Download: Matt Braunger – “Lifting Weights to the Smiths”

(from Soak Up the Night, out now on Comedy Central Records)

Matt Braunger’s new record made me laugh hard and laugh often. Braunger is part of a cool crop of L.A. comics that I discovered initially via Matt Dwyer and Duncan Trussell’s Chief Cornfoot’s Comedy Hour at Sea Level Records (RIP). Since then, Braunger joined the cast of MADtv for their final season and released Soak Up the Night, first on iTunes and now on vinyl (which comes with a free digital download thingie too). It becomes clear why he’d do a 33 1/3 when you get to his bits on music and musicians. His perfect explanation of Jim Morrison’s “talent” and his literalist take on Lil Wayne are golden-crisp nuggets of hilarity. The true strength of this album is the revved-up laughs per minute. Braunger never overstays a topic, isn’t afraid of 90-degree turns from bit to bit, and has a flawless, natural delivery. Get this record, get some friends, maybe get a little high, and curl up next to your Victrola in preparation for some serious funny.

—Richard Seymour

Download: The Veils “Three Sisters”

(from Sun Gangs out now on Rough Trade)

American rock critics, after their oft-coldblooded fashion, took note of the battered heart of frontman Finn Andrews—son of XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews—since The Runaway Found first blipped the indie radar back in 2004. The Veils have undergone significant line-up shifts, but the band’s impressive energy and Finn’s ever-maturing lyrics and magniloquent vocals pay off superbly on Sun Gang, their third album now out on Rough Trade. In this interview by Ron Garmon, Finn gives up a glimpse of characteristic romanticism while putting discreet end to some rumors.

You stayed for a spell in the Flaming Lips’ hometown of Norman, OK. Tell us about that.
Finn Andrews (singer/songwriter): We slept in a classic car garage most of the time. That town is strange. We were all pretty curious about the Bible Belt and that stuff and we met a lot of really interesting people. The police followed us and raided the place a couple of times. I think we stuck out a little. That was in an interesting period. We were literally swamped and didn’t know where we were at any point. We would return there in between touring and that was our first encounter with America, really. We literally did not know where we were after a while. We didn’t know if it was east or west or in the middle or down the bottom or near the top. I found it really interesting, for we knew we’d stick out a bit and people in England talk about the Bible Belt and all that. I didn’t know what to expect, but we had a lot of fun. It was about three months on and off and we’d leave and drive either to L.A. or New York to do a show and do more shows on the way back.
The crits are talking up Sun Gang as a difficult listen, but the melodies are certainly spare and sweet enough for popular consumption, with just the right amount of heart revealed in each one. This is rocket science?
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Everyone has a different palate.
‘Scarecrow’ implies an emotional transformation. Tell us about ‘not being made for these times.’
The record is still kind of coming into focus for me a little bit. There’s a lag time and I’ve begun to think on it and I still think I’m going through it. I just hate having spent the majority of my young life in a decade known as ‘the noughties.’ That makes me want to puke. That might be a kind of pretentious answer.
One gets an impression of a kind of record kept or a scrapbook of an interior state.
I love writing and it feels like everything all at once. I was never very good at keeping a diary and I’ve tried getting up at night to write my dreams down and you feel like a wanker. It’s kind of all those things all at once.
Since critics are scrabbling to get a handle on Sun Gang’s place in the Veils’ evolution, why not tell us its place yourself?
I think we’re probably in the ‘land invertebrates’ stage’—awaiting ‘social insects’ and mass extinction. It’s hard to predict what will happen next.
What was it like working with Graham Sutton as a producer?
It was good. That record kind of came at the end of a pretty relentless period. We’d been on the road for a very long time and finally fell off the road and into this weird little wooden chamber of a studio in West London. All my memories of that period are red. We kind of needed someone to pull us together and he was very encouraging.
I imagine at that point most of the band activity was comprised of staring off into space.
There was a lot of that, yeah. We always thought it was a real privilege to make records and that kind of slapped us around a bit. I was kind of hesitating going back into the studio until we could do it right and that time felt just perfect.
The album comes to a kind of ringing emotional climax with ‘Larkspur,’ the penultimate track. Did Sun Gang have a kind of formal structure going in or did the shape come later?
I always thought that song should be where it was on the track listing. That’s a strange song. We’d never played it before we recorded it and we did it in one take. That’s very precious to us. I’d only written one line lyrically before we went in. I kind of told everyone I’d had this song and wanted to play and record it once and that’s what happens. It is as it was.
Drummer Henning Dietz has left for good?
Yes, he just left after the show in Berlin two weeks ago and a new friend is filling that out.
Have you ever played Spaceland before?
Yeah. We played there on our first tour. I think that was the last show for our keyboard player as well.
One Veil comes off after another.
Yeah. It’s like revolving Doors.
Address the rumors you were being courted as a solo act.
I dunno what people are thinking. It’s nice to be talked about.
It’s not surprising, being the kind of offer that was dangled before, say, Jim Morrison.
No, I wouldn’t want to give this up at this point. We’re a band and I wouldn’t want to run away from that now.
How do you like the title ‘21st Century Romantic?’
As what?
As a title. Try it on for a while.
Whatever makes them smile.

