Apparently Sam Simkoff is out buying some new drum sticks. Or at least trying to. It's 6pm on a rainy 23rd February in Paris, and apparently finding replacements isn't that easy. It turns out that the shop suggested was less a music store and more a pawn shop. And the only three drum sticks in the place belonged to the owner. The reason for such a search becomes clear about four hours later, when no fewer than four drummers rip through the maelstrom of set closer "Celebration", which also happens to be the last track on new album "Family", the warmly received follow-up to the blog fuelling "The Throne Of The Third Heaven Of The Nations' Millennium General Assembly". Le Loup's 2007 debut release made quite a splash in the music world; for many the darkly anxious tales, at times of the apocalypse, at others simply driven by disillusionment and uncertainty, were more than enough to enjoy the album. But some in the blogosphere took it upon themselves to dissect the admittedly intriguing title, even to the point of neglecting the actual musical content. I ask Sam, the band founder and creative hub, whether he was surprised by the reaction.
"In terms of the first [album's title], I didn’t really think about it much before putting it out. It all went by so quickly that I didn’t have time to consider the kind of tide of critical opinion. It’s not really something, when you’re just starting out, that you tend to worry about: about how long your name is, and where you chose it. It didn’t occur to me that it mattered that much."
But it did. Those that didn't understand it called it pretentious. Some seized on the Dante's Inferno and apocalypse themes, hitched them onto the 11 September release date, and got lost in a swirl of doomsday conspiracies and cries of "the end is nigh!". Whilst some did realise that it was named after an infamous piece of outsider art, created by James Hampton, some writers, in a post-modern twist of music journalism, spent entire reviews sneering at previous reviews that missed the reference. Sam appears to have looked on with a certain ironic bemusement, tinged, unsurprisingly, with a hint of disappointment.
"It always struck me [how many] words were devoted to how wordy the title was. People were saying completely unnecessary, unrelated things to the music. At a certain point it got tiresome; I was very eager with the first one to hear how people would approach it. It was always kind of a bummer when, instead of them being like 'I like this song, I don’t like this song', it was like 'Urr, what about the title?'. I mean, what are you supposed to do with that? But it never really got us going."
The album began life in Sam's bedroom, as song-writing became a mechanism for coping with post-university life. Intensely personal, "delicate and ornate" songs (as Sam puts it) that may never have seen the light of day had he not befriended a few bands on MySpace and been spotted by Jonathan Poneman. With a record label and a band built up around the first album's songs, tours began to roll by. And inevitably the issue of the second album arose, and how to follow such a curio.
"For the second album, we didn’t try and figure that [reaction to the first album] into the way we made the album. There were all sorts of new challenges and cool ideas that we kind of had our hands full with. So we didn’t really get much into the whole, 'how do we present this to the public?'"
Going from an extremely singular creative experience to writing for a fully-formed band could have presented difficulties, but Sam is balanced in his assessment of the group's progression.
"It became much more of a group production. It came from a different source," he says. "The first one was a lot more insular. It was a reaction, a coping mechanism for the situation that I was in. The second one was more of a group exercise, an expression of how we felt, playing together, the emotions that we could have with each other. So the writing process changed a lot." This process originally involved mapping out prospective tracks in his head and committing them straight to a computer, a style that was unlikely to suit the new multi-membered unit. "If you have a very strict definition of what [the] song is, more often than not, you’re going to come out frustrated. So instead, what we tried to do was that I would come with a very loose interpretation of the song: the lyrics, the melody, the general tempo, maybe (sometimes that changed). And maybe a chord progression, although that was subject to change as well. So basically what we’re dealing with is a melody and beat, or a melody and a progression. And then we would kick it around for a long time, because that would yield much more satisfying results."
Although the more individualistic approach clearly suited him, he admits "As much as I might want to keep things as perfect as they are in my own brain, that doesn’t produce anything surprising. And I think that if I had gone into the second album with the same exact approach, I would have come out with something similar to the first album. And I think that would have been a real bummer. And so there is this joy of suddenly having something that you consider sacred and serving it up to a group of people, and it being twisted and reformed. It’s something completely different, and just as beautiful."
"Family" is just that. Twisted, joyous and at times incredibly beautiful, the mesmeric claustrophobia of "The Throne..." has been exchanged for a real sense of liberation. "Grow" is light and breezy, while "Forgive Me" is five minutes of pure euphoria. There's even a track called "Celebration"!
"Those three were pretty much off the cuff. There were certain songs in which we took a lot more care when producing them. Those three in particular were more like we knew what we wanted, and we just did it. And it felt great." It's a demonstration of just how different the second album ambience is that "Forgive Me" was recorded "more for fun than anything else."
