The For Carnation
This interview was recorded late at night at an Ethiopian joint on Fairfax
Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, during the For Carnation's US tour
with the Black Heart Procession. All questions were provided by myself,
Dave, and all answers were provided by Brian McMahan, whose band the For
Carnation has been. Also present, providing spiritual guidance was Brian
McDonald, the sponsor of the Washer e-mail list (washer@kuci.org),
which is dedicated to Slint (McMahan's former band) and all related and
derivative musics. For more information about what the For Carnation
sounds like, read my review.
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| There is an impression that the For Carnation is a vehicle for your
musical vision, is that accurate or are the For Carnation more of a democratic
band? |
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In the past it has effectively been a revolving door sort of solo
project. I would never think of trying to do stuff by myself, and the
reason that I play music is because I love getting together with all the
people and making it happen, but it hasn't been a solid band until this
record. [The For Carnation, the band's most recent album, released
on Touch and Go] took a couple of years to get the line up together, to
flush out the ideas, and record them. I feel really good about that,
that's something that I like to do. It hasn't really been possible in the
past for various reasons. I've played with some great people, no doubt,
and I'm not going to try and take credit for their input, but since it has
been a revolving door, its just been sort of like I end up being the editor,
and there's not always a lot of opportunity to establish a working
relationship where everyone can be on equal ground. If you only play
together for three or four days you aren't exactly going to break a lot of
ground.
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| The newest record took three years to write and record and comes across
as being very focused, very lean, with no excess. How many of the songs
were you working on over the three year period? Were they being polished
over that time? What was the process of writing and recording this album? |
| Four of the six [songs on the album] were based on ideas that had been
sitting around for couple of years that I had worked on with different
people, and when we finally got the group together we turned them into what
you hear. There's a couple that were written within six months, nine
months before the record was completed. |
| The album has six songs, which were recorded in six studios. Will there
be a more regular approach in the future, if the band is stabilized, where
the band will go in the studio and cut a record? |
| I certainly hope that I can continue to play with the people that I played
with on this record. That's most important to me. I enjoy recording and I
definitely give it a lot of attention during the process, but actually I
wouldn't characterize the process we went through as that unusual. We
worked on the songs, got a line up together, rehearsed the material for
several months, recorded it, and part of why it took so long was strictly
financial reasons. We did as much as we could, we ran out of money, we got
more money, we did what we could. I actually don't think that its that
weird. These days people take recordings here and there, to different
studios, based in what they want to do. I enjoyed that, I'd like to keep
doing that, I don't know if I'll be able to. I'm pretty pleased with that
process. So recording-wise, yes I'd like to, maybe based on that sort of a
process, again take a lot of time in the studio, but group wise I'm
definitely interested in working more with this group of people. |
| When you start a record, do you have any kind of agenda or timeline? |
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I did the first two For Carnation records on a pretty tight timetable, and I
found that as I tried to look further and further into the future, things
just got more unreasonable. It just got to the point where, myself, and
even the record label, were like "its really weird that you're planning
this far ahead and you don't know who you are going to work with." But I
would still have all these dates, and if I don't set these dates then
nothing's going to happen. The first two records, I'm proud of what they
are, and I got a lot out of making those records, but I felt like they fell
too short in some categories. I just wanted to make [The For
Carnation] as good as possible. Basically any sort of timeframe was
out the window and [we] just kept working until it was done. |
| Although it was conceived over a long period of time, it's a very
cohesive record. The songs fit together really well and it comes across as
a unit, as a whole. Did you have a particular idea in mind for the album
as a whole, how it was going to sound? |
| Yeah, definitely. I knew I wanted to do something that was more
rhythmically consistent and maybe more solidly anchored in bass and drums
than the earlier recordings. Some of the earlier stuff is sort of
whimsical or favors more of a tenor sound. The main thing, the real
significance, for me, with this record, versus the others, is a solid group
of people all working together. That's the main thing. Maybe I have some
ideas, for this sort of aesthetic or something, but its the group of people
that made it happen. |
| The record features some notable guest spots--Britt Walford [from
Slint], John McEntire, Kim Deal, did you have them in mind when writing and
planning the record, or were they things that just happened? |
| Yes and no. Very early on, when I was working with my brother, who plays
guitar, Todd Cook, who plays bass, and then Britt Walford, we were all in
Louisville and I came back there from LA just to sort of jam--to generate
some ideas, play together and see what happens. As it turns out, Britt
didn't really feel comfortable continuing, it didn't really work out, but
we had hours and hours of rehearsal tapes of just improvising and the song
that he plays on is something that came out of one of those
improvisations. That was in the spring of '97.
