Tulsa find their inner noise
By WILL SPITZ | September 18, 2007
VIDEO: Tulsa, "Shaker"
I first met Carter Tanton in early September 2005. We were strangers moving into the same house in Allston — me from around the corner, Tanton from Baltimore — who’d been brought together by a mutual musician friend. A bit unkempt, with straight brown hair that fell just past his ears and looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a day or two, he spoke softly, seemed shy, almost timid. One night just a couple of weeks later, before we had gotten to know each other, I bellied up to the bar at ZuZu as Tanton — then 25, with a number of years of playing in bands and as a solo artist behind him — sat at the front of the room, looking sheepish with a blue Fender Mustang strapped on, getting ready to play his first show since moving to town. He started to strum the guitar, and when he opened his mouth to sing, the sound that came pouring out was so enormous and resonant — a direct contrast to his speaking voice — I had goosebumps, and not just because I knew him as my diffident new roommate. The whole room was transfixed.Two years later, I’m in the basement of that same Allston house, out of which I’ve since moved, drinking Busch beers and smoking cigarettes with Tanton and Erik Wormwood, the bassist in Tanton’s newest band, Tulsa, who came together during that fall of 2005. (Drummer Greg Hatem couldn’t make it.) I tell Tanton about the shock I felt on hearing him sing for the first time and how I think his soft-spokenness is at odds with his on-stage demeanor. “I don’t think that’s a rarity,” he says. “There’s that eternal contradiction in people who feel the need to perform: half of you doesn’t want to do it, half of you is petrified. And half of you feels incomplete without doing it. You kind of set yourself up for a really tumultuous life.”
Like Tanton’s opposing halves, Tulsa’s music is marked by a sort of push-pull between melody and dissonance, concision and unhinged sonic exploration. Tanton cites an instinctual drive to write tightly structured pop tunes, but he’s also turned on by playing longer, freer songs, music that breathes and flows. Their new EP — I Was Submerged, their second for Philly-based Park the Van Records, the release of which they celebrate upstairs at the Middle East this Tuesday — leans more toward the pop end of the spectrum. “Shaker” — one of the EP’s best — is based on a couple of simple, tuneful melodies, and it’s over in less than four minutes.
But Tanton and Wormwood say they’re headed in the other direction, especially since guitar/keys player Marc Pinansky — a rock classicist at heart — left to focus on his band Township. (Tanton used to play in Township, but he and Pinansky decided to devote themselves fully to their respective primary projects.) Tanton points to Hatem — who grew up listening to and playing krautrock-influenced psychedelic and noise music — as leading the charge to the left of the center. “I really want to have long songs — that’s something I’ve never been able to feel comfortable doing. If you play a three-minute song, it’s done before you know it. Just when it’s over is when you’re finally feeling comfortable with it. But no matter how much we try to take it into that realm, there’s still going to be catchy songs. It’s just inevitable, I think — that’s the way I sing. I feel like I have to leave that print on a song. If I open my mouth, I want it to be, if not catchy, just, like, memorable.”
Related:
Legacy act, Boston music news, March 10, 2006, Hyland avenues, More
- Legacy act
What does it say about the current scene when the standard full rock band of two guitars, bass, and drums can seem novel?
- Boston music news, March 10, 2006
Brooklyn-by-way-of-Shutesbury electro-rock trio Mobius have just got the opening gig on the Editors/Stellastarr* spring tour, though they’ve yet to be confirmed for the March 20 stop at the Roxy.
- Hyland avenues
It’s Friday night at P.A.’s Lounge in Somerville, and the band on stage are facing a potential drum-kit disaster.
- The good old days
As if it weren’t enough that the venerable Paramount Theatre on Washington Street was open for the first time since 1976, the Celebrity Series of Boston brought in as the initial act to play the new 600-seat mainstage Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester.
- Dis-Respect
Toward the end of Respect: A Musical Journey, a revue bringing together some four dozen female-associated pop oldies, comes the big moment that’s supposed to represent American womanhood shaking off its shackles and stepping bravely into the future.
- Good Evening
All those Oscar prognosticators, all those Best Picture wagers, and nobody has mentioned, or even noticed, Andrew Wagner’s Starting Out in the Evening .
- Urban cheek
There are several meanings to the word popular, and BalletRox’s The Urban Nutcracker satisfies the truest of them.
- Live and kicking
Yes, we suffer from an embarrassment of riches when it come to live music here in the Boston area.
- Not through yet
Paul Taylor brags that he’s violated just about every taboo in American culture over his 50-plus years of creative work and he’s not through yet.
- Staying true
With his roots in the popular ’90s band Chisel and his passion for punk-influenced, politically minded music, Ted Leo is a man with all types of fans.
- Vietnam and Victoriana
War is hell in Streamers — and few of the characters have even been to one.
- Going Ga Ga
Video: Spoon live at First Act Guitar Studio
- Less
Topics:
Music Features
, Entertainment, Music, Ernest Hemingway, More
, Entertainment, Music, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Younger, Marlene Dietrich, Erik Wormwood, Marc Pinansky, Less