Splice Today

INTERVIEW: David Manchester of Kadman

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:55:15 -0400

I'll just lay it all out up-front: Kadman is no doubt the best band around Baltimore you've never heard. A slowcore project fronted by David Manchester, Kadman sounds, well, like no one else who calls Charm City home—setting themselves far apart from the art rock weirdness of Wham City that tend to dominate these days. These Old Bones, Kadman's second album, out now on the Baltimore's fantastic Beechfields label, is as good an album as any you'll hear this year: alternately noisy alt-rock and dark indie folk (think: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Matt Sweeney's Superwolf), all dominated by Manchester's superbly haunting vocals. Manchester and I exchanged some emails the other day, and here's what we came up with:

SPLICE TODAY: Can you tell us how Kadman got started? Originally it was a solo project, right?

DAVID MANCHESTER: Yes. Kadman did start as a solo project. I guess I started playing this particular style of music towards the end of college. I had been in a few bands before this, but Kadman was my first venture into writing and performing my own songs. I had a lot of life changing events going on at that time, and Kadman became a creative and emotional outlet for all of that. It was almost like an audio diary. After playing solo for a few years, I mentioned to my wife that I really wanted to be able to take the music to the next level, but didn't really know how. I had been doing the acoustic singer/songwriter thing at coffee shops and open mics and was getting burned out. I wanted to do more, play clubs, live the rock-star life, to a degree. So, my wife and my brother worked together and organized both of the families to get together and buy me my first (good) electric guitar, the Gretsch I use now. It was amazing. In my head I thought, "well … no excuses, now." That's wh en I put together the first version of the full band, with Matt Smith on drums and my brother Mitch on bass.

"Mountain Song"

ST: I know you've changed the line-up a few times, how long has the current configuration of Kadman been around?

DM: The current configuration came together in two stages. James joined the band in September of '08, and Frank joined in, when was that … February of '09. So, it's still a relatively young group.

ST: Has the songwriting process changed much since you got started? How do you approach it these days?

DM: It has and it hasn't. I am not the kind of musician that can just sit down and write a song. A lot of times, songs come to me from my just fiddling around on the guitar in front of TV or while sitting in the backyard. I'll figure out a progression or two and then just build on it. Lyrically, this may sound odd, but a lot of times the song dictates the subject matter. Once I get the chord progressions and changes down, I'll ad lib. Sometimes it works, sometimes it is absolutely horrible what comes out of my mouth. Recently, though, I've been trying to put more thoughts into the lyrics and the subject matter of the songs. I've been trying to move from having all of the songs be about internal issues to looking at the outside world. Politics, current events, things that are more global, though I like to think that even the songs about personal issues and events can have a universal appeal, or can at least be interpreted to fit into the listener's own experiences.

ST: Can you tell us about this latest album, These Old Bones? How'd it come together?

DM: Wow … good question. I'd like to say organically, but that just sounds so trite. The songs on the album came in bits and spurts throughout the year after Sing To Me Slower was released. A couple of the songs like, "Portraits," "Lullaby," and "An Army Rises" were songs that were put together with the old lineup of the band. The other songs on the album pretty much trace my life over the next year. Once the bulk of the songs were put together, we contacted Mat and Mobtown Studios to start the recording process, which, took a little over 4 months. We really took our time with this album. We used three or four different snare drums, 5 different guitar amps, three different guitars, stand up bass, electric bass, a vast array of pedals. Some songs we had 7 tracks of guitar feedback alone. We really wanted to figure out what worked best for each song to really help it come to life. It was great that the whole band was so invested, as well as Mat at the studio.

I'm really proud of these songs.

"Anything"

ST: Who would you consider to be your biggest influences?

DM: Hmm … that could be a very long list. I try to listen to so many different bands and genres it's hard to figure out what the direct influences are. When I first started playing guitar I was really influenced by old blues musicians like Lightning Hopkins, Hounddog Taylor, John Lee Hooker. Take that and combine it with Alan Sparhawk from Low and Retribution Gospel Choir, Mark Kozelek from Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters, My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth and I guess that gives you the music of Kadman.