In the case of John McEntire's involvement, it was probably sometime in
'98 that I started talking to him about recording and helping to produce
the record, so definitely we had him in mind as we were working on the
material, and that's kind of the reason it took so long: we ended up
waiting for his schedule to open up.
With Kim Deal, that was a total last minute thing. We happened to be in
the same place, she was recording some stuff downstairs, we were upstairs,
in Steve Albini's studio in Chicago, I had been really dissatisfied my
ability to sing the introduction to ["Tales (Live from the Crypt)"]. Britt
was there [who has played in Kim's band, the Breeders], we had just
recorded his drums for ["Being Held"], and he goes "Man, just ask her."
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| Slint was on Touch and Go, but the first two For Carnation records were
on Matador. Now you are back with Touch and Go. Why did you decided to go
to Matador, and now why are you back with Touch and Go? |
| First of all, you have to consider the period of time you're talking
about. You're talking about, basically, for me, a musical period that
spans 15 years. There's all sorts of little details. Essentially, in
Slint, I worked with Corey at Touch and Go, and a few of the people that are
still there now, and I got a very firm idea of how they worked, what their
approach is. In part, working with Matador on For Carnation stuff was
motivated by just money. Not to make it sound crass, but we knew we wanted
to record and work in a certain way that, at that point, Touch and Go
wasn't putting a bunch of money on records, advancing money for
records. So that was a big part of it and also at that time, when I
started working on the For Carnation stuff, Touch and Go's perceived
audience was still 14 to 18 year old boys. And there's nothing wrong with
that, but I kind of felt like I didn't know if the people that buy TG
records, and at that time I really think there was a type of person that
bought Touch and Go records, that they would be that into the For
Carnation. So I just decided to try something different and work with Matador.
Going back to Touch and Go, it was motivated by a sort of realizing "I
think I, at this point, feel like I'd be comfortable working with Corey
again." Things changed a lot at Touch and Go over the years, and also, to
be honest, I didn't get along real well with just sort of the way things
were handled at Matador. I don't really want to get into details but it
just didn't seem right to continue. |
| The For Carnation is a quieter band, and, with the rise of quieter
bands, there is a rise of complaints about rude audiences, who talk during
the set. Do talking audience members bother you, as a performer? |
| I have no problem with that really. When we play live, I know that there's
going to be a certain number of people at the venue on a given night that
probably have no idea who's playing and also are more interested in going
out just to relax and unwind. Sometimes our music has got a relaxing
gift. Sometimes it can interfere with the performance if its really,
really loud, but I don't take it personally and usually its not
distracting. I'm pretty focused on the music and I think if I was an
audience member I might be a little more bothered by the talking in the
audience. It's not a big deal. |
| Looking back on the 90's and the cult of Slint, what was it like,
after the band had broken up and you had moved on to the For Carnation, to
see the way Slint's popularity and influence had grown, to the extent that
people are describing other bands as "Slinty?" Is it strange? |
| I really don't think about it that much. To be perfectly honest, I'm
really glad that people have found out about and heard our
recordings. Certainly when we made them, that's why we made
them. Awareness was quite a bit less. I'm astonished and at the same time
it seems like "well, yeah, that's a pretty good record, that's cool, people
heard it, that's awesome." I don't know what else to say. |
| Do you ever hear a band and think that you can recognize the influence
that Slint music had on them? |
| I think a long time ago, there may have been a period where stuff like that
entered my mind. Whatever we were doing, we were a part of a group of
people making music. There may be certain formal dimensions or ways of
songwriting or aesthetic or mood or whatever that people identify with
Slint, but whatever. We were stealing from everybody else. |
| What are you listening to now? |
| Listening to the Black Heart Procession for the past week has been
great. I listen to a fair amount of the Drag City stuff. I've been
listening to Ghost. The Plush record, I think, is unbelievable. I've been
listening to Roy Orbison a lot and I got this cd when I was in France of a
collection of Japanese, Detroit techno inspired works, I think that's
really cool. I actually don't really know who the people are, I can't
pronounce their names, but I think its cool music. Speed to Roam. Speed
to Roam, you should remember that. They did a record that they're going to
release themselves. Its so good. You should definitely check it out.
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