If you ask the guys in Crystal Antlers, a six-piece band from Long Beach, how they determine their ever-changing set list on a particular night, you might be surprised to learn it isn’t always about how they’re feeling or what songs they like playing. Rather, it’s all about keeping things interesting — something you have to do if your tour schedule is packed through the end of summer.
“Depending on which bands we’re playing with, we may play different
things,” says singer and bassist Jonny Bell. “We may play things just
to freak out people, you know? We recently played with Cold War Kids,
and since their audience is fairly mainstream, we played a lot of our
weirder songs. I think people need to be shaken up. When you have a
captive audience, it seems like the right thing to do. Cold War Kids
fans liked us better than them. People will say ‘We’ve never seen a
band like you before.'”
While the group’s live performance may be partly tailored to get a
reaction from the crowd, their self-titled EP and debut album,
Tentacles, which came out last month, weren’t made for the sake
of weirdness. The music on both releases falls somewhere between the
sprawling soundscapes of My Morning Jacket and the psychedelic layers
of Les Savy Fav.
“We wanted to showcase all the aspects of the band on the record,”
explains Bell. “It was a little tricky. We felt like our EP was our
first record, but everyone kept saying ‘No, this is your first
record.’ There was so much emphasis put on that, so we wanted it to
encompass everything. But we make music regardless of anybody. When we
started the band, we wanted to do something different. And we’re always
trying, on some level, to make it interesting. But we’re not
necessarily just trying to weird people out. We’re not Frank
Zappa.”
Tentacles was recorded in a single week at a studio in San
Francisco, where the band isolated itself and barely slept. The
resulting album, which was also mixed during that week, contains a
frenetic sense of palpable desperation that both surprised and
delighted the band. After spending a week in a dark, cavernous space,
leaving only to run across the street for food and water, Crystal
Antlers, who have already started working on their second album, were
uncertain what they had produced.But they were pleased with the
result.
Once Crystal Antlers (who had self-released their EP to some pretty
serious hype) had their debut in hand, they were faced with the news
that their album would be indie label Touch & Go’s final release.
Bell is uncertain of where Crystal Antlers’ next record will land, but
he does believe that now especially, DIY is the best model.
“We’re on this trajectory of doing what we do, regardless of
labels,” he says. “If something comes along that’s interesting, we’ll
go with it. But otherwise, we’ll do it ourselves. A lot of people have
asked what it’s like to be the last Touch & Go release. We don’t
feel like we’re the grim reaper or anything. We’re just happy we had an
opportunity to work with them. Our ethic has always been do it
yourself. But not everyone can do that. To a certain extent, bands are
going to have to take matters into their own hands.”
This article appears in May 6-12, 2009.