We're Already Dead – The Dodos
"Why are we called The Dodos? We're already dead. The only place you can go from there is to come back to life, start over." A band seeking to reinvent itself even as the embers of its beginning still burn, The Dodos have no wish to look back. Despite this, their music meanders into the past at every turn, and then hurls itself forward in the crash of a trash can, the personality of a tempo change. They don't sound like right now either, not really fitting into a handy nook, regardless of their folk sensibilities and stylishly dishevelled looks. In their early twenties, they're a throwback to something nobody can remember remembering, so they end up sounding impossibly new.
At V Festival last month, they sounded plain awful. With just 27 people watching, in the midst of that glorified advertisement, they played without any hint of the subtleties they are capable of. "It was so sponsored, so spread out and huge that we were just stuck with nobody watching us," bemoans Meric Long, the band's nonchalant mouthpiece. "We did see Amy Winehouse, but it was hard to have any fun at that monstrosity." Back in the UK for their own tour, at considerably smaller venues than the buzz about them in their native US is allowing them to perform, they appear at home. Logan Kroeber, a tight, persistently driving presence on drums, is far more chipper offstage, exuding the cavalier exuberance of a man used to hitting things with sticks for a living. "This tour is better than V Fest," he laughs. "So much better. We go home tomorrow, so we're celebrating tonight."
The concept of home is far from straightforward for a band getting used to the cross-country necessity of incessant touring. "Home is wherever I can relax," Logan offers. For Meric, it's more convoluted. "It's a crazy cycle every night, it's groundhog day. I forget what happened the night before every morning. Going into each show, there's that sense of anxiety, nervousness, excitement. After the show, it feels like I've taken a huge dump and I feel so much better. Sorry…" He trails off but there's more; pauses are a fixture of his rhetoric, slipping from eloquence to crassness as his tracks move from delicacy to coarseness. "I don't feel like when we visit places we have really visited them. You only see cities at night, and then only the venues, the bars. Home is in the head. It has to be."
So could this displacement from any physical sense of belonging be behind the band's second, breakthrough album, Visiter? Spelt incorrectly on purpose after a child's drawing the band was given, songs on the record such as Park Song and Walking touch upon the dislocation from regularity visitors can feel, even in ordinary settings. "To be honest, I like to leave songs to individual interpretations," Meric explains. "The song is this big cloud, that I don't really understand, or have a good grasp on, I just sense it. I infuse it with things from my personal life, but it would be half-assed to say they're completely personal."
Larger-scale influences than the undemanding unrequited love of Undeclared are often present though, with the possible political upheaval happening back in his physical residence, the US, dominating Meric's thoughts as much as it is the newspapers. The subject of elections is a marked one, bringing a guarded enthusiasm from the band. Even Joe, the group's multi-instrumentalist who is as at home hitting a dustbin as tapping a xylophone, looks animated at the subject despite offering little but politeness and swigs of his beer during the conversation. "It's at that point where there's something new every day, it's a pretty exciting time right now, something is going on that hasn't happened in a long time," states Meric.
The theory that political upheaval could underpin changes to the artistic community divides the band though. Logan isn't convinced. "I can't see it," he frowns. "Of course, it depends what happens, but I really can't imagine any creative spark being influenced by who gets elected or anything." Meric, meanwhile, claims his songwriting is on "the same shit" it always has been, but readily acknowledges the impact November's election result could have on the band. "It will be big, both ways. People are going to be so stoked, or think everything is so lame, depending on the result. That's got to have an effect, there's got to be a change."
Transformation is also happening within a band whose songs seem to be growing increasingly into balanced, meticulously planned affairs, developing to a level beyond the organic playfulness of early material. With new single Fools getting airplay on Radio One, could the leap to the big time come too soon? "We wanna get huge!" exclaims a pokerfaced Logan. "We're going to try to blow their brains out." Meric is keen to join in with such droll facetiousness. "You see that Rolling Stones film? That's peanuts to what we'll be." Logan again: "Ever been to the moon? That big." But how, Gigwise wonders? "Trampoline," they deadpan in unison, in-jokes abound.
But the smirks mask an ambition that rears up in their technical acumen onstage, their bursts of passion off it. They want success, they're human after all.
"It's baby steps," says Joe. "We're just creating an impression that we couldn't get big. We could go there right now, but we want some kind of story to tell when we get there." A few more catchy singles to compliment their skin-itching slow-burners and they may just get their wish. There's a lot of life in the Dodos, for a band that's dead already.