ST: You seem pretty at odds with a lot of the music that's being made in Baltimore these days. Is there any part of the local scene, any bands, that you're really drawn to?

DM: Haha.. yeah. We seem to stick out a bit which is good, and bad. It's hard to classify us into a genre and it's hard to find bands we're similar enough with to put a good bill together. Of other local bands though, I'd have to say I absolutely love The Water. Amazing music, awesome guys. Monarch, er … I mean Wye Oak is another one. They give us little folks hope, too.

ST: What's next?

DM: Right now we're spending a lot of time trying to get the word out on the album, and we're working with some other bands, locally and regionally, to get a few mini-tours together in the summer and fall. We did a mini-tour of the mid-west a few months ago and it was a blast. I am really hoping to take the band from a local to a more regional, or even national arena. Then, just keep working on new songs and see where the music takes us.

Visit Kadman's at MySpace, and check out a Mobtown Studios Microshow.

Don't Tread On Me

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:08:25 -0400

Metal has always been an uneasy critical sell. Too uptight to be rootsy, too formulaic to be arty, too earnest to be clever, and too
remorselessly sexless to be sexy, metal has droned, trudged, and howled its own way between rockists and poptimists, occasionally hailed by one or the other, but never exactly embraced by either.

So it makes perfect sense that High on Fire is the critically validated metal It band of the moment—since, in most ways that
matter, the group isn’t really a metal outfit at all. Oh, sure, High on Fire has many metal trappings. The songs are long, loud, and prog-inflected. The vocalist growls as much as sings. There are guitar solos.

But despite all that, High on Fire’s energy is not metal. It’s punk. More specifically, it’s metal-tinged pop punk, in the vein of Guns N’Roses or Nirvana or all those grunge bands that critics loved because beneath the thin metal veneer they were actually trying to be rootsy, or arty, or clever, or sexy, or some combination thereof.

You can hear High on Fire’s actual sympathies in the opening title tune, with the repetitive, fist-shaking chorus (“Rise up! Fall
down!”) that gets lodged in your brainstem like an overcarbonated bleacher cheer. You can hear it in the emotive sincerity with which Matt Pike emotes like a cross between Eddie Vedder and a constipated pachyderm on “Bastard Samurai.” And you can read it in that damn name: High on Fire. That’s an inspirational slogan for your mildly edgy corporate event, damn it—it’s not a metal band.

Metal is about being ground into anonymity beneath a giant iron heel. Punk’s about raging against the machine. The latter is in general the option more likely to wow a cultural arbiter, since people, or at least critics, like to feel that they’re fighting the power rather than being devoured by it. And, you know, if you’re creative, smart, and funny—like the Dead Kennedys, or Motorhead, or even Nirvana—fighting the power can be really entertaining and worthwhile. High on Fire, though, has neither the wit of great punk nor the remorselessness of great metal. Instead it’s just lumberingly literal adrenal rush; music by which to run on your treadmill or invade a sovereign nation, or shout “Shit yeah!” while drinking yourself into a stupor.

Which is fine, I guess. But I wish they wouldn’t call it metal.

Stephen Malkamus' fantasy sports love

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:26:29 -0400

"I SUPPOSE YOU DON'T like sports, do you?" This is what Stephen Malkmus—the enigmatic architect of Pavement—asks me as he sits in a Thai-sandwich restaurant, waiting for his bacon. He is casually pawing at a local Portland alternative newspaper that features Trail Blazer Greg Oden on the cover; it's the day before Thanksgiving, so Oden's patella is still unexploded. Malkmus seems slightly (but unspecifically) annoyed—his wife's parents are in town for the holidays, he's just spent the last ninety minutes at a school party for his 6-year-old daughter, and now he has to waste two hours with some bozo who probably doesn't know why Greg Oden is interesting. He keeps his head down as he speaks. At this moment, Stephen Malkmus looks so much like Stephen Malkmus that it seems like sarcasm. In fact, he looks like someone playing Stephen Malkmus in an ill-conceived Cameron Crowe movie: He's unshaven, he's wearing Pony high-tops that no longer exist on the open market, and his baseball cap promotes the Silver Jews. His T-shirt features the logo of the Joggers, a Portland band whose greatest claim to fame is being mentioned in a GQ story about Stephen Malkmus eating at a Thai-sandwich shop. The restaurant is loud, so I initially mishear his question. He asks it again.