THE VEILS WITH FOREIGN BORN AND OTHER GIRLS ON TUE., JULY 14, AT DETROIT BAR, 843 W. 19TH ST., COSTA MESA. 9 PM / $12 / 21+. DETROITBAR.COM. AND WITH LUKE TOP AND OTHER GIRLS ON WED., JULY 15, AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVERLAKE. 8:30 PM / $12-$14 / 21+. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. THE VEILS’ SUN GANG IS OUT NOW ON ROUGH TRADE. VISIT THE VEILS AT THEVEILS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THEVEILS.

Download: Chairlift “Bruises”

(from Does You Inspire You out now on Columbia)

Chairlift are from a haunted hotel in Colorado but moved to Brooklyn to pursue music more intensely and to be intensely pursued by people who recognize them from an iPod commercial. They speak from Paris in between kissing graves and delivering DJ sets. Their album Does You Inspire You has been re-released on Columbia. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Have you visited the Paris catacombs yet?
Aaron Pfenning (vocals/electronics/guitar): No. I went to Père Lachaise, the big cemetery where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried.
Whose grave did you kiss first?
Randomly, Oscar Wilde’s because I got to it first, but it’s a great place to explore and get totally lost in. I was there at 6:30 AM and there was definitely a group of four teenagers at Jim Morrison’s grave. I can’t imagine what it’s like later in the day.
What is the most ostentatious grave you’ve ever visited?
Well, I think probably Hunter Thompson’s. I wasn’t really that close to it. I was going to school in Boulder—right when we started the band—and my friend Kyle was also in Chairlift before Patrick was and we drove up for the celebration where they shot him out of a cannon. We weren’t there—we were on the outside. You could definitely hear it. There were fireworks and everything.
What was it like when Hunter S. Thompson was blasted into eternity right before your very eyes?
It’s like hearing the new Grizzly Bear album. It punches you in the stomach.
I heard you’re handy with a Ouija board.
Yes, but only in the wintertime. We don’t play in the summer months. It’s not really appropriate. Spirits come out more in cold weather. There’s more electricity in the air when the weather is colder. And it’s easier for spirits to travel when there’s more electricity in the air so they just naturally come out more in the winter.
What’s the most profound thing you’ve learned about yourself from a Ouija board?
Probably just how true a Scorpio I really am.
Like in the story about the scorpion stinging the frog who carries him across the river? That was one of Philip K. Dick’s favorites.
I should know that because I love Phillip K. Dick. Well, actually the only one I have is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? We’re really into sci-fi—the whole band is into sci-fi, Western and goth things. Dune by Frank Herbert and the Phillip K. Dick one are my top two. Caroline’s reading Necromancer so I get that after her. I have friends with library cards.
But you don’t have library cards? How easily could you disappear from society?
Oh, I think we could disappear pretty easily. We’ve traveled so many places that we’ve actually scouted towns and said ‘This is the place we would come if we needed to disappear.’ It’s gotta be a place where you can stay healthy so it at least has to have some organic source of food. Clean water and a place to buy records. There’s about seven places.
Would the same things that make you work as a band make you work as criminals, too?
Yes, I think so. It’s possible that we are criminals. Just in a basic pop music level. My new favorite pop criminal is this guy called the Dream. He produced songs like Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” but just came out with his own album a few months ago. We’re DJing tonight in Paris and basically, we put his record on and have a dance party. You can play any track from his record and it would work.
Can you imagine a situation where you would have to say, ‘No, Kate Bush—no, absolutely not!’?
I almost could never say no to Kate Bush. I would trust Kate Bush with almost anything.
Describe the bond you guys have with the Crystal Antlers.
