Dan Monick

Bodies of Water “Under the Pines”

Bodies of Water are from Highland Park and are hoping to get a pet goat someday. Their newest A Certain Feeling is out next week on Secretly Canadian.

What was the band name that was second-choice to Hitler’s Gay Son?
David Metcalf (singing/guitar): Once somebody comes up with Hitler’s Gay Son, there’s no need to really discuss further. You know a winner when you hear it. I was probably seventeen.
Meredith Metcalf (organ/singing): We had a reprise when we first met—we did one free jam of Hitler’s Gay Son right after we were married.
How do your changing band names reflect your development as human beings?
M: When we very very first started, before we were even really a band, David and I played music together in the house, and [drummer] Jessie [Conklin] and [bassist] Kyle [Gladden] were with us but not playing shows. So we just used David’s email address, which was Unicorn of Death. I’m glad we ditched it before the unicorn craze! You realize anything that’s pretty funny and that you really latch on to—that kind of humor? Snark-core? So weird and lame that it’s cool—I really like that kind of thing. But I know now to avoid those things because it’s in a three-year cycle. If you think something is the most original thing you ever thought, in three years Urban Outfitters is gonna have a shirt with that logo. You have to restrain yourself. It takes a lot of willpower. And ‘Bodies of Water’—I don’t think anything about it. It doesn’t bug me. ‘Oh, there it is.’
That’s the kind of enthusiasm we love.
M: I’d rather be indifferent than embarrassed.
D: In the long run, people who don’t care come out on top.
M: Sometimes I really wish I could be one of those people who don’t care. Historically people who care too much are people who go crazy. Sometimes I sense this in myself. I have friends who are wired totally differently. They don’t have that sense of urgency. I’m like that in everything. Whatever I do, I’m really invested in it. I can’t just kind of halfass something.
Which Os Mutantes album is most like A Certain Feeling?
D: I like the first one so much—I like all of them and I don’t like anything beyond the first three. I bet I would probably get into it now, though. At the time, I was like, ‘Prog blows!’ Now I’d sit down and enjoy it. When I first went to college, I had a drawing teacher, and drawing labs are like free hours. He’d play that later-era Leonard Cohen stuff, and I’d never even heard Leonard Cohen then, and I was like, ‘This is the lamest thing I ever heard in my life.’ Cohen and Dead Can Dance for three hours repeating—pretty relentless. ‘This DOES NOT ROCK!’ But every record I really like now, I actually disliked when I first listened to it.
Which was your biggest reversal?
D: Ziggy Stardust I really didn’t like. And my friend’s older brother had Aladdin Sane. ‘This is sick!’ I was like twelve or something. And the first Os Mutantes record—I didn’t hate it but the mix is all weird and the guitar is the only thing you hear when it comes in, and then you kind of get it.
M: It’s a real inspiration to listen to that, especially when you’re recording. If Os Mutantes cranks that totally weird line-in guitar to be the loudest thing and it’s awesome, you’re like, ‘Oh, you can totally do that kind of thing.’ Because it just seems so wrong.
How many auxiliaries can Bodies Of Water muster up?
D: Joe and David both play trombone—Joe plays bass trombone and David plays tenor—and Andrew plays trumpet, Heather plays viola and she’s on the first record, and Laura is also on the first record. But they don’t play live with us anymore.
M: Noah plays drums and Adam plays guitar sometimes. For a while—last December—we did our first show with horns and strings and thought, ‘Oh, that’s the way to go!’ But then we pared down again for tours, and we just tour as a four-piece. Most of the bands I really like aren’t more than four people. It’s a really different thing. With more people, you don’t have to work as hard to bring the energy on stage, which I kind of really like sometimes! Everyone feeds off each other. But there’s something more raw with four people, and I like watching smaller bands better. You can focus on the members rather than the big experience. It’s more compelling for me. Audience members are like, ‘It’s so epic with all these people!’ But I think it’s more epic when it’s fewer people totally going for it.
How do you maximize your bombasticism?
M: I think of horn trills and extra drums. It’s more raw-rocking with fewer people. Our sound is different. It’s the same songs, but people walk away thinking, ‘Orchestral indie pop!’ And when it’s just us, they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s like the B-52’s! You’re like a really raw B-52’s!’
