them on a Sunday at Scharenbroich’s
house, the first thing I want to know is how they all met.
“Shut up, dude,” is Alexander’s immediate response, followed
by much general laughter. Sure it’s a cliché interview question,
but I really want to know.
“Um, junior high, right?” Mader obliges. “You [Stef] were
in 9th grade, we were in 8th grade. Stef was in a punk band.”
“I had switched from North Junior High,” fills in Alexander, “to
Hopkins West Junior High. I went to North the first two years (7th and 8th grade)
and met Kai [Benson of Swiss Army, aka Marshall Larada of Doomtree] between
8th and 9th grade and switched schools just so I could hang out with Kai. I
had to wake up at like six in the morning, take a city bus downtown and then
take another city bus back way out the fuck there just so I could hang out with
Kai.”
Allen adds, “Him and Kai were in a band called Om and we, as younger kids,
had seen you guys around.” By this point, TPC was already TPC, formed
at the beginning of 7th grade around Allen and Mader’s mutual love of
Sonic Youth. Om and The Plastic Constellations weren’t exactly fast friends,
though.
“It was a little unspoken rivalry,” says Mader, “‘cause
there was a talent show and not all the bands could get in and Om got to headline
and we were pissed. ‘Those damn 9th graders!’ They were the most
popular band in the school.”
 “In
the first Om full-length, we thanked ‘Those Little Bastards TPC,’”
says Alexander. “These guys made a documentary which heavily features
a part that’s just a section about how much everybody hates [Om]. [laughter]
We actually used a section of their documentary to open up our full-length,
[a part] that was like, ‘I fucking hate Om.’”
This kind of back and forth counterpunching went on for a while. Om put out
a tape, The Plastic Constellations put out a 7-inch. First Om headlines the
talent show, the next year TPC get their vindication by headlining as 9th graders.
What really brought them together was hip-hop, and Seth Weston-Stuart’s
Sethtoberfests.
“Dude, Sethtoberfest was where it really happened,” affirms Alexander.
Allen explains: “It was Matt on drums and me on bass and then you and
Mike rapping over us playing the whitest funk.” At which point Mader interjects,
“The Whitest Funk would be a good name for a band.”
The actual name of the band: Rhythmatics. “The Rhythmatics! That was the
first show!” exclaims Alexander. “At that point, me and Mike [Mictlan,
of Doomtree] had seen each other around but we had never really talked. We both
knew that we rapped, but we played Sethtoberfest and I was freestyling with
this guy Dave that I was in Cenospecies with and Mike just starting rapping,
too, and it just happened. We set up a show at the Depot in Hopkins [a school-run
alcohol- and smoke-free venue for teens]. We played and that place was packed,
from like the front of the stage to out the door. Just screaming and really
happy. Crescent Moon showed up and rapped. That was our first rap show—our
first for-real rap show.”
In the present day, P.O.S. is what we would generally call a “rap artist.”
He belongs to a “crew” called Doomtree whose members include rappers
Sims, Dessa, Cecil Otter and Mike Mictlan; DJs Turbo Nemesis and Paper Tiger;
and producers Marshall Larada, Lazerbeak, Tom Servo and, uh, Emily Bloodmobile.
It’s a grip of cats, and they wear a lot of black and a lot of hoodies.
The Plastic Constellations, in sneakers, jeans and T-shirts, look like about
the least likely guys to light up a venue and burn it down quicker than the
Human Torch, but that’s just what they’ve done every single time
I’ve seen them. The way their shared background influences both artists’
music is one thing I find particularly fascinating. What we’re witnessing
here is not the kind of clunky and uncomfortable hybridization of rap and rock
that has plagued the musical landscape for the last five years. It’s music
made by musicians who grew up in a far more fluid musical landscape, where Jay-Z
tapes sat next to Fugazi tapes and Atmosphere split bills with Dillinger Four.
 “I’ve
been doing a lot of interviews lately for this next record,” says Alexander,
“and everybody’s like, ‘What’s up with punk-rap?’
There’s still people that don’t get it. There’s nothing to
get. If people were uninformed and read my bio, they’re gonna be like,
‘This dude likes horrible music,’ because everybody knows that you
can’t mix rock and rap. It doesn’t work and it sounds stupid. It’s
not the actual mixing of the elements of music, it’s the feel behind it:
it’s where you’re coming from. That’s the stuff that mixes.
If you listen to my record and don’t think, ‘This is a punk rock
guy,’ it doesn’t sound like a punk rock record; it sounds like a
rap record. That’s just how it is. And these guys are kind of the exact
opposite. They’re a very great rock band that just happens to have some
of those elements.”
“I think you make a good point when you say there’s nothing to get,”
Allen responds. “There’s people who—I don’t know why—maybe
people grew up differently than us or are older than us—but they think
there is something to get. And so, we got called out for our last record. [Critics]
calling us white-boy rappers and shit and rap-rock. 311 was mentioned in several
articles and we were like, ‘What the fuck?’”