David Byrne and Fatboy Slim: "Please Don't"

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:18:32 -0400

RIP Alex Chilton

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:22:01 -0400

Alex Chilton, the pop hitmaker, cult icon and Memphis rock iconoclast best known as a member of 1960s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the 1970s power-pop act Big Star, died Wednesday at a hospital in New Orleans.

Theoretical physics meets record collecting

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:35:56 -0400

Chris Supranowitz is a researcher at The Insitute of Optics at the University of Rochester. Along with a number of other spectacular studies (such as quantum optics, trapping of atoms, dark states and entanglement), Chris has decided to look at the relatively boring grooves of a vinyl record using the institute’s electron microscope. Well, not boring for me.

The Temper Trap's biggest fan

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:19:39 -0400

Michael Jackson estate signs biggest recording contract in history

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:14:30 -0400

Even in death, Michael Jackson remains the King of Pop. Less than a year after his shocking passing, the administrators of the late pop icon's estate have signed the biggest recording contract in music history, a deal that the Los Angeles Times speculated could be worth up to $250 million and include unreleased recordings, DVDs and video games.

Glenn Beck says "Born in the U.S.A." is un-American

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:34:37 -0500

Twenty-six years after the release of Bruce Springsteen's hit song, "Born in The USA," conservative talk show host/performance artist Glenn Beck finally got around tolistening to the lyrics.

Psychological Alchemy

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:39:06 -0500

Since her 2001 split 7" with Songs: Ohia, Scout Niblett has been putting out minimalist indie folk that runs nicely along the early Cat Power axis: nothing but a Fender Mustang (inspired by Kurt Cobain) and a distortion pedal, with the occasional drummer or piano backing. Niblett has earned a dedicated following, and found a not-so-surprise hit with 2007's "Kiss," a heartfelt duet with Will Oldham. Her lyrics are known for their dark and painfully honest introspection, and often follow the same simple structure as her songs—the howling refrain, "We're all gonna die!" on the b-side "I'll be a Prince," for example.

Her new album, The Calcinations of Scout Niblett, out now on Drag City, is her first since 2007's This Fool Can Die Now, and though upon first listen the two albums don't stray too far from each other—minus Will Oldham of course—Calcinations is an important move for Niblett, no doubt thanks in part to her continued collaboration with producer Steve Albini, known for his inspired work with Nirvana, Pixies, Mogwai, Manic Street Preachers and on and on.

"Cherry Cheek Bomb"

"Just Do It" opens the album with some slow fuzzed out guitar tapping riffs before turning into a fairly typical (albeit excellent) Niblett slow-burner, a subdued sound that carries over into the album's second track, "Bargain." But it's the raucous guitar wail of "Cherry Cheek Bomb" that really sets the tone on the album: perhaps angrier and more aggressive than anything Niblett has done before -- fiery is no doubt the word, as the album's title refers to a kind of purification by fire. As Niblett told Jessica Lewis in a recent interview for Round Letters:

I think the main bulk of the album was realizing I was going through a transformation of sorts, where I’m basically looking at myself in a critical way to try and work out what parts of myself are kind of dysfunctional so that I can sort those out. I’ve been reading a lot about psychological alchemy and the way that you have to really look at yourself for a change to happen and you have to deal with your shadow and the dark parts of yourself that you don’t really want to look at ... You are literally putting a fire under you; you’re bringing a light to your personality to really kind of dissect it and look at it.

Niblett's esoteric reasonings aside, Calcinations surely holds together better as an album than This Fool Can Die Now, and will no doubt remind the listener more of Fiona Apple than anyone else. Calcinations is harrowing and exhausting and beautifully complete as an expression of Niblett's power as an artist: perhaps best summed up in the nine-minute album closer, "Meet and Greet," a song about the frustrations of music and touring, which drifts from ambient droning guitar to crescendos of clanging drums and distortion. In the end it's a difficult listen, but a thoroughly rewarding one.