The last time we were in Paris, we had a really great DJ dance party with them and I think they were filming part of their movie. We’re in it somewhere but we don’t know what roles we play but I can’t wait to see it. We vibe well together. We can be in a room and dance or we can be in a room and nod our heads. I love them; they’re one of my favorite bands to see live. We were in a coffeeshop in Stockholm a while ago and they had their record up on the wall and nobody there knew what it was. For some reason they had Crystal Antlers vinyl framed on the wall and no one knew why. It was so weird.
What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever come across your record?
I heard ‘Evident Utensil’ in the JFK airport. I think I mentioned it to the waitress and she gave me a free coffee.
What kind of things are you going to take advantage of with this new record on Columbia?
We were actually just talking about making the new record tonight and I think it’s going to happen sooner rather than later, hopefully this winter. We’re talking about going to one of the seven disappearing towns and recording it there. We’ll be bringing along a special guest to help engineer with us but I can’t say.
Is it Steve Albini? Did you refresh yourself with his essay about not signing to a major?
We were approached by a lot of labels and we signed to Columbia because we met with the head people and we told them exactly what our plans were. And they said they would not interfere with anything we wanted to do and the reason they liked us is because we generate our own ideas and carry them out on our own. They said ‘Keep having the ideas that you have and we’ll give you the resources to do it.’ And they haven’t at all tried to force us to do anything.
Do you think the independent vs. major distinction is still relevant?
It’s hard to say because the way Columbia’s working—in the U.S. at least—is that they’ve totally restructured. I think it’s a survival mechanism and record labels like Columbia are working with smaller PR and radio promotion companies so we’re still sort of trying to do our own thing.
What’s your favorite Columbia record?
I think when it comes down to it, probably Jeff Buckley’s Grace.
How do you want history to remember Chairlfit?
I’m worried history will remember Chairlift as either a joke or an iPod band because we have some silly aspects that we embrace but personally, that’s not what I like about us. I want us to be remembered for putting on a good live show and having some sort of powerful presence in a live setting. And being able to tie album themes together, visually and fashion-wise and musically.
How do you rehearse for interviews?
We don’t rehearse. We had to do four interviews in the hotel today and we rehearsed by taking showers and we all wore our bathrobes in the lobby.
What is your favorite album of all time that is not Air’s Talkie Walkie?
I would say John Lennon Imagine.
What is your personal vision of the end of the world?
I personally think that it’s going to be a massive planet quake and severe electrical storms and we all fall into the ocean and become orcas.
When you were living in Boulder, did you ever go to Casa Bonita? Even though it was in Denver?
I did and I left within ten minutes because I was born in Oklahoma and there was a Casa Bonita there. I always went and they had these puppet shows. I loved those puppet shows. It was way smaller than the one in Denver and there’s no cliff diving. It was really creepy. It’s a creepy place to go. What I loved was the music they played during the puppet shows. I still think about it. It’s like dulcimers—it’s like the Fiery Furnaces composing for a puppet show in Oklahoma. The one in Denver was lame and it was just kind of sad for me to walk into a place that had such a profound affect on me and feel nothing.
Is that the moment you realized you were a grown man?
I have not realized that yet.

CHAIRLIFT WITH LUKE TOP ON THUR., JUNE 18, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30PM / $10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. CHAIRLIFT’S DOES YOU INSPIRE YOU IS OUT NOW ON COLUMBIA. VISIT CHAIRLIFT AT CHAIRLIFTMUSIC.COM OR ON MYSPACE AT MYSPACE.COM/CHAIRLIFT.