Maybe you can blame the open-minded Twin Cities music community for the difficulty
that the rest of the world seems to have when it comes to pigeonholing these
guys. “In Minneapolis, you can have a bill that’s Doomtree and TPC,”
says Alexander. “You can have a bill that’s like the Fuck Yeahs
and Brother Ali and people won’t blink an eye. If you try to do that in
Chicago … like there was a Dillinger Four/Atmosphere/Sage Francis show
in Chicago and there was like fights and shit. People had no idea what the fuck
to do with it.”
 For
Alexander, he just followed the rule that Mader mentions: “Sample the
records you have.” He grew up on Minneapolis acts like Killsadie and Song
of Zarathustra and so their music forms the basis for two tracks on the upcoming
Audition: “Half-Cocked Concepts” and “Yeah Right (Science,
Science).” Fashioning hip-hop out of hardcore came easily to him after
programming beats for Building Better Bombs, his other major project. “When
me and Isaac [Gale] first started [Bombs], it was me and him playing guitar
and a drum machine. I programmed all the basslines and the drums and additional
sounds right into the drum machine. It just made sense, like, we’ll add
this on top of it and we’ll do vocals, but the rest of it is on here.
So when it came to making beats, it was pretty much the same process. Like,
pick all the melodies and then you add drums behind it, and then you rap over
it. It kind of felt like putting together songs the same way. That’s why
if you listen to a lot of the first beats from False Hopes Mega and the
first False Hopes [series of shorter CD debuts by Doomtree members],
the beats are godawful, but they sound like a band playing. And I loved it until
this dude [Aaron] really started making bangers and shit. That made me think,
maybe I can try not doing that. I pretty much wanted every beat that I had to
sound like A Series of Sneaks, the Spoon record. That was my plan, because
they’re so choppy and they ride so hard and completely random and all
over the place.”
“And I want every beat to sound like Jay-Z,” adds Mader. “And
it’s still like that to this day.” He’s perfectly right, too.
His contributions to P.O.S.’s new disc are anthemic, orchestral and just
generally way more “hip-hop,” I suppose. Stop reading this for a
second and appreciate the beauty of a white kid from an indie rock band bringing
the Kanye West flavor to a black dude’s national hip-hop debut. And don’t
thank just Hopkins or the Twin Cities for all of this. TPC and P.O.S. make clear
what kept them in it this long.
 “It’s
really important to talk just briefly about the Foxfire,” says Allen,
and everyone affirms that they owe a huge debt to the short-lived, all-ages
coffehouse that made such a difference for so many young musicians. “That’s
why we’re a band. That place was only around for two years, but in those
two years it touched so many people. So many bands.”
“I was there every day,” adds Alexander. “I worked there and
even when I wasn’t working I was hanging out there. What the fuck else
am I going to do? If you’re underage and you want to go downtown, where
the fuck else is there to go?”
“That place was the catalyst for us turning from a band that played our
friends’ parties to a band that played shows,” continues Allen.
Is there anyplace now that can compare to the Foxfire, a place that hosted not
just all-ages showcases of local bands but also gave the Twin Cities their first
glimpse of now-legends like Death Cab for Cutie and At the Drive-In? They just
can’t say. It’s a fact of life that once you reach 21, you pretty
much start hanging out in bars, although they’d all like to play more
all-ages shows. P.O.S. in particular is pumped about a place called the Alamo
House that he played on New Year’s with Building Better Bombs and Allen
has his sights set on an all-ages show at the Church when they get back from
their tour.
Talent shows and the Foxfire may have given them their start, but what’s
set to send them from local favorites to national draws are their rock solid
albums. Neither is exactly an easy listen, and neither boasts a radio-ready
hit, but somehow they manage to be confrontational, complicated, subtle and
irresistible at the same time. Part of the problem with TPC deciding which track
to give to radio is that they’re a band with two unique songwriters. The
overriding theme of Crusades is unity in the face of adversity, but where
Allen attacks topics from married life to band life with a down-to-earth approach,
Mader recasts his band and his friends as a group of warriors on a quest to
slay a dragon. What makes it particularly “freaking brilliant”—as
Alexander avers—is that these sides need each other: if it were all swords
and sorcery, it’d be ridiculous and if it were all meat-and-potatoes it
wouldn’t stand out so well from the rabble of like-minded indie rock bands.
It’s yin and yang; each half needs the other to make a whole.
 “I
think we took it to almost an extreme,” says Mader. “I’ll
give Craig Finn [singer from the Hold Steady] as an example—I love how
he ties stuff in: you get pieces from other stories. And I think we took it
to an extreme of, ‘This is gonna be one huge story.’ I say the same
line at least three times on the record.”
