Where did all the good rock music go? Everything today is angry,
angst-filled yelling over a heavy bass and screaming guitars. It's
impossible to tell one band from the next. They could all join forces
and become Three Doors Down from Creed there was a Puddle of Mudd
that became Tantric due to some Saliva from Nickelback. It would save
everyone time, money and confusion.
Thankfully, Cracker remains as good as ever. Their potent and unique mix of modern rock and Americana roots is at its best on "Forever," the band's fifth studio album. It hit stores in January and Cracker hits Milwaukee on Sun., March 17 at the Miramar Theatre.
Singer/guitarist David Lowery was kind enough to chat with OMC about the group, rock music, touring, Cracker's Milwaukee connection and more.
OMC: Why did you decide to call the album "Forever?" What's the story behind that?
DL: I wish there were a good reason, but there really isn't. The art director was working on the artwork, and we had a photo where we were doing a sort of Dorothea Lang thing. The art director was asking us for a title and we weren't coming up with anything, so she just starting picking titles of songs and sending them as sort of mock-ups. And the whole point is, on the song "Forever," forever isn't really a good forever. It's like a drunkard's forever. It's a drunken promise of forever, so it's very unreliable. Plus, the people really don't look happy in that photo. Somehow it just worked.
{INSERT_RELATED}OMC: I'm not sure if this is the right word, but the album sounds very carefree. I can hear how much fun you guys are having. Is that an accurate description, and has recording always been that way?
DL: Certainly this is more carefree than some of the other records we've done. In a way, it's similar to another record we did called "Golden Age." It's very much a studio record and the recording process is a very important part of the sound. It's very dense and there's a lot of instruments and studio manipulation on both records. But this record was all accidental where as "Golden Age" was all methodically planned out. We had a string section. This record has some of the same quirks and sound changes, but it's all accidental. We did it all in nine months. We would go in and play four and five songs, and stay in the studio for about a week playing them in different ways. Then I'd go in as the producer and start editing and chopping things up. Sometimes they were completely different takes with completely different instruments. We just started picking out the stuff that we liked. I'm not sure how carefree it could have been since we did it over a period of nine months. It wasn't casual.
OMC: Over the years, how has the music changed and stayed the same? How has it progressed over time?
DL: To us, the idea of what current music is covers a period from now to about 30 years ago. It's been almost four years since we made a studio record. Things have changed in that time. The big electronica rock-is-dead scare has come and gone again. The drum machine seems to have found its place in rock music without overwhelming it. We've incorporated little bits of technology into what we're doing now. But it's not a big part of our sound. And we've never been the most modern band. We're usually like three or four years back of everybody else. There are some little bits of 80s and 90s stuff in this record that wasn't in the last one. But otherwise I think it's a similar approach.
OMC: Is intelligent rock an oxymoron these days? How would you define it?
DL: I think it is an oxymoron. When you have songs where the chorus is "Shut up when I'm talking to you!" and "It's my way or the highway," it's like rock doesn’t seem very smart right now. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We don't think rock was always this way and we're not trying to do intellectual rock. We're not trying to do stuff like Stephen Malkmus did with Pavement and pull stuff from "Finnegan's Wake" and other books and make real intellectual kind of rock. But compared to what the status quo is right now, I think people think that rock has to be dumb and monosyllabic. And it doesn't have to be. It's the notion that you have to pander to the masses. We don't care about the masses and we never have. To become popular, I don't think you have to do that. I don't think people want to be pandered to.
OMC: Is there an effort on your part to please longtime fans and recruit new ones, or do you not worry about that?
DL: I've always felt that you need to be selfish and self-indulgent first, and please yourself first. That's why we don't use a set list. We do a show according to what our mood is that night. And eventually you build a bond with the audience as the show goes on and they start influencing what songs you pick. But I think you have to start with yourself. I wouldn't want to go and see a band that wasn't enjoying themselves or playing the kind of music that they wanted to. I've seen bands play their popular song that doesn't sound like any of their other songs and look like they wanted to kill themselves. I would never want to be in that position. We don't make an active effort to please our fans. I think they respect us because we don't pander to them. As far as a broader audience, I don't think what we do is weird or unintelligible for a mainstream audience. That's more an issue with how we've been marketed.