"Why are we called The Dodos? We're already dead. The only place you can go from there is to come back to life, start over." A band seeking to reinvent itself even as the embers of its beginning still burn, The Dodos have no wish to look back. Despite this, their music meanders into the past at every turn, and then hurls itself forward in the crash of a trash can, the personality of a tempo change. They don't sound like right now either, not really fitting into a handy nook, regardless of their folk sensibilities and stylishly dishevelled looks. In their early twenties, they're a throwback to something nobody can remember remembering, so they end up sounding impossibly new.
At V Festival last month, they sounded plain awful. With just 27 people watching, in the midst of that glorified advertisement, they played without any hint of the subtleties they are capable of. "It was so sponsored, so spread out and huge that we were just stuck with nobody watching us," bemoans Meric Long, the band's nonchalant mouthpiece. "We did see Amy Winehouse, but it was hard to have any fun at that monstrosity." Back in the UK for their own tour, at considerably smaller venues than the buzz about them in their native US is allowing them to perform, they appear at home. Logan Kroeber, a tight, persistently driving presence on drums, is far more chipper offstage, exuding the cavalier exuberance of a man used to hitting things with sticks for a living. "This tour is better than V Fest," he laughs. "So much better. We go home tomorrow, so we're celebrating tonight."
The concept of home is far from straightforward for a band getting used to the cross-country necessity of incessant touring. "Home is wherever I can relax," Logan offers. For Meric, it's more convoluted. "It's a crazy cycle every night, it's groundhog day. I forget what happened the night before every morning. Going into each show, there's that sense of anxiety, nervousness, excitement. After the show, it feels like I've taken a huge dump and I feel so much better. Sorry…" He trails off but there's more; pauses are a fixture of his rhetoric, slipping from eloquence to crassness as his tracks move from delicacy to coarseness. "I don't feel like when we visit places we have really visited them. You only see cities at night, and then only the venues, the bars. Home is in the head. It has to be."
So could this displacement from any physical sense of belonging be behind the band's second, breakthrough album, Visiter? Spelt incorrectly on purpose after a child's drawing the band was given, songs on the record such as Park Song and Walking touch upon the dislocation from regularity visitors can feel, even in ordinary settings. "To be honest, I like to leave songs to individual interpretations," Meric explains. "The song is this big cloud, that I don't really understand, or have a good grasp on, I just sense it. I infuse it with things from my personal life, but it would be half-assed to say they're completely personal."
Larger-scale influences than the undemanding unrequited love of Undeclared are often present though, with the possible political upheaval happening back in his physical residence, the US, dominating Meric's thoughts as much as it is the newspapers. The subject of elections is a marked one, bringing a guarded enthusiasm from the band. Even Joe, the group's multi-instrumentalist who is as at home hitting a dustbin as tapping a xylophone, looks animated at the subject despite offering little but politeness and swigs of his beer during the conversation. "It's at that point where there's something new every day, it's a pretty exciting time right now, something is going on that hasn't happened in a long time," states Meric.
The theory that political upheaval could underpin changes to the artistic community divides the band though. Logan isn't convinced. "I can't see it," he frowns. "Of course, it depends what happens, but I really can't imagine any creative spark being influenced by who gets elected or anything." Meric, meanwhile, claims his songwriting is on "the same shit" it always has been, but readily acknowledges the impact November's election result could have on the band. "It will be big, both ways. People are going to be so stoked, or think everything is so lame, depending on the result. That's got to have an effect, there's got to be a change."
Transformation is also happening within a band whose songs seem to be growing increasingly into balanced, meticulously planned affairs, developing to a level beyond the organic playfulness of early material. With new single Fools getting airplay on Radio One, could the leap to the big time come too soon? "We wanna get huge!" exclaims a pokerfaced Logan. "We're going to try to blow their brains out." Meric is keen to join in with such droll facetiousness. "You see that Rolling Stones film? That's peanuts to what we'll be." Logan again: "Ever been to the moon? That big." But how, Gigwise wonders? "Trampoline," they deadpan in unison, in-jokes abound.
But the smirks mask an ambition that rears up in their technical acumen onstage, their bursts of passion off it. They want success, they're human after all.
"It's baby steps," says Joe. "We're just creating an impression that we couldn't get big. We could go there right now, but we want some kind of story to tell when we get there." A few more catchy singles to compliment their skin-itching slow-burners and they may just get their wish. There's a lot of life in the Dodos, for a band that's dead already.
No comments:
Post a Comment