Pop Tarts

Orchestrated rock maneuvers its way through the grungy darkness



The rock underground has long been obsessed with aesthetics of ugly--or noise for noise' sake. Rather than building the now-familiar wall of chaotic guitars, a growing number of groups is drawing inspiration from the lushly orchestrated sounds of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left and albums by the Left Banke, Burt Bacharach and Love. In this era of non-stop sensory assaults, a little beautiful music couldn't be more welcome.

Rachel's of Louisville, Ky., who record for an offshot of the noise-rock haven Touch and Go, feature punk veterans playing minimalist instrumentals on piano, vocal and cello. Chicago's Yum-Yum decorate simple pop songs with mellotron and strings. And England's Tindersticks use a variety of instruments to turn their Leonard Cohen-style tunes into dramatic mood pieces. But the most inventive of these symphomaniacs are Richard Davies and Eric Matthews.

Working together as Cardinal, Davies and Matthews crafted an album that was one of the strongest releases of 1994, complete with arrangements elaborate enough to make George Martin blush. Late last year, Matthews released his solo debut, It's Heavy In Here, which includes songs like "Fanfare" and "Fried Out Broken Girl," majestic rockers in the mold of the Beatles ' "Penny Lane" and "For No One". While he still uses dramatic trumpet and piano flourishes, Davies' latest, There's Never Been A Crowd Like This, is more stripped, with the emphasis on his lilting vocals and impressionistic lyrics. "Do you see the color of my dream?/ The music pours out of Steve," he sings in "Sign Up Maybe for Being," a song about jamming with Flaming Lips drummer Steven Drozd.

Davies first appeared on the scene in the early '90s as the leader of the Moles, psychedelic garage rockers came together at college in Sydney, Australia. "We were an old punk band with an intellectual bent, which really destroyed our chances of communicating with anybody," Davie says, laughing. Melody Maker ran a rave review of the group's first album, Untune the Sky, and the band relocated to London in the hope of capitalizing on the good publickity. Things didn't quite work out as planned. "We all wound up working the night shift in a factory, packing copies of the Fievel Goes West video on a conveyor belt," Davie says. "It was real Dickensian."

The Moles disbanded, and Davies moved to the United States, settling in his wife's hometown of Boston. In early '94, he recorded one last album under his old band's moniker, usinng a cast of guest musicians. Released on the small Seattle indie Flydaddy Records, the horn-driven Instinct is the album Davies always hoped the Moles would make, a cross between Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Love's Forever Changes.

Two months later, Davies started on an even more ambitious project. Bob Fay, a Moles fan and drummer with the indie heroes Sebadoh, introduced Davies to Matthews, a native of the blue-collar suburb of Gresham, Ore. Matthews had studied trumpet at the San Fransisco Conservatory of Music, but he had abandoned his grand ambitions of playing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra when he was distracted by the city's rock scene. Davies and Matthews shared similar influences and the goal of making an old-fashioned baroque-pop record.

The result, Cardinal, is made up mostly of fragile, soul-searching tunes that Davies had been saving since his early days in London. Matthews added elaborate and moving scores and his smoky, baritone vocals. Theirs was an inspired pairing, but there was dissonance behind the lulling tones. "There was an intense relationship," says Davies. "There's good and bad about that." Adds Matthews: "It was fruitful, but Richard and I pretty much intended on making only one record together. He's more comfortable being his own boss, really."

Although he makes a point of saying how much he hates grunge and the Seattle sound, Matthews signed to Sub Pop Records. The hardest part of making It's Heavy in Here was finding string players in Oregon. "Portland is not a very strong music town," he says. "It would've been a lot easier in New York or L.A." The modish 26-year-old sang, conducted and played recorder, harpsichord, organ and trumpet; former Jellyfish member Jason Falkner engineered and added guitar. Unfortunately, Matthews lacks Davies' falir for fanciful wordpay, and the lyrics of some songs sound like sophomore poetry. But Matthews is nothing if not immodest. "There are certainly other arrangers who would've been more capable, but it wouldn't be as much me," he says. "I'd hope it communicates a special language."

One drawback of being an orchestral rocker is that you can't travel lightly. Matthews is reluctant to hop in a van and tour rock clubs, but he hopes Sub Pop will advance him enough money to take a "small" group of 20 musicins on the road to play theaters or performance spaces. Davies notes that he has released more albums in the last few years than he has played gigs, although he did make a high-profile appearance last fall at the CMJ music festival in New York, fronting a guest backing band, the Flaming Lips. Davies is now back in Sydney, learning to surf at age 31 and waiting for Flydaddy to release the latest and sparest of his musical adventures.

"I spent a lot of time with the Moles recording lots of layers of electric razors and transvestite prostitutes," Davies says. "You write a song and overdub lots of weird stuff on it. The Cardinal thing wss, you write a song and then out lots of layers of musical overdubs on it. This [album] was a case of trying to keep what I loved about the original composition whether I wrote it on pinao or guitar."

Davies and Mathews both say they're blissfully unaware of musical trends. Though they wouldn't mind if others followed in their paths, they say they're drawn to orchestrated sounds because the appeal is timeless. "If you want to know what was on my mind regarding the shape of the music," Davies says, "I'd really like to be making music that I'm totally comfortable hearing at age 56."

Written by Jim Derogatis, Rolling Stone, 3/7/96.


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