Paranoid Cocoon seems to announce itself as a rock and roll album, opening with “Up a Tree (Went This Heart I Have),” a tune that pairs frontman Michael Nau’s throaty vocals over a thick, bluesy baseline. Quickly, though, the song itself, and then the whole album, gradually evolves into something different, whirring off into turrets of ambient, kaleidoscopic sound. In “Up a Tree,” the tension between the tight, rhythmic, rock and roll sound, and a diffuse trippiness is engaging. Throughout the album, the band often discards and then returns to this tension in favor of long ambles down psychedelic pathways lined with brushed percussion, prolonged leans into an organ, and synthetic keyboard sounds.

The Cotton Jones live experience was quite different, probably because the band found it difficult to match the plush reverberation that is achievable with a studio set-up. Songs like “Blood Red Sentimental Blues” were only tweaked slightly, but the difference was remarkable. Without the echo chamber quality of the studio, Michael Nau and Whitney’s McGraw’s contrasting vocals (he a husky Jim Morrison, she the delicate siren of a 1950’s radio program) rang clear and true, allowing pretty turns of phrase—like “I heard it in the garbage can, in every piece of trash, you better color up my heart again, I’m afraid it’s turning black”—their due.

In concert, songs like “Cotton and Velvet” and “Gotta Cheer Up” also sharpened their melancholy. On album, “Cotton and Velvet” is the auditory equivalent of a heroin high, a feeling not discouraged by its title, or by beautiful, non-sequitur lyrics like “my tongue on the ocean, made me feel all numb” and “the poet barks.” In concert, however, you might actually be inclined to question Nau’s statement that “there was no sadness, and nothing was wrong.” The mournful call of a steel guitar was more distinguishably audible, and the feeling of being stranded alone inside your own desert more distilled.

One highlight was an expanded version of “Some Strange Rain,” simply announced by Nau as “a love song.” Like many other Cotton Jones songs, it substitutes its own unique narrative structure for the traditional verse/chorus/bridge. In the case of “Some Strange Rain,” the progression through long instrumental sections, alternating with free-form verse, what sounds like but never turns out to be a harmonied chorus, and a solo guitar bridge, gives one the feeling of several songs cobbled together. It’s an apt sentiment for a song whose lyrics travel the long distance of a relationship, from “I got me standing in the rain, well here we go again,” to what sounds to be a shot-gun wedding at the end of the song, with the intriguing, “Come yesterday, I had no love for cats, I had no words for cats, but I love Kat,” sandwiched somewhere in the middle. The piecemeal song had all logic of love itself, but also all of the charm.

The concert version of “Some Strange Rain” encapsulated everything both exciting and frustrating about Cotton Jones’ style. Their willingness to wander down new musical avenues, peeking into any door that catches their interest, means the sacrifice of an integrated form in favor of a playfulness that is sometimes meandering. It’s a worthy trade-off, and one that leaves space for the fresh promise of innovation in Cotton Jones’ future work.

—Tara Everhart

Download: The Flatlanders “Homeland Refugee”

(from Hills and Valleys out now on New West)