Can you describe what you were doing when you wrote the line ‘the love I have for my axe is weak’?
D: When did I write that?
With your shirt off and a lightning storm outside?
D: I have no idea. I think I pulled it out of my book of writing. Usually I write all the lyrics before the music, and change pre-existing lyrics to get the meter right. Make them rhyme if I have to, but that’s not always that case. Usually I’ll have the skeleton of a song and a melody, and I’ll kind of show everybody the way it goes. More so on this record, I’d have a couple sort of movements and we’d link them together.
Did you fit the songs on the album together in a particular way?
M: It just felt very good—it felt like it had an ending like a movie I would like. Kind of left you going, ‘Huh. OK.’ You put song order together the same way you put a song together—especially our songs, with so many different parts. Just fitting more fully formed pieces into a bigger structure. My favorite is when it goes into ‘Darling, Be Here!’ It strikes me as funny—it lulls you down and then it’s like, ‘Alright! Come on!’
What do you think of the quote ‘soul makes you fear God more’?
M: This would be a really amazing game show. I would like it and nobody else in America would like it.
It’s from James Brown.
M: I bet he totally pulled that out his ass. ‘I gotta say soul and God in the same sentence—people love that shit!’ It’s hard with transcribed things. That’s why I’m afraid to do interviews. When I read things I say, they’re totally different. I’m afraid I’m horrible! I say the most horrible things, and if you didn’t know me, you’d think I was horribly racist or really stupid.
Is your label concerned about this at all?
M: It’s kind of our edge in this market—the stupid and racist market we’re cornering.
D: Toby Keith has cornered it too long.
M: I’m still thinking about that quote. I can’t shake the idea that he just said that and didn’t know what it means. It sounds powerful, but maybe… my idea of soul music is a pretty strong feeling you get.
He was the Godfather of Soul.
D: He wasn’t actually related to soul.
M: If soul’s parents die, would he take care of it?
D: You shouldn’t pay so much attention because he hasn’t been involved in it for a while.
Well, he died.
M: I never understood the godfather-godmother thing—does that really happen? Do they really take the kids?
How come you picked Lefty Frizzell’s ‘I Want To Be With You Always’ and not Webb Pierce’s ‘I Don’t Care’ as your favorite love song?
M: Because that’s the song David and I danced to at our wedding. And I just love that song. When we first met, David made me a mix CD of old country music and that won my heart over. Whenever I hear it, I’m like, ‘Ohhhhhh, the salad days!’ That’s what country is genetically engineered to do—for when you’re bummed out or when you fall in love.
D: There’s something almost biological about the appeal of that kind of stuff. That show Radio Lab was saying country music is popular all over the world. Australian aborigines are really into older country music, and it’s really popular in sub-Saharan Africa. People I’ve never heard of will sell out stadiums in Kinshasa. Some Texas crooner that isn’t popular in America.
Which is your most tear-in-your-beer heartbreak song?
M: ‘Love Will Call You By Name.’ It has steel guitar—totally like an old country song.
D: On the first EP we put out.
Is that the one available only with a special cash offer?
M: Yeah, someone emailed me and said, ‘I’m willing to pay upwards of twenty dollars!’ And I’m like, ‘Hmm, I could really use that money…’ I’m so sentimentally attached. We made them all by hand, and I always think, ‘Well, nobody wanted them then—they can’t have them now!’ But if I can tell someone is a superfan—well, paypal me five dollars.
Why is the new record more passive-aggressive than the old one?
M: That’s such an off-handed thing! It didn’t mean anything!
D: I meant every word of it. The first one is more in-your-face. And this one is not like that.
M: It’s not aggressive—it’s assertive!
D: ‘Assertive’ is a euphemism for ‘aggressive.’ The emotional tone is just different. It doesn’t run up into your face. It’s kind of doing its own thing. This crept up toward your face. The other one ran at your face.
M: This doesn’t make any sense—I don’t think you should put that in the interview!
We always put in what people say not to put in.
M: Good to know—goodbye!

—Chris Ziegler

BODIES OF WATER WITH THE HENRY CLAY PEOPLE FOR RELEASE PARTY FOR A CERTAIN FEELING ON THUR., JULY 17, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $8-$10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. BODIES OF WATER’S A CERTAIN FEELING RELEASES TUE., JULY 22, ON SECRETLY CANADIAN. VISIT BODIES OF WATER AT BODIESOFWATER.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/BODIESOFWATER.