PopMatters has had plenty of nice things to say about Baltimore’s the Oranges Band (specifically here and here. When the band announced that they were headed into the studio to begin work on their new record, having soldiered through personnel changes and struggles at their label, Lookout Records, it seemed like an excellent time to catch up and to allow them to speak for themselves by cataloging the happenings. Over the next several weeks, Oranges Band frontman Roman Kuebler will write in with updates from the sessions for the band’s third full-length. Judging from the preview of the songs that the band gave at a recent show at Cake Shop in New York City, the arrangements are denser and the lyrics step a city block away from the sundazed atmospherics of their last album. Always an excellent live band, I’ve never heard them sound better. The hope now is that Kuebler will help us better understand the process, or at least the process in this specific case, of taking a group of people and a set of songs and bringing them into a studio for a set amount of days, singing and playing into microphones, plugging and unplugging effects boxes, adjusting levels, hoping nothing important breaks or gets lost or erased, and then, hopefully, walking out with a finished document that comes close to your expectations and which you can then turn around and call your new album.
—Jon Langmead

The Name of This Band Is The Oranges Band

So we’re making this album and when making an album it’s important to remember that a recording is a factual document for the most part. It is the representation of a performance that happened for real. (It’s important to remember that when listening to an album also.) It is a point of view that doesn’t necessarily change anything but it does, for better or worse, kind of level the playing field. So, no matter what the budget, or where it was done, when the engineer hit the record button, David Bowie physically performed the lead vocal to “Young Americans”. (It is also rather funny to think about this fact when you hear it come on the PA at K-Mart while shopping for household items.)

Now, of course, in the context of beginning to make a new record this is NOT what you want to remember. I mean, it is really hard to try and create anything in a world where you are, theoretically, on a level field with David Bowie. But what is useful in that theory is that you have a time and a method to record these ideas that you have come up with… and that is what you have and that is when it is going to happen. All of the performances are added together and sometimes refined and sometimes redone and sometimes removed and, in the end, they make up your “SONG”. And your songs are then added and ordered and then re-ordered and sometimes removed and this makes your “ALBUM”. And it has happened a million times before and more and more and more and will continue, in some way, forever, I think.

I have to admit, though, I do tend to get a little hung up on the whole idea of the album. It’s about the potential. We all know what albums mean to us, so… you know, can I make one of those? But in starting this album, our third proper full length, the approach is meant to be a little less deliberate and a little more natural. Let the band sound like the band and let the songs be the songs… as well as they can be, at least.

The Oranges Band on this as-yet-to-be-named album, are a much different group than we were just over a year ago and on our last album, The World and Everything In It, which came out in 2005. When dealing with a group of people you never know what is going to go down and most of the fun happens when things get unexpected. Losing our bass player to the family life and then losing both his replacement and our long-time lead guitar player to what amounts to a sitcom of inter-band dynamics left only Dave [Voyles] on the drums and myself on guitar and on the mic. Faithfully soldiering on, it took us no time at all to catch Baltimore’s Pat Martin, our erstwhile touring companion, up on the bass bits and we spent most of the year clowning around as a three piece with an occasional fourth wheel, Jim Glass (whom we borrowed from Impossible Hair) doing mostly backing vocals. But as for carrying on with this album, I think we knew that we would need to fill out the spots with another guitar (because we love guitars) and I knew that I didn’t want to just add parts on top of my parts (because I am not that impressive on the leads, eh?) so we’d need a new axe.

I had been wondering for awhile what we were going to do about not having that fourth corner when my friend sent me a YouTube clip of Guided By Voices playing “Pop Zeus”. The Oranges Band had toured with GBV a couple years earlier and I did a few tours playing bass with Spoon, who also toured with GBV, so I knew Doug Gillard (GBV’s only true lead guitar) and the rest of the guys well enough. Doug and I had often talked about doing some work together. As far as I am concerned, “Speak Kindly...” is the best treatment of Bob Pollard’s songs and I had dreams that Doug could work a similar strain of magic with some of my songs as well. So while I am watching this clip of “Pop Zeus” I remembered that Doug had co-written this one… and what a great song this is… and what a great player Doug is… and what ever happened to us working on some songs… and wait a minute, I need a guitar player!

And now you are wondering why, if this is a recording blog, is there no talk of recording and microphones and compression ratios and digital vs. analog and such like. Well, it’s because we haven’t started!

—Roman Kuebler

—Jon Langmead

Harlem Shakes w/ Deerhoof
Diary #7

The last days of tour felt like the last days of summer camp.

Busdriver‘s last show was Winston-Salem. After we’d all sadly exchanged goodbyes, Brent and Satomi from Deerhoof suggested a group picture. Satomi urged us to build a human pyramid for the occasion.

The Winston-Salem venue, the Warehouse—a commune/coffee shop/rock venue/art gallery extraordinaire—let us sleep in their basement. Bleary-eyed and already wistful, we gathered our sore limbs from the dusty rugs, and forced ourselves to try a drink called “Electric Yoohoo.” It worked. We were ready to go.