The Flatlanders knew everything that was going to happen to them when they named their first album—available if at all in the U.S. only on 8-track—More A Legend Than A Band. Founders Joe Ely, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore all won significant fame on their own—Ely would publish poetry and tour with the Clash besides releasing an impressive set of solo LPs—but they regroup on rare occasions just to see what happens. Their newest Hills and Valleys is out now on New West. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Do you still have the guitar you bought off the street in Venice Beach?
Joe Ely (vocals/guitar): I’ve taken it out on the road for the first time in 20 years and I’ve been playing it for the first four or five songs. It sounds better than ever—it’s just aged really well. I’ve always played it in the studio because it sounds so sweet and I used to take it out on the road with me until the airlines punched a hole in it one time. But I got a nice case for it and I’ve been taking it out. What happened was I was playing down in Houston, alternating sets with ZZ Top when they were still called American Blues. We’d start at 6 PM and play until 6 AM. We’d play an hour, they’d play an hour—all night. And I had a falling out with the club owner and he pulled a gun on me so I hit the road—ran four blocks to the bus station and caught a bus to Fort Worth, and my friend in Fort Worth had just quit his job and he had enough money for two plane tickets to L.A. And my guitar had been stolen a few nights before at the club. I had stored in Fort Worth my Super Reverb amplifier and they actually let me strap it into the seat on the plane—like a baby! So we get to L.A. and I didn’t have any clothes or anything—just the amplifier. Well, there were a few shirts stuffed in the back of the amp. And we took turns carrying that thing from LAX to Venice Beach.
On foot?
Yeah. Well, we got a ride from a winged-out guy for a few blocks, but he was so crazy we said, ‘Let us out here.’ We get to Venice Beach and I was sleeping under the old pier that’s been torn down—I had my head on the Reverb to see if it moved. And then my friend knew someone out there so I put my amplifier at their house. I was out there about a week or two just doing whatever I could and I ran into some speed freak playing that old Gibson guitar at a bus stop right off of that main road—I guess it’s called Ocean or something. I can’t remember the streets in Venice anymore. He was sitting at a bus stop playing it and he had seashells glued all over it and I just came up and started talking to him and said, ‘That’s a real interesting guitar.’ And he looked at me all pissed-off and said, ‘Yeah? You wanna buy it?’ I said, ‘Well, what do you want for it?’ He said, ‘Ten dollars.’ And I thought, ‘God, a Gibson guitar for ten dollars!’ So I told him, ‘I don’t have one penny, but where are you going to be tomorrow?’ And he said ‘Oh, I’m always here—just get out of here if you don’t have any money!’ I spent 24 hours borrowing, begging, selling Coke bottles—whatever I could—and I came up with $5 and some change and I went back and told him, ‘Hey, man, I saw you yesterday and this is all I could scrape up.’ And he just looked at me like he was kinda needing a hit of speed or something and said, ‘All right, gimme the money—but I get to keep the seashells.’ So he starts ripping off the seashells and I was scared he was going to rip the top off because they were glued on with airplane glue. And he ripped all the shells off and I take the guitar and a couple months later I take it back to Texas with me and a guitar-and-violin maker in Lubbock, Texas, put a new bridge on it and new frets and sanded down the top. He just left the top all the same because he said if he refinished it, it would lose a lot of the sound. So it has the original finish and just a bunch of half circles where the seashells were ripped off. It’s an ugly guitar but boy, it sure sounds sweet. I think I’m going to bring it out to L.A. with me for these shows.
And that was your first week in L.A.?
That was basically my first week in L.A.
What was it like the first time you rode a freight train from L.A. back to Texas?
