ROCKING THE CAVERN The Cave Singers
Mar 10, 2011
With a new album and a new label, the Seattle combo turns it up. Way up.
BY JENNIFER KELLY
"No Witch is more ambitious and bigger sounding than anything we've done before," says Cave Singers drummer Marty Lund, speaking of his band's third full-length album, out last month on Jagjaguwar.
"Our last two albums were a little bit mellow," he adds. "When we'd play those songs live, they would be way more up. So that's what we wanted to capture on No Witch. We wanted the album to sound more like our live show."
The Cave Singers, out of Seattle, have always infused backwoods country and blues with a fractious punk energy. That's only natural, given that the band's members come from more aggressive outfits, bass player Derek Fudesco from Pretty Girls Make Graves, singer Pete Quirk out of Hint Hint and Lund from Cobra High. They started in 2007 and recorded two albums for Matador, Invitation Songs in 2007 and Welcome Joy in 2009.
The band connected with the Black Mountain family, just up the coast in Vancouver, convincing Lightning Dust's Amber and Ashley Webber to guest on their second album, Welcome Joy and touring with their band in 2009. For No Witch, they asked Black Mountain producer Randall Dunn to help them bring on the rock (Dunn has also worked with heavies like Sun O))) and Boris).
"The material we brought to record with Randall was definitely more rock than before," says Lund. "And we knew we wanted to play with more aggression, too. Still, the way that Randall was able to capture the sound was important. When we listened to some of the songs, they were just so much bigger than we had anticipated. It was awesome."
No Witch is the Cave Singers' first album on Jagjaguwar, which is, not coincidentally, also the label that releases Black Mountain and Lightning Dust's material. "We've known the Jagjaguwar guys, just kind of as acquaintances, for a while. We stayed at Darius [Van Arman]'s house long before we were talking about being on their label," he says. "Then at SXSW last year, he came up to us and said, ‘Sounds great. I'd be interested in talking to you guys.' And we thought, that's perfect. What a great label."
Cave Singers is gearing up for another tour this spring, but it will be hard to match their road experience last fall. In September the band went to China for two weeks, playing shows in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Cheng Du, Wu Han and Chung Quing. "That was amazing," says Lund. "It was definitely the most incredible experience of my life. I've been to Europe and Central America, but that was completely different. Like a complete culture shock."
"Every single minute of every day was different. There was nothing the same," Lund continues. "I mean, obviously, people still eat and talk. But everything's different. Like just down to the way people talk. Obviously, I couldn't understand people, but the way people interact with each other. Personal space is different. They have a different way with that. The food. For me, I was familiar with Vietnamese food, but I didn't know a lot about Chinese food, so every day there was something new."
Because of the language barrier, Lund says it was hard to connect with regular people, ordinarily one of his favorite parts of touring. Still he does remember one stilted conversation with a young rock and roll fan at a vintage clothing store in Shanghai. "We were just talking about music and how he liked Aerosmith and stuff," he says. "That is one of my favorite things about traveling, so it was nice, once in a while, to get to chat with someone."
Lund says he and his bandmates were blown away by some traditional tourist sites (The Great Wall), as well as some less expected ones. "We went to a trannie bar in one city, where there was a drag show going on," he says. "That's definitely not something that you expect, and it's pretty neat that they're able to have this little enclave where they could be into that thing and be comfortable."
But mostly, Lund says, he was fascinated by the sheer foreign-ness of daily life in China. "There were times when I would just sit outside and watch people," he recalls. "Everything is a lot more squeezed in. Everything's more crowded and it creates a different vibe. I never got tired of it."
A version of this story also appears in the latest print edition of BLURT.
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