OMC: In the first song there are the lyrics "guarded by monkeys," and the fourth track is titled "Guarded by Monkeys." Is there a story behind that?
DL: Yes. It goes back to our collaboration with Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse. He's been a friend of mine for a long time. On the last few things we've done, I've had Mark do the same things for us that I was doing for him, which is a certain style of producing. Hanging out, drinking coffee, playing a little guitar and taking about a week to record one song. That's what he did on the song "Brides of Neptune." In the course of this, we discussed our love of records by Daniel Johnston, Syd Barrett and Roky Erickson. All these people who made records while they were going nuts. The idea came up to one day fake that. We were discussing how you could accurately fake that. You would have to start several records in advance and mention monkey in every single song for no apparent reason. And mention it more and more often and you could probably pull it off. So we were working on "Brides of Neptune" and I had the chorus but no words for the verses. I started with the end of the song first and worked my way back. Then I had this other music that I didn't have any words for and I thought, damn, I shouldn't have used that guarded by monkeys line cause it works really well for the chorus on this. The songs are related and that's how that came about. And then it gets mentioned all through the record in both English and Spanish, sometimes in backing vocals.
OMC: "What You're Missing" is an interesting and humorous song. How did that come about?
DL: We were trying to do a War song. Me and Johnny went to high school in Southern California and heard them all the time. It's always been a band we have really loved. Whenever you buy a mixing board, people will tell you what else was recorded on it. There's always a legend that a used equipment dealer tries to give you. And they're usually not true, but a friend of mine told me that War records were recorded on it and it turned out to be true. Originally, I sang the song all the way through, and it wasn't that interesting to us. It went on and didn't do anything, but we liked the music. So we went on and chopped it up. Then, somehow, it came up that all of us should sing a verse, a kind of Sly and the Family Stone thing. And that's what we did. Everybody wrote a verse and nobody knew what it was in advance. We recorded them and suddenly liked the song again. It's supposed to be the credits on the record.
OMC: You touched on this before, but why do you like touring without a set list?
DL: There are little couples or triples or groups of four songs in a row that we do together anyway. I played so many years with a set list, and I think half the time we threw away the set list halfway through the show. You think, this isn't working. It keeps me more in tune with the show, and it's more of a hassle because you have to pay more attention. I also don't get that thing where you've been on the road for four weeks straight and you're playing in Lincoln, Nebraska and you're halfway through the song and you feel like you just woke up and were daydreaming.
OMC: The band played Letterman recently (Mon., Jan. 28). When you're only playing one song, do you work extra hard on making it sound good?
DL: That's a sure-fire way to make it sound lame. Yes and no. We've only rehearsed about five times in the last year. We usually only do one rehearsal and then start a tour. We play anywhere between four and ten shows a month anyway. But we have taken a pretty long break this time.
OMC: Are you excited to get back out on the road?
DL: Yes and no. I've enjoyed being home. But I love playing live and playing in front of an audience.
OMC: What is Cracker's Milwaukee connection?
DL: That has a lot to do with the Sound of Music (recording studio Lowery is a part of). We're not sure how it happened, but there was a band called Tweaker from Milwaukee that recorded in our studio a couple times. After that they were living in Chapel Hill, and before we knew it about 50 people from Milwaukee moved to Richmond. I'm not sure how that happened. It was really funny. Maybe it's because they are similar cities. A lot of drinking and a lot of bars. There's also a slacker element. And they're cheap places to live.
Cracker's new album, "Forever," hit stores everywhere on Tues., Jan. 29. They come to the Miramar Theatre on March 17. For more information go to www.crackersoul.com.