I’d run into some Texas buddies that had come out from Lubbock on a freight train and I asked them all kinds of questions about it. And I got called for the draft to go back to Lubbock and appear at the draft board in Amarillo, and I still didn’t have any money so I had somebody drop me at a San Bernardino freight yard. I asked which train went across to Albuquerque and they pointed it out and I made it all the way to Clovis, New Mexico—and hitch-hiked part of the way. But, boy, what an experience—flying across the desert in a boxcar with no weight in it so it’s just bumpy as shit. It literally knocks your brain out of your skull. Besides that, the girls that had given me a ride to the freight yards had given me a little package with some food in it—sandwiches and chips and brownies—so about dark I got hungry and I started eating their food and I ate the brownies and I’ll be damned if they hadn’t spiked the brownies with pot! I was riding 80 miles an hour in this boxcar and the brownies started coming on and I was bouncing towards the door—pushing myself back because I was scared shitless. And then I came out to Venice the next three summers. That was the winter of 1966 when I first went out there and then I went back to Texas for the draft, came back summer of ’67—the ‘Summer of Love,’ they called it. That was when Jim Morrison lived there and Venice was just a true bohemian spot—it wasn’t an upper-hunky place like it is now. It was a real bohemian village and I had a really great time working on music out there.
Didn’t the Seeds play there every day for a month?
At the Cheetah at Pacific Ocean Park—P.O.P. Some surfers showed me a way to climb on the outside of the pier and cut across through the middle and there was a hole and you could come up right underneath the stage. So we used to climb on the pier and sneak into shows at the Cheetah. The ocean was like six stories below. I didn’t have any good sense then—that was my problem!
I read when you were a kid, you liked to follow songs around—go where someone had sang about to see what it was really like. Why?
First it was Woody Guthrie, so I had to go everywhere that Woody Guthrie had gone. About the time I got that old guitar, I had to go to the towns that Woody talked about and then I heard ‘Go to San Francisco with flowers in your hair,’ so I went to San Francisco and made it up there in ’67 and ’68. I spent a whole lot of time in Berkeley. Mainly it was Berkeley, San Francisco and Venice. Being from Lubbock, Texas, where nothing ever happens to being right in the middle of the whole movement in 1966 and ’67—it was quite different than Lubbock and I found it totally fascinating.
The Flatlanders come back together every so often—is it because of something between the three of you or is there some outside force lets you know the world could use you for a bit?
There’s no outside force that gets us together. We don’t have much drive or ambition or anything like that. Between the three of us, you could put all of our ambition in a thimble! What it is is that we are truly dumbfounded and fascinated that we sit down and put a song together one word at a time—one note at a time—and we’re always fascinated at how it’s going to turn out. We never expected we would ever write a song together. That was just something that you didn’t do. Like this last record. Somewhere around the time Hurricane Katrina hit, we got together and started putting together some songs and it took us about five years to write these last songs. I think one song took two-and-a-half years to write. It’s almost like a game that we play—to see what happens. And even if we have songs, we don’t know if we have an album or not until we sit down and start recording it. So it’s quite a process. If we had someone looking over us saying, ‘You better get this record done!’ we would never do it. We just like to take time out from our own schedules every once in a while and just see what happens.
Butch told a reporter that you’ve ‘spent many hours in pancake houses across the country revealing the secrets of the universe to each other.’ What secrets can you share with us now?
We have come to the conclusion that sooner or later it’s now or never. And that’s about all we figured out. Anything that comes your way, just say to yourself, ‘Never mind.’ And everything will be all right—you won’t have any conflicts.
You’ve said before you cared much more about the live shows then the recording sessions when you were younger—what kind of things got lost because of that?
I’m sure I lost a whole lot of things—physically and mentally. One time I lost four years of songs I had written and stories in my journal. One time I lost an entire album—when I was coming back after we were touring with the Clash in London. I was over in Europe for a few months and had recorded an album on a little tape recorder and had it all pretty mapped out and was going to record it when I got back to Texas, but we got to New York City and the taxicab that took us from the airport to the Chelsea Hotel drove off and it had my bag in it with all four years of writings and a complete record album—all the notes on cassette tape—and it never came back. That night I kicked a table in my hotel room and broke my foot, so for the next three weeks I had to hobble along on tour from town to town with a cast on my foot and playing every night. It was miserable. The University of Texas just published a bunch of my journals that I kept on the road and those would have been four years of journals I probably would have included in this book and there’s a missing gap now. I’m amazed that this many things did survive because I’ve gone off and left whole record collections and whole houses full of stuff. I’ve gone off and left cars in airport parking lots and never gone back.
