Carl Spencer

I only ever call Celeste’s name

the first (fast) time in front of the mongolian stir fry.

The night I say I delayed asking

because I was waiting on Savannah.

Nights later fumbling by the duck pond

or in the passenger seat,

her jeans nudging the flask,

expunging the lead sigh.

A weekday afternoon,

can't stay hard to Neutral Milk Hotel,

her face a polite but driven downcast

serving sounds and sensibilities.

Her whispering in the campus hallway,

“Did you like that?

Because I want to be good.”

[More by Carl Spencer]

It can be like climbing ice,

passing on the computer

to dive into my eyelids.

Listening to the air exit my teeth.

The dull roar of walls.

Deep pulls,

through my nostrils and wrist.

Remembering Celeste’s tattoos in the full length mirror

Or Gwen’s moled sternum.

A channeling that exits according to aura.

The release days makes me repulsed,

canceling an itch and plans on a Tuesday night.

The others are my brain giving birth to itself.

My heart is capsized

by a hopeful hummingbird.

Courtesy Image

If you haven't read my story on Nick Zammuto's new project, check it out here. Zammuto opens for indie-proggers Explosions in the Sky at Backstage Live (1305 E. Houston SA, TX) on April 24 (T). More info about the show here. Meanwhile, here is the full-length discussion I had with Zammuto, one of the more fascinating and earnest characters still active in indie rock. -AVC

AVC: You’re being very classy about The Books’ breakup.  I read a Pitchfork interview where you said going into the details of the breakup won’t serve anyone. I think it’s humane, but also kind of not rock n’ roll. 

NZ: [laughs] You want me to just tear into him?

Well that was kind of the expected narrative or what they might hope for at a national magazine.

Yeah, I kind of blew it there, I could have gotten way more attention if I had flown off the handle. I considered a long time about how I should handle it. As all breakups are, it was messy, dirty and frustrating and it was mostly the women in my life who talked me down [from retiring]. They said, “Keep working and just be gracious about it” and it worked out.

Moving on from that, compare and contrast Zammuto to The Books.

Umm. Sure. Because I’m inside of it, I may not be the best one to give the ‘real’ answer. Books was never really a band. It was sort of a meta-band. There was a lot of pre-recorded material and video was kind of the frontman of the band. For what it was, it was a good show. But what I wanted to do was have a new band.

I gathered something like that from just listening to the new album. I don’t know if the right word is “lyrical” but there is certainly a greater instant likeability to Zammuto, whereas with The Books I felt like I had to let things sink in and I thought, alongside that, just the fact that the project and record are simply called Zammuto gave me the impression that there is no overarching theme here. This is just a group of songs that you put together.

Yeah, even working under my own name was kind of a big decision. I came up with a lot of names and they all failed and some of them were awesome but I couldn’t live up to them. My favorite one was Sexsexful. You know, so successful that it’s Sexsexful. I couldn’t live up to it. Falling back on my family name felt right.

Some of these cuts on the new album are heavy despite their general springiness. I’m thinking in particular of “Idiom Wind,” where the singer is weary of talking through issues and of a person’s supposed “knowledge.” The singer is ready to cut their losses through a “ruthless cutting.” Talk to me about the friction there between the sound and message.

I love that tension of opposites wherever I can find it. That song, I felt like for the first time ever I was writing from what was inside of me. My wife and I are homesteaders, essentially. We live on top of a mountain in Vermont and we’ve managed to grow most of our own food up here and that’s what we really love to do. That’s what those lyrics revolve around. It’s easy to say, "Oh he just went through the breakup and it’s about that," but it’s more about this universal theme to make a choice to move away from society and build your own place. That’s what the education line comes from for me. When you’re up here trying to make a garden grow, it throws your college education out the window. It’s totally useless when you’re chopping firewood to be thinking of that class on religion you had. We’re not up here for idealistic reasons; our instincts brought us here.

I want my kids to be able to run out the door and disappear into a field for a while, to really be free. Every year we know twice as much as we did before. That incredible process of really getting to know a place and becoming rooted in it. We went from having an little shack to building a studio out of a tractor garage. I go there to play drums in the middle of the night without bugging anybody. We have a big garden to put away food for the winter and we heat with wood and constructed most of our house ourselves.

It sounds like whenever the American Empire falls, the place to be is going to be your house.

[Laughing] I don’t know. We’re not off the grid yet. We do have the high ground but not the weapons stockpiled yet. You have to bring your own if you stay with us.

What’s it like working with a new band? How have the performances been in February and March?