That's not to say that the album is anything other than a Le Loup production. That same delightful sense of anticipation remains. The songs remain as hypnotic as ever. It's just that the fear of things coming to an end has been replaced, for the most part, by thoughts of what there is to come and a contented acceptance of the 'here and now', encapsulated perfectly in "Morning Song". And he is quick to point out that, although having exchanged the twelve-word title of their debut for a one-word second-album title (take that, bloggers!), they both share similarities.
"The reason I like the first title was because of the shape of it. I considered the music ornate, baroque. The title seemed to mirror that. It had a certain cadence to it; it keeps going and going. And I think with both titles, they came from the same place: we just liked the shape of these words, of these phrases. To me, "family ", beyond the direct connotations of the word, is just a very pretty-sounding word. And there are all sorts of complicated concepts tied up with that; just as many as, if not more than, the first."
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A similar sense of the whole also hangs over both albums. "The Throne..." and "Family" are collections of songs that cannot exist alone, in which themes and melodies surface, melt away and re-emerge in slightly altered forms. "Beach Town" and "Neahkahnie" go even further, sharing verses and the same basic melody. This awareness of the ensemble becomes very apparent to me three hours later, when the band strolls on stage. Nor has the production process of "recording little tidbits, twisting them together, tweaking them, discarding them, and recording them again", as Sam charmingly describes it, affected their ability to transfer these songs to a live setting.
"Coming back to it [the music], and getting it back on a live stage, was pretty easy. Once you work with people for long enough, we all know where we’re coming from, musically, we all mesh personally, and it becomes a lot more intuitive. We would just get in, have a practice, and do it. It took some tweaking, but it was relatively painless."
Which is fortunate because, like many modern-day groups, the band is on the road relatively frequently. In fact, this is already their third time over in Europe since 2007. The continent seems to agree with them.
"People are super warm here," smiles Sam. "They’re very polite, very careful to listen to the song, and clap at the allotted times. Which is funny, because you go to the States, they like the music, but you go to any show and there’re going to be people talking over the entire thing. I guess they’re two completely different musical cultures."
Which do you prefer? Do you like people to be hypnotised by the stage, staring straight at the lead-singer?
"People need to be looking at me all the damn time! (Laughs.) I think honestly, our favourite crowds are the ones that can get into it, in some shape or form, and if that means being very still during songs and then clapping afterwards, or just going ape-shit during the songs, then it doesn’t really matter. As long as you get some sort of response."
This particular tour has taken them from Spain to all across France (their European label Talitres Records is based in Bordeaux) and will see them dip into Belgium and the Netherlands before sprinting back across the pond for a trip down to SXSW in Austin. All in just over a month. Pretty exhausting, eh?
"Certainly for a band our size. We can’t afford a tour bus: we’re in this van, and you don’t have an allotted driver. It’s really tiring. I think that once you hit critical mass, in terms of how much you sell, you can probably afford to get a tour bus…"
With your name on the side…
"Yeah, preferably with some sort of sparkly thing going on. (Laughs.) But it is super tiring. Especially in Europe because everything’s so beautiful over here. Maybe it’s just because I’m not used to it. You just want to see everything."
Sam admits that an extra day in Paris is tempting, but unfortunately for his sight-seeing plans, the band's tour schedule has other ideas. A date in Rouen beckons, but not before clambering up on stage at the Café de la Danse and delivering a quite startling set of spell-binding and at times psychedelic songs. For the hardcore few crowded at the front of the stage, the Parisian night has been brightened immeasurably by Le Loup's songs of desolation, of growth, of loss and of happiness. Towards the end of a very thoughtful forty-five minutes or so spent with Sam, he muses aloud:
"Music is great, but it’s also, when you get right down to it, sometimes tremendously frivolous. We spend so much time talking about what a musician is, about the songs, when there are so many things to be talking about, so many things in the world that are interesting. Music is what I love to do, and I really enjoy it, but its immediate benefit is very unclear. It’s got a social benefit, and it’s got a cultural benefit, but you sometimes look at people who are mapping the human genome, and you think, is it really worth that?"
It's an interesting thought, and one that demonstrates just how much thought and consideration Sam puts into his music. But I'm sure that fans of Le Loup's music would argue that the band more than justify their existence. And maybe one day they'll get their driver and a tour bus with their name on the side. They certainly deserve to.
Le Loup tour dates:
3rd March, 2010 - Le Grand Mix, Tourcoing, France
4th March, 20010 - La Laiterie, Strasbourg, France
6th March, 2010 - Theatre Denis, Toulon, France
13th March, 2010 - Grounds for Change, Meadville, PA
14th March, 2010 - Vollrath Tavern, Indianapolis, IN
Le Loup online
Talitres Records online
Café de la danse online
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