What’s it feel like to walk away from things like that?
Usually it’s not an impulse—it’s just a situation that I find myself in. It’s like, ‘Well, I’m here, but somebody called me and said to come up here and I know I won’t be back for six months so I’ll just call somebody and say, “Say, want a car? You can have it.”’ One time I had a collection of glass doorknobs that was my most prized possession. I don’t know why—I found these glass doorknobs in a house that had fallen down in Amarillo. I got a gig in New York playing with this theatre company which then went to Europe for six months and I knew I was going to lose my house and everything, and I called a friend and told him, ‘I’m going to donate to you my glass doorknobs.’ And he went, ‘What in the hell is a glass doorknob?’ And I said, ‘You know. Old houses in the ‘20s—everybody had glass and crystal doorknobs.’ That’s just kind of the way things are if you’re a rambler and that’s what I’ve always been.
But you’ve settled down in Austin for a bit, right?
I’ve had this house in Austin for 20 years now. There were a few places around there—one was one of the few settlements—at least in Texas—where the white settlers and the Indians lived side by side. The guy that built my house, his family settled Texas and came out with Steven F. Austin in the 1820s. He told me some stories and there’s been a couple of books written about one of the few places where the Indians had their teepees down by the river and the settlers were on the other side and they helped each other get food and pick pecans and all that stuff. I kind of feel like I was guided into that spot. I feel like I’ve found—after all that wandering—found that right spot.
Where do you feel the Flatlanders fit in your life now?
It’s a different kind of chemistry that happens when we sit down and work on something together. I cant put my finger on it—I don’t know what it is. All I can call it is kind of like mustard and mayonnaise—just a chemistry. We have tried to figure it out and we’ve never been able to. Probably something we’d be better off talking about at a pancake house! But if we figured it out, we probably wouldn’t have it anymore. It’s like the story of somebody asking the centipede about how he moves all his legs at one time and when the centipede thinks about it, he trips all over himself.
How did you happen to get bit by the world’s smallest horse?
When I came back from one of my trips from the East Coast, the Ringling Brothers circus was setting up in my hometown of Lubbock and I went out to watch them set up. And some guy walked over and handed me a jackhammer and said, ‘Go over and help those guys set up that tent.’ I was hired on the spot. And my first job after the tent was when we moved from the auditorium where we played back to the train yards which was several miles away—I was put in charge of two llamas and the world’s smallest horse. If you can imagine, his head was exactly knee-level to me. And he was a mean sonofabitch so every five seconds he would turn over and try to take a bite out of my knee. Napoleon complex. And when I would kick the horse off me, the llamas would rear up and look at me and spit at me. That was the worst job I ever had—leading the llamas and the world’s smallest horse. Within three weeks of being in the circus in what they call ringstock—which is taking care of the animals—I had the most seniority which goes to show you how long circus employees last. It’s usually guys running from the law who get a job so they can make it to the next town. So if you’re ever running from the law, just go join the circus.
You had a lyric on the new record that says, ‘the average person’s afraid of talking about death but not afraid of driving a car.’ What does that mean?
This world we live in is one big paradox. Everybody worries about the latest thing to worry about. Today it’s swine flu, but yet there’s a volcano underneath Yellowstone National Park that is 60,000 years overdue and if it goes off, it’ll cover the entire United States with fifty feet of ash. So I don’t worry about the latest things to worry about. I just think it’s better to make the best of what you got. My old BBQ friend Stubbs, I asked him once—‘What’s the secret to what you do, all the sauce and BBQing?’ And Stubbs said, ‘The secret of it all is to make do with what you got.’ So I figured that’s a good thing to live by.