When you tour a place that you’ve never visited, you’re compelled to collect peculiar experiences. It becomes a compulsion. Hence our eating Fried Green Tomatoes, Shark, hominy, and all sorts of stuff that we would never order at a diner in Brooklyn, even if they had it.

Our last show with Deerhoof was at the Ottobar in Baltimore. Everyone on the tour except for John from Deerhoof and Lexy from the Shakes was sick. Lexy fiendishly consumed oranges we’d purchased in bulk in Florida (oranges are best van deodorizer ever!). Greg and Greg’s brother David, from the Unity Reggae Band, joined us for a few songs on drums and tenor sax respectively.

After our shows we confessed the nicest things we’d been thinking about each other’s bands for the whole tour but would feel funny saying, and then proceeded with normal interaction. We said we’d miss the members of Deerhoof as musicians and people, and we already do.

We stayed in our friends’ hotel room that night in Baltimore and briefly attempted to act like rock stars before we went to a 7/11, purchased children’s cereal, ate it, and went to sleep.

No one told us how funny it would feel to come home from tour. Back in New York, Kendrick, Caural (Zach from Busdriver), and Lexy met up and attended a stellar Volney Litmus show even though we’d been hanging out for days on end.

You’ve led such a strange lifestyle and all of a sudden you’re re-inserted into your more mundane routine, alongside your friends who haven’t gone anywhere. We were only gone two weeks but the intensity of the experience and the friendships that we developed made it feel like two months. We miss the simplicity and singularity of purpose that you experience on the road, where you have a very particular job that you do increasingly well each night (ideally) and your only responsibility is to do it as best you can.

After all, you can’t pay taxes from a moving van. Isn’t that a Willie Nelson lyric?

Thanks for reading,

—Harlem Shakes

Harlem Shakes w/ Deerhoof
Diary #6

The van smelt funny today.

When last we spoke, the subject of our discontent was THE NOISE. The noise is the total lack of silence on tour, and its result is mild insanity. But today we couldn’t help but shout over the constant chattin’ and iPod shufflin’ that something smelt awful—not funny… awful. Thevandra has become a moving dungeon, a pit of sounds and smells that puts Hades, or CBGB‘s for that matter, to shame.

But, at last, we arrived in Athens.

Out of the underworld we soundchecked with a wonderful sound guy and girl who gave us a lovely, leisurely run through our monitors. The sound was fantastic on stage (the sound at the 40 Watt Club tonight, and Common Grounds last night, have been some of the best of the tour). Come showtime, we were joined by the lovely voiced Larkin Grimm for our song “Red Right Hands.”

Then, on “Old Flames,” Greg from Deerhoof set up a second drum set and improvised. The joy was impossible to describe, and the fans in Athens were warm and responsive. It was absolutely our best show of the tour—if not our best show ever. Once the show was over, some concert-goers engaged in wine-fueled squabbles perilously close to our equipment, but, besides the pushing and shouting, Athens, Georgia, had been nearly perfect.

But, the fates are whimsical. Here’s a scene: you’re in the backseat lying down; windows wrap around, and there’s the sound of the engine… and then Todd backs the van into a parked BMW. You’re in the 40 Watt parking lot and a man who sells Polish Sausage (with, apparently, “Comeback Sauce") is screaming at you. “We need to find the owner of this BMW,” he roars. A crowd of vagrants gathers around (not kidding). 

Todd, who, thanks to his new Airborne addiction, has had 4000% of his daily vitamin C is acting with a rare mixture of fear and tenacity. His already complex relationship with Jose receives added tension as Jose is the overlord of all things van-related.

Well, just as the crowd (led by the sausage salesman) begins circling Todd and chanting pagan war-prayers, the owner of the BMW appears. Strangely enough he begins apologizing to us. Apparently he was a friend of Kendrick’s and so now he “owes us dinner” or something.

Aware that our band is cursed, the club owner says, “I would rather be tied to the soil as another man’s serf, even a poor man’s, who hadn’t much to live on himself, than be King of all these, the dead and destroyed.”

Huh!?! With that, we leave you internet, until next time (wednesday) which will be our last time. And then it’s over. We love you, and we love Georgians!

Love, love, love,

—Harlem Shakes

Harlem Shakes w/ Deerhoof
Diary #5

Being in a band with five go-getters means that someone always wants to show the other guys some cool new music ("dude, have you guys heard “Mental Perturbation” by Morton Feldman”), tell a joke ("how many indie rockers does it take to screw in a light bulb? What—you don’t know? Yeah… you should really go check that out") or point out a sign that says something like “No Jesus No Peace, Know Jesus Know Peace.” Such fun can turn a good Shake bad.