Allen adds, “Aaron wrote an actual arc that the songs follow. So like,
‘When we come out of the instrumental, it’s on a beach somewhere.’”
General laughter ensues and Alexander contributes his opinion to the pile. “The
difference between the Hold Steady and the TPC approach is Craig draws from
life and then adds to his stories with characters, whereas Aaron is just flat-out
taking Plastic Constellations and Doomtree and giving us all swords. It’s
a really cool approach.”
Alexander’s got his own approach lyrically as well, and Audtion,
much like Crusades, is an album that rewards repeated and careful listening.
As I discovered over the months it took me to fully appreciate P.O.S.’s
debut Ipecac Neat, the best parts of Alexander’s records are the
moments when you first realize that he’s doing something great. Maybe
it’s a cadence or an internal rhyme, or maybe you just catch the tail
end of an obscure pop-culture reference, but Audition is chock-full of
these. P.O.S. has what is undoubtedly his finest single line in “Stand
Up (Let’s Get Murdered)” where, in the midst of decrying the USA
PATRIOT Act and this administration’s policies regarding privacy, he lands
this blow against apathy: “There’s a war against me, my friends,
my fam, my pride, my life, my job, my rights and like-minded/ Folks are like,
‘Pshhh’ like they just don’t mind it.” And then there’s
the subtle repetition in “P.O.S. Is Ruining My Life” during the
calm before the storm when he intones, “And it’s strained, I think
it might/ break, scratch, crack, silence,” and then on the repeat switches
it to, “Break, crack, scratch …” switching the word for a
real moment of hush before the last verse kicks the door down.
 Since
it’s a solo album, Audition doesn’t sport exactly the same
all-in-the-family vibe that pervades TPC’s disc, but solidarity comes
from two sources: Doomtree and the various collaborations on the record. Most
specifically and poignantly, the song “De La Souls” features Greg
Attonito from punk/hardcore band the Bouncing Souls. P.O.S. takes his hook from
the Bouncing Souls’ song “Argyle,” and after meeting the band
when he was on the Warped Tour with Atmosphere, Attonito came into the studio
to sing his own part back on the track. There’s something genuinely touching
about the collaboration; it’s a song about being an outcast and drawing
strength from music that means something and on the track itself, the teenager
inspired by one of his favorite band’s paeans to individuality and resilience
gets to repurpose it for his own song about the very same values.
While we’re on the topic of repurposing, the strong community that these
two albums spring from comes through in the relentless lyrical cross-referencing
between TPC and the members of Doomtree. “We quote [Doomtree rapper] Sims
because he quoted us and, on the record I’m making with Mike [Mictlan],
I gave him the idea [to use] some lyrics that I’d written [for the last
song on] our record [‘Bring What You Bring’]. So he changes it a
little bit, but he raps some of our shit. Lyrically, I respect these guys and
they’re like giants to me, so we take from each other.”
“Doomtree,” interjects Alexander, “and every band related
with Doomtree in some way, there’s always been crossover. Sims used TPC
lyrics and Swiss Army lyrics. I used TPC lyrics and Lifter Puller lyrics. TPC
used Sims.”
 Yes,
it’s complicated and incestuous, but here’s the breakdown: In “Music
for Shoplifting” from Ipecac Neat, P.O.S. references the TPC song
“Riots and Rugburns” when he says, “Is it the switchblades
or the stabwounds?” and there’s also a brief musical interlude taken
from unreleased TPC song “Chunk Rawk.” On Sims’ debut, Lights
Out Paris, he references a TPC song from Mazatlan when he says, “That’s
the sign of the times, right?” and Plastic Constellations returned the
favor when they lifted “Blood coming out, time is running out” from
Sims for the chorus lead-in of “Best Things” on Crusades.
Sure, it’s a subtle thread, but it’s the kind of thing that elevates
a bunch of bands to the level of a scene and can turn a scene into a real community.
At least for a music journalist, it’s the subtleties that prove the most
intoxicating when it comes to bands.
The first time I got to hear Crusades I couldn’t catch all those
nuances, but I knew it was a completely different affair from their last long-player,
Mazatlan. Sitting in front of some premium studio monitors at the Hideaway,
I could tell that this album shook and grooved in a way their previous efforts
hadn’t. Where before the songs seemed overly thought-out and the drums
felt too tight and small, Crusades boasts more immediate and visceral
arrangements and a sound that’s miles closer to approximating what you
get at a Plastic Constellations show. They credit one man with hooking that
up, and it’s no coincidence he’s the same guy that Alexander looked
to when assembling Audition.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how we can get a City Pages or Pulse
feature about Joe Mabbott,” says Alexander. “In the last four years,
in the top 10 lists of records, he’s always got at least four of them.