Oh man, February was just…it felt so good to be playing with these guys, a total 180 from what I was used to with The Books. The Books were kind of sitting on stage and trying to stay low profile. With the band, I really wanted to work with players. That was the whole point really, say to have a live time keeper. I found Sean Dixon, who is like a scientist on the drums. His real passion is polyrhythmic playing. I’ve seen him do stuff I’ve never seen anyone else do. In "Shape of Things to Come," he’s playing a pattern double time with his right hand and half-time with his left hand. I could practice my entire life and not be able to do this. But he does it so smoothly,  it looks easy. Gene Beck, who was part of The Books, he’s playing keyboard and electric guitar, sometimes simultaneously. And my brother Mikey plays bass, far better than I ever could. Meanwhile, the vocal effects are totally reproducible live, which I was careful to do.

I’ve seen many EDM musicians in one form or another including Underworld, DJ Shadow and the Chemical Brothers, and they all do what they do well, but it’s always about having a lot of sound and light with them kind of taking a mad scientist role in front of the sequencers and turntables. What I love about live instrumentation, especially speaking as someone who’s played in a band, is the very real possibility of having something go wrong because of human mistake.

Yeah, instead of a power failure. It took me some time to discover that because I never really considered myself a real player and I still don’t. But I feel like I’m a writer, so I can take the raw materials and turn them into something that has structure and that will work. But I can count on these guys to take this stuff and turn it into something I could never imagine.

Playing as Zammuto, can it be assumed that you won’t abandon material by The Books in your live show? What can people expect?

At headlining shows, people should expect The Books material, but not at opening shows like Explosions in the Sky.

You said you’re weary of the idea that language is the best way to express oneself. Why do you feel that way?

A love-hate relationship. You can’t live without words, but they can lead to many un-intentional problems. I just have this awful fear that people [confuse] writing a lot of e-mail with getting a lot done. Also, I supposed living up here there’s always a lot of work to do that doesn’t require a lot of mental activity, like collecting firewood or weeding or whatever. And it’s real work and it really affects our bottom line to get that work done. It’s very satisfying for that reason. I wish people had that experience every day in their lives. Again, not to be idealistic about it, but just that’s what we’re designed to do, a lot of physical activity, so I feel like in terms of expression music is a wonderful thing. You can do things that people don’t really have names for and they just kind of surrender to them and enjoy them without having to intellectually process them.

Whenever I’m writing a song with lyrics, there’s always this tension between the intellectual side and the musical side pulling back on it in a way. Words in general kind of require the idea of dichotomy and I guess since I’ve sort of studied Buddhism a lot in my former days (not so much now), the idea of opposites being intimately connected with one another is a theme that runs throughout everything I write. It’s sort of like the sun, which everything else revolves around. It’s the real existential issue. Existence and non-existence are almost the same thing in a way. Everybody’s really happy to be alive, but everyone wishes stuff were different also. That’s kind of what moves you forward.

I think it’s interesting what you’re telling me because you’re concerned about sounding too idealistic about living this life of what maybe Thomas Jefferson would have described as a “joyful toil,” but what I’m hearing from you is actually something that would upset a lot of intellectuals, these educated urbanists who love to sit and talk about deep things, not that I’m not one of these people. But what I’m saying is that what you’re doing seems to be the opposite of that. It’s not a idealistic at all; it sounds more like a return to the primordial  existence of humankind.

Yeah, yeah. We’re animals and we come from that same place where all these other animals come from. It’s a situation where it’s easier to feel.

How old are you?

I’m 36.

I just turned 30 and went from writing full-time to working as a bartender. I went from 60 hours a week of desk work to working with my body all the time and I thought this was going to be misery. But what I’ve discovered is that I don’t want to work behind a desk most of the time ever again. I’ve been thinking, like you, that our bodies were meant to be used, that it’s good to be lifting 100 pound beer kegs and squatting and sweating and stooping and walking around.

You should really just be tired at the end of the day.

Writing full time was an existential crisis.

[Laughing] I ran into that in my mid 20s. What most people do between 20 and 30 is realize all the dreams that aren’t yours in some way. Like, I was living in LA working in a pharmaceutical company when I was 26. I was trying to bike to work whenever I could but I had to leave at 4:30 in the morning. It was just an absurd way of life. And since I was this "promising white kid," they [his employers] were trying to force me into this leadership role over these other people who had been there forever. It was just an offensive situation. I was like, "I’ve got to get out of here" and I hiked the Appalachian Trail. That was my reset button, the turning point for me.

For me, it wasn’t necessarily trying to take on dreams that weren’t my own, but just competing with forces that were much greater than me. Trying to become a full-time freelance journalist in this economy…I did it for two years and it didn’t work out because of a number of factors, most of which were beyond my control. So it was kind of a surrendering. My hiking the Appalachian Trail was pursuing another trade I always wanted to do. Other people would call that “losing” in some way (as in “Why did you give up?”), but I haven’t worked in three months even though I’ve been giving 40 hours a week to the bar. And I’m actually doing the research needed for, say, an interview like this and actually looking forward to it.