To counteract all this over-stimulating, anxiety-attack-inducing fun, we’ve been taking solo walks around venue neighborhoods, putting on Jose’s gigantic, ear-enveloping headphones, and, like we did today, heading to the Gainesville public library to visit separate sections.

The previous day Kendrick, Todd, and Jose sought serenity at Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure. Key events included an outstanding 3D Spiderman-themed indoor rollercoaster (Todd: “the Deerhoof of rollercoasters"), a funnel cake and ice cream extravaganza, and an attempted picture with a dude dressed up as Cyclops, who, when Todd suggested we all take a picture together holding hands, said, “are you guys trying to make me look silly?”

Brent visited his grandfather, while all documentation of Lexy’s afternoon was destroyed in a goblin accident. We’ve all been admiring the Spanish moss in the south, and we still can’t believe that we’re touring with Deerhoof (and Budriver, who’s been blowing our minds nightly for several shows now)

We also can’t believe that the tour is only halfway finished. Home is but vague recollection; the reality of tour, apparently, is that you and your band say goodbye to all of your friends, family, and jobs, and do nothing but drive and play music for months on end. This was always something we understood intellectually, but grasping it emotionally requires actually living through the experience. Now, trying to remember the lives we lead back then is like trying to remember certain scenes from Lawrence of Arabia.

You stay classy, internet. See you Friday.

Love,

—Harlem Shakes

Harlem Shakes w/ Deerhoof
Diary #4

Hey Internets. As we get into the heart of our journey, it’s time we took care of some of the crew. No account of this tour would be complete without mentioning Peter Venuto’s glorious Electronic Rainbow Machine (ERM). Finally, someone has created the thinking man’s pyrotechnics. Each night we watch Deerhoof perform in front of this five-foot diameter circular rainbow, pulsing in time to the music.

It’s an incredible contraption—a three-pronged windmill with multicolored lights on each tab. When the windmill spins, it creates a sentient wall of color that whooshes, spins, and twitches—a perfect complement to Deerhoof’s cheerful paroxysms. His machine is the way we imagine the inside of Deerhoof’s collective band brain might look like.

And then there’s Peter Venuto himself, the friendly longhaired Canadian who operates the ERM live each night. (He got the idea for the rainbow machine, apparently, from early-computer-style player piano reels, and, not surprisingly, Las Fucking Vegas!) Crouched next to the band, wearing striped velvet pants and a zip-up sweatshirt with a tank-top underneath, Peter runs his fingers over a little pad of buttons that triggers the machine’s many subtle functions.

Deerhoof first befriended Peter after they witnessed his “trashlights”—trashcan lids outfitted 250 tiny LED lights that create an undulating, similarly colorful effect—and now he’s part of our big touring family, showing up at every gig with his magical windmill.

The crowd in Tampa Bay—where neither our new tourmate Busdriver, nor us, nor Deerhoof has ever been—was one of the tour’s absolute best. A fan built a purple rubber dinosaur for Deerhoof and gave it to Satomi who beamed with gratitude.

Last night we slept in a motel in Orlando that had a special rate for serial killers. We wistfully recalled the days when four-on-the-floor meant a dance-punk beat, not a sleeping arrangement. We woke up, and more than half the band (Jose, Todd, Kendrick) went to Disney World to protest Disney’s conservative politics and ride totally fucking awesome roller coasters. Lexy and Brent sought quiet places in which to hear the inside of their heads for the first time in many, many days.

Love for now,

—Harlem Shakes

Harlem Shakes w/ Deerhoof
Diary #3

We’re now four days into tour—four shows, four cities, four venues, and what feels like a thousand hours in Thevandra. A pattern is
developing. First, we drive all day:

Then, we arrive at a venue, load equipment into the club, soundcheck (if time and tattooed men permit), and find food.  Then, we play our set:

Once we’re off, we lose our shit over Deerhoof’s set, talk to strangers, pressure strangers into buying our t-shirts, frown, and move the blasted equipment into the goddamn van. Then we complain, drive to some kind person’s home (last night we literally begged the audience to find us somewhere to stay—this desperate tactic worked shockingly well and we stayed with a nice girl named Whitney), tell jokes and confide in each other, and sleep on the floor. Then we repeat.

The repetition is strangely liberating. Playing the same songs every night removes some of the usual “something to prove” anxiety. Empowered by this monotony, we’ve been performing with the same fearless spirit with which we check our email or go to the movies. Though we’re feeling progressively more comfortable on stage, we haven’t grown accustomed to how big these venues are, and how receptive and fun Deerhoof’s fans are. It’s still so exciting.

Deerhoof, as people, are so kind and warm that you find yourself being less cruel and condescending as a result of their influence. Watching Deerhoof perform, too, has been educational. They have so many qualities that we aspire to have—overflowing creativity, beautiful/creepy moods, the ability to be both challenging and accessible without sacrificing the integrity of either—that seeing them slay each night feels like both a kick-ass rock show and a study session.

Last night’s show, at Cumberland’s, a