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Here�s a nice musical coming-of-age story, a chapter in my as-yet-unrealized bildungsroman. My junior year of college, first term, there was a girl in my drawing class, a freshman, who I thought was just the cat�s pajamas. Her name was Jen, and she was a little too cute, a little too precious, the kind of girl who makes a barely perceptible meowing sound when she�s pleased, who never ever uses capital letters, who shops exclusively at thrift shops. I knew it would never work between us, and conveniently enough, she wasn�t in any mood to put it to the test. But we became pals in that class and outside of it soon enough, and her pollyanic freshman cheerfulness was a valued counterpart to the inveterate cynicism I was laying on thicker than ever that year. One night I stopped by her room. Once a week we were expected to show our drawing prof the sketches we�d been working on outside of class. I hadn�t produced much, so Jen and I sat in her room drawing and listening to music. I�d never heard this music before�it was instrumental and elegant, produced by clearly proficient musicians with an ear for subtlety and ambience, but it was just bass and drums, maybe a guitar here and there. That music turned out to be Tortoise�s first album. Tortoise, you say? I�ve never heard of them. Then she switched out the CD and I heard a melancholy mellotron hanging on a single chord before some sleek drums dropped in with swishing, muted cymbals, and a liquid, circular bassline. This was �The Sporting Life�, and my introduction to the Sea & Cake.
I knew I loved this music, but it would be a while before I could convince a friend with a car to give me a ride to the Exclusive Company, the best indie record store in town, all the way up on Wisconsin Ave. I got the first Tortoise album that autumn and Millions Now Living Will Never Die that winter, but it took me a while to get around to the Sea & Cake. One Saturday night I was in the library and I ran into Jen. What was she doing in the library on a Saturday night? More importantly, what was I doing in the fucking library on a Saturday night? Trying to slog through 700 impossible pages of Tristram Shandy for my English Novels seminar, that�s what. I asked her what Sea & Cake album I should start with, and she wrote a quick guide on the title page of TS. I found that book in my Mom�s basement recently, barely cracked, of course, but there it was, just inside the front cover�a beginner�s guide to S&C:
2. nassau�just ok 3. the biz�the best! [next to this entry she�d drawn a little cartoon kitten-face and a star�see what I mean?] 4. the fawn�2nd best�new direction more electronic and more extensive use of drum machine�but it works 5. two gentlemen EP�good but will be more appreciated by the s&c connoisseur I should have paid more attention to that last point. Turns out the first thing I bought was Two Gentlemen, and it probably won�t come as any surprise to anyone familiar with this oft-maligned remix EP that I was pretty underwhelmed. I can appreciate it now as a �s&c connoisseur,� and it has its moments. Fortunately, I didn�t give up, and I bought The Biz and then The Fawn. Neither album knocked my socks off, but over the course of the spring of 1998 The Fawn slowly but steadily crept under my skin like a gentle hallucinogen, as I found myself back in another drawing class, along with Jen. We�d stand next to each other and try to reproduce with vellum and charcoal the naked man or woman in front of us. During breaks from the class, I�d sit in the art building�s ampitheatre and listen to this album�or Tortoise�s TNT, which had just been released, but that�s a different story�on my headphones. To this day, no song cycle better captures the arrival of spring like this one. The thing is, however, I can listen to it on a crisp, cold autumn afternoon and it works just as well. There�s something so subtle and guileless in this album, in the whole package: the cover art, the song titles, the production�the way �The Fawn� slowly fades in on an amniotic mixture of slightly detuned Moog and Eric Claridge's smooth-as-silk bassline, the drum machine na�vely chirping away; the way that song fades into the chiming bossa nova of �The Ravine�, Sam Prekop�s seemingly nonsensical lyrics waxing nostalgic about the kiss behind the door ... I�ve seen it all before; the way that trebly, almost primitive drum loop rides through �There You Are�. On this song and many others on The Fawn, a thin but insistent Moog snakes its way under everything else for an effect that is simultaneously charming and a little creepy. This effect is furthered by the the jocular rhythm section on �Civilize� or the sway of the album�s two instrumentals, �Rossignol� and �Black Tree In Bee Yard�. And then there�s the album�s masterpiece, the towering, frighteningly good �Bird & Flag�. When I would finally see the band years later (twice in one week, by virtue of being in San Francisco and then Iowa City at the right time), this was the last song they played before the encore, both times, as if they knew it was going to knock everyone down. I can�t quite put my finger on what it is that astonishes me so much about this song. Maybe it�s the fact that four guys in a �conventional� band lineup (i.e., drums, bass, and two guitars) sat down to write a song and this is what they came up with: waterfalls of mellotron, that serpentine Moog again, a distant, eerie guitar that flickers on and off around the same chord, a drum loop that seems to fold back in on itself as real drums accentuate it, the torpid vocal harmonies, the sublime middle section where layers of synthesized flute and strings are piled atop each other, only to fall away until it�s just that high, hammered guitar that sounds like it�s being played in a different dimension. I listen to �Bird & Flag� and I�m back on that concrete footbridge in the middle of campus, watching the pretty girls walk to class. With all their albums, but especially this one, it�s disarmingly obvious that the Sea & Cake mean no harm; theirs is a peacemaking mission to quell some of the vitriolic, chauvanistic tendencies rock music�yes, even indie rock music�can have. They assume the purest innocence in their listeners and in return take us back to a primal, almost pre-lingual era where the landscape is made up of Rhodes and Moog keyboards, quaint Roland drum machines, drums played with the softest touch, and chiming, clear-tone guitars. Maybe it�s that ingenuous skein in which this album is draped that makes it so dear to me, because it recalls a time in my life which, I�d like to think, was simpler and more innocent, though I was already being corrupted by higher education and beer. By listening to The Fawn, by writing this, I can somehow pay homage to that time and also say thanks, Jen, for helping me find the Sea & Cake. This one�s for you, wherever you are. |