More power to you. For me, if there is a lasting effect of what I do, I’m hoping that this helps people gain that sense of themselves, that they need to do something else.

Before you started Zammuto, you thought of perhaps stopping doing music. What would you be doing instead to make ends?

Construction actually. It’s something I’ve always loved to do. I built my house out here and I made a huge amount of errors, but luckily no structural ones. I love working with wood and especially framing, focusing on the skeleton of buildings, creating that space from nothing. Nailing boards together is an incredible thing, extremely satisfying and scratches that primordial itch in such a direct way. I could definitely do that for a living; it would be a blast compared to sitting in front of a computer all day.

Lyle Rosdahl

The first time she comes, it’s by accident.

Head hanging off the mahogany desk,

breathy praise choked by clitoral ruptures

when most of the family is home.

This wasn’t important to her and now it is,

becoming each time a communion as much a congress.

First with my mouth and then my fingers, violently,

pinching and biting flesh as needed,

until the vein flexes in her throat

and I see the undersides of her incisors.

She’s absent, her world one with little oxygen.

Calid, clammy, a blotched sternum that

fake tan can’t hide.

Returning, eyes centered but weary.

Suddenly quiescent.

Four years of that.

--

More by Lyle Rosdahl.

sand, ocean and moonlight .

The weeds washed

back to sea. It’s the scene he,

Celeste and I were robbed

of that afternoon.

I’m glad his mother dragged me out again, soaking

black water and moon shards, huffing

warm salt and picking

granules from the hard

basil lemonade gone

tepid.

I wade in until I’m deaf

of my family,

the blink of the wash house behind

me, the quilt of lunar and liquid

in front.

Still standing, knowing

the world wouldn’t see me die.

My reason for coming

back is why Celeste goes out,

courting any death disguised as a thrill.

I’m calm until she disappears

but rationally respond.

She wouldn’t wade too far.

I’m not afraid.

I can do nothing.

“Mortal,” she says, upon return.

That’s how she felt between Aransas Pass

and the abyss.

We walk with Ascher and I

think I understand now.

Life will always be a series of quiet

panics and respites, made

worthy through trials and exaltations

We can only plant

our feet, breath deep and

hold.

I never told her so.

Whether for better or worse,

I’ll never know.

In a college town, where the kids look freed from shrinkwrap, saying your age is like copping to an airborne herpes anyone can catch. Even though the only people who care are the 25-year-olds. They use “us” and “we” talking with you. 

It’s not just the age. You exercise, avoid poison, hustle with the kids you work with. But you’re a prime buck checking IDs and throwing out fawns that were in diapers when you first heard this song on the radio—the one where he settles for a burger and a grape snow cone—the one this kid is singing too loud while falling and puking on his date.

“Fuck you, you fucking douchebag!” he yells, the river of youth swirling around him on the sidewalk. Tonight he’s a maroon-faced pain in the taint, but he’ll get his BS in Engineering, find work on an oil rig, marry some other girl and make more money than you ever will a year or two before you got your act together.

“Shut it,” says your benevolent roommate (same age), tossing green beans to flank your birthday ribeye. “Choose the happy. Choose it. You can.”

And you wish she was the 22-year-old bartender with the same hobbies and name as the girl you almost married, horizontally glistening under slivers of moonlight. Wisdom and assurance (however self-indulgent) at 4 a.m.

But redemption is neither a fledgling beauty nor a labor of love. It’s being too old in a town too young, knowing that each second is a penny flung into a cosmic well.

That said, nothing prepared me for the experience of listening to the record. "Are you hearing this?" I asked my (different) girlfriend. I don't remember how she responded, but I can tell you that my own reaction was purely visceral. Alex Méndez screeched like a banshee to the hardcore missile strike engineered by Wes Dunn (bass/vocals), Marcos Garza/Gossi (guitars/vocals; he goes by both surnames) and Lawrence Mercado (drums/vocals).* I read over the lyrics and hated them immediately, wishing the album's entire printing to recieve a Milli Vanilli-like steamrolling, especially as I read SOHNS' Facebook manifesto. The pride they took in a record so utterly imposing and willfully unlikeable was an affront to my sensibilities as a critic. How could they?

It was with that frame of mind that I endeavored this review, one that garnered several polarized comments (some of which I'm sure came semi-anonymously from members of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy). I proudly wrote:

Méndez’s vocals aren’t discernible unless read, and, on paper, their ambiguity is a shit-stained middle finger. To quote Jawbox, a likely forebear of SOHNS, this album is all nerve, no brain.

I knew what I was writing was provocative (which is a nice way of saying I was being a knowing asshole) and submitted it in part to prove something. I knew better than SOHNS what a good record was. Fuck these guys for spending two years on an album I couldn't stand and being proud of it. Never mind that my experience with hardcore and metal begins and ends with The Refused, Jawbox and the artier features on rock radio (Metallica, Tool, Sabbath). I wield the pen and, therefore, the authority.