He’s the shit. He’s so good.“ Noted. He’s also the man
behind the most recent Atmosphere albums and mans the drums for the blazing-hot
band Passions. A lot of engineers and producers can talk you around in circles
and add all kinds of signatures and flourishes to a band’s sound, but
Mabbot’s real talent is in just letting the band be the band.
 “We’ve
been trying for years to make an album that really was us and we’ve come
close,” explains Allen, “but I feel like this record is us and without
Joe it wouldn’t have happened. It’s also the way it was written
because Mazatlan was written over three years because we weren’t
doing shit. We wrote, like, three songs over the course of 2003, I think. And
Mazatlan came out and this Frenchkiss thing started happening and we
were like, ‘Oh shit. We have to write 10 songs in like six weeks.’”
Another major motivating factor was borne out of tragedy. A friend of both Alexander’s
and TPC’s named Matt Davis died of an unexpected seizure in August of
2003. He was the lead singer of an Iowa City band called Ten Grand (originally
Vida Blue), and after attending his service, the Plastic Constellations recommitted
themselves to making music, dedicated Mazatlan to their departed friend
and got themselves seriously in gear.
P.O.S. dedicates Audition to Davis as well, along with Melvin Dortch
and Charles Bronson, who crops up in numerous places, including a track called
“Paul Kersey to Jack Kimball.” As it turns out, the track is quite
specifically about Dortch, Alexander’s uncle. “On his girlfriend’s
birthday,” Alexander explains, “he walked across the street to buy
her a birthday card and got hit by a car and then hit by another car and dragged
100 feet and killed and nobody stopped and nobody’s been arrested or caught.
The whole first verse of that song is about how pissed off I am—it’s
pretty much written to that guy, whoever it was and the second verse is about
how nobody gives a fuck about anything anymore. That you can feel OK killing
somebody and not turn themselves in.”
Never one to be shy about personal revelation, whether it’s about his
uncle, a failed relationship or politics, Alexander’s personality comes
across in another way on the record through the copious amount of studio chatter
he includes with nearly every song, a pleasant holdover from Ipecac Neat.
“I don’t know where it came from, or why, but it just feels like
important parts of the song to me. You can’t just—especially when
some of your songs come off so abstract on the first or second listen—if
you can give a rundown of where your head’s at while you’re recording
it, it gives more real life to it. One thing as a performer and as a rapper
especially—not so much as a musician, but as a rapper—the posturing
of the rapper has to be completely buried. A lot of rappers do their best to
look as cool as possible and sound as cool as possible and hold the mic just
so and make sure their adlibs at the beginnings of songs are, like, keeping
their image held together. All that stuff. To me, I’m gonna put the jokes
that my friends are gonna get in that stuff. I want that part of my life out
there as much as I want my lyrics out there. If I’m working with a different
engineer than Joe, that I don’t like, I’m not gonna be calling him
out, but I definitely refer to Joe and talk to Joe on the record between every
song. If the take turned out good, chances are if I talked to him before the
take started I’ll just leave it on there. It just feels more realistic
to me. It’s a good way to create whatever story or create whatever energy
you’re trying to create with the song but still keep it grounded in real
life. It’s got to be.”
 Keeping grounded in real
life. In the end, that’s the most important thing that The Plastic Constellations
and P.O.S. share. They’re unpretentious and genial in person while at
the same time setting their sites no lower than every garage band’s goal
of world domination. As Dick Clark likes to say, they’re keeping their
feet on the ground while reaching for the stars. 2005 was the first year that
Alexander didn’t have a job and didn’t have to borrow money from
his mom. Both TPC and P.O.S. seem a little apprehensive about the public reception
of their albums, but I doubt they have much to worry about. As Alexander affirms,
“I can’t imagine anything better than what it is right now. Everybody’s
pieces are finally falling together.” With the best albums of their 10-year-yet-somehow-still-budding
careers under their belts and the warm hands of the Twin Cities music scene
to hold them up, Alexander’s right: “Everybody’s got it—everybody’s
got the pieces falling into place.” ||
The Plastic Constellations play two release shows for Crusades on
Fri., Jan. 27, at the Triple Rock Social Club. The All Ages show at 5 p.m. features
Shoeshiners, The STNNNG and Doomtree. The 21+ show at 10 p.m. features The STNNNG,
The Hawaii Show and Doomtree. Both cost $8. 629 Cedar Ave., Mpls. 612-333-7499.
For more information on The Plastic Constellations, visit their official website
at theplasticconstellations.com.
P.O.S. plays the release show for Audition on Mon., Jan. 30 at the
Seventh St. Entry with special guests to be announced. 8 p.m. $10/$12. 18+.
29 N. 7th St., Mpls. 612-332-1775. For more information on P.O.S. visit Doomtree’s
site at doomtree.net and Rhymesayers’
site at rhymesayers.com.
For a full transcript of the interview, visit pulsetcmusic.blogspot.com.
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