THE FLATLANDERS FEATURING JIMMIE DALE GILMORE, JOE ELY AND BUTCH HANCOCK ON SAT., MAY 30, AT THE TROUBADOUR, 9081 SANTA MONICA BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 8PM / $18-$20 / ALL AGES. WWW.TROUBADOUR.COM. THE FLATLANDERS’ HILLS AND VALLEYS IS OUT NOW ON NEW WEST. VISIT THE FLATLANDERS AT THEFLATLANDERS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THEFLATLANDERSTX.

Download: Cave “High I Am”

(from Psychic Psummer out May 26 on Important)

It’s nice, easy, and recommended for all folks to zone out with Cave’s 30-minute jams. If only the band’s MySpace page background could follow them around, spiraling neon colors out of sounds and frequencies, and so could we engage the ideal psychedelic lifestyle, in which a blink of an eye might transport us to an outer-space beach blanket with Sun Ra. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

You move furniture for a living?
Cooper Crain (guitar): Everyone in the band does, actually. It’s us and the band Mahjongg. We’re all originally from Missouri and have moved up here at different times. There’s a company that our friend owns. It’s not really ‘real’ but it is real. We own some box trucks and move all throughout the year. It’s called Starving Artists, and there’s a bunch of people in bands. And there’s some people who make visual art and some who write. It just makes it so everybody can leave and do what they want to do but always have a job.
You don’t necessarily think of musicians as handy movers.
Oh no—it’s great because it makes it easy to move amps or anything since for your job you move a bunch of people’s apartments and stuff up stairs all the time.
Do you ever compete to lift things?
Well, there’s certain people who are taller and their arms are longer so they’re able to carry box springs. And every now and then a move is made by somebody who figures out how to get a certain type of couch through a certain doorway. It’s a lot of fun. You work with friends and it pays cash at the end of every job so it’s nice work.
What’s the most current thing in Cave land?
We recorded a bunch of songs last winter and made a record and a single out of it and that’s coming out on May 26 called Psychic Psummer on Important Records. That’s the newest thing. But a 7-inch of ours just came out in England. This new record is the ‘new band.’
How is that reflected musically?
Big, big deal! Before it was just kind of a thing where certain people were involved and every show there would be various amounts of people. It would go from four to ten people in the band at one show. That was in Missouri and they were kind of freeform jams for the most part. Then me and a few other guys kept doing it on our own and moved to Chicago. Some people have left but for the last year there’s been an actual band. Only me and Rex who plays drums are the ones who have been in it the whole time. But this live band that’s on the album—we’ve been doing it for a year and it’s totally a great change. Before only a handful of people would be overdubbing or doing it live. And then editing jams and now it’s advanced a lot more. There’s Adam playing electric organ, I play guitar and keys, Dan on bass, Rotten Milk plays the mono synthesizer and sings and Rex on drums. It’s a five-piece now.
Are you playing full songs at shows now or just jamming?
The album that’s coming out—half of it is songs we actually worked out and half of it is jams we recorded or edited that we kind of learned in order to play live from the recording. Now all the songs that have been recorded—as far as the structure goes, we do a lot of editing in the studio but a lot of new stuff is actually just start and then end. That’s the vibe of how everything starts.
Do you have communication tricks when you play?
A few of us have been playing together in various things for a long time. All of us live for the most part near each other if not in the same household, and we work together then play together. I feel like over the last year being around eah other makes it easier. Since it’s a band now, it’s advanced the sound. It’s tighter and things can happen smoother. As far as location for when things happen—not always but every now and then, there’s a nod or two. It goes half and half.
What’s the longest continuous session you’ve played together?
The very first thing we ever did, we hooked up a tape machine and threw out a bunch of mics and that was like a 36-minute song. That’s probably the longest. Maybe we’ve played literally longer back in the basement in Missouri. Our goal was to try and not go over a half hour for a continuous jam, but it may have slipped here and there. That’s more than a side of a record. That’s why we’re releasing a single with the record. There’s one song that is actually three and a half minutes, and it was kind of written as a song rather than a jam. And we were like, ‘Wow, that’s our first actual song. There’s a lead vocal part on it! We should make it an album single—like an old 45.’ That just shocked us all. But that’s the direction it’s more going into. We’re starting to get into songs, while still maintaning the spirit of the old songs. We’re evolving, as always. It kind of started as a part someone had and we worked it out and we felt it shouldn’t go too long, not that it lacked interest, but it sounded like a song—short and sweet.
What’s the greatest guitar riff you’ve ever heard?
Aerosmith, ‘Sweet Emotion.’ I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that one.
If you could time travel to spend an afternoon at the beach with three historical figures, who would you choose? What moment in time would you like to visit them in?
It’d be cool to go back a little further when things weren’t kept so close-eyed. Mid-1900s. And hang out with some Ethiopian dudes. Maybe Terry Riley or jazz dudes? We’ve all been really into the Doors lately, but not so teenage-girl way—not so Jim Morrison, so I don’t think I would want to hang out with him on the beach. Perhaps one wild card, one TBA. No, wait, actually—though I don’t think I will ever be in this situation, I think if I could have a telephone booth like in Bill & Ted, I want to hang out with Terry Riley, David Tortuga and Sun Ra. Location: a beach in the outer-space zone. Maybe we’ll depart from the mid-1900s. But space, of course, is timeless.

CAVE WITH NITE JEWEL AND JEALOUSY ON THU., MAY 28, AT THE SMELL, 247 S. MAIN ST., DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES. 8PM / $5 / ALL AGES. THESMELL.ORG. CAVE’S PSYCHIC PSUMMER RELEASES TUE., MAY 26, ON IMPORTANT RECORDS. VISIT CAVE AT MYSPACE.COM/REALREELPRO.