It was a low-point in my short tenure as a professional entertainment critic for one reason: I developed a personal vendetta--however convoluted and self-serving--with the band. Sometimes critics circumvent the art and instead go for the artist. Pitchfork (all due respect) has developed a reputation for such reviews and the rep is neither unwarranted nor unjustified. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum and Ian Cohen can build a sterling case around persona in informing art. His reviews of recent work by DJ Shadow and Childish Gambino are authoritative studies of character. Whether you agree that the music is still good and/or bad is beside the point.

But at worst, to-the-artist examinations become my discussion of SOHNS, wherein I paint Méndez as a douchebag of songwriting complete with if-you-have-to-ask-you-just-don't-get-it subtext (the shit-stained middle finger). And that's simply not true. Revisiting the album in late summer, I found most of my criticisms of the album to hold water. I'm still not fond of the vocals' take-it-or-leave-it shrillness and still find the lyricism vague. But to pretend that SOHNS aren't masters of sonic terror is foolhardy. I still haven't heard another SA-release that is so assaulting. Recorded by Chris Common (who also worked with Mastodon), To Ward It Off And Drown It Out demands to be heard. It's loud, dynamic and positively invasive. But the record's brevity and detailed composition reveal a band willing to sacrifice length (read "awesome sauce" for many metal bands) in favor of kinetic pacing. "Battlorches" remains the album's crowning moment, where SOHN's seem to be scoring the 2012 apocalypse. In other words, To Ward It Off and Drown It Out is a record like many of its locally released brethren: prone to some indulgences with other moments of sheer exhultation. I should have written as much.

In the months following the review, I thought of Paste Magazine's 2007 record of the year: The National's Boxer. The publication revealed that their initial review of Boxer was far from mediocre (a 3 out of 5), but the album didn't provoke a My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-style slam dunk. Instead, it spent the year worming its way into the staff's heads and they found themselves in agreeance: The National had it.

All of this is a way of explaining three important things. First, visceral reactions to new art must be tempered with time, thought and a willingness to take the high road. My review trafficked in negative absolutes, which is bad territory if one thinks they might ever change their mind about something. Secondly, a critical reaction to any work must be regarded as all art: alive and perfectly capable of evolution. Knowing that my own attitude towards To Ward could change, I should have resisted certain "rhetorical flourishes." Lastly, artists are people; sometimes touchy, off-kilter, social idiots but people all the same. The sad truth about my SOHNS review is that I used to be in a band and would have been horrified to read the same words about myself. I would have much preferred something more thoughtful, substantive and certainly less personal.

I count these revelations as important lessons in my own artistic journey and I perfectly understand that chronicling them may damage my cred. A writer whose work and counsel I greatly admire once told me that writing is a priesthood, where one regards their subjects from a saintly distance in an effort to write clearly and justly. That writer (and others I'm sure), would look at revealing one's own inner workings to illustrate humanism in the craft as revealing weakness. If this is true, so be it. My subjects commit sometimes unsettlingly private things to disc, canvas, print, and celluloid. The least I can do is return the favor. 

*This article initially conflated the lineup at the time of  the album's release with the musicians responsible for recording (resulting in a minor change). I regret the error and thank vigilant readers for helping to correct.

I keep re-scheduling with my therapist.

Talk until I’m hoarse.

Drag Celeste in one day,

Where she admits she likes being hit during sex as punishment.

Get Dr. Bowling to tell me he’s not a doctor,

before showing me childrens’ drawings of OCD dysfunction.

He recommends Feeling Good,

but I leave feeling great after just talking for an hour.

Six months and I say I’m better,

after I yell at my father, legs collapsing.

I hate him for thinking he wasn’t raised for intimacy.

Get goosebumps thinking of denting his temples.

Find my brother sitting alone in the closet,

the tissues between his legs and his eyes like wounded animals.

All we know is

our father broke our hearts.

And the rest is searching

blindfolded for a fish in black water.

I take up my sneakers and hoody,

run amidst

bashful pirates and precocious witches.

A first.

My periphery populated:

Mini-dragons, penguins and Batmans haunt,

but I keep pounding,

fleeing the disquiet of home

but knowing the specters of the time and place.

I’m parting predators mid-street.

Finally beyond the neighborhood.

Quickening at the elementary school's sight

North of the Loop. Pausing

at the medical construction site.

The dozers and dump trucks

sleep, the tools of man yearning

for a cherubic hand to give them purpose.

Wind dry-biting my face,

I collapse at the knees,

heart primed to jump out of my neck.

Hot arms, icy hands.

Baby’s breath swelling my lungs and throat.

Simple, I huff inwardly.

Something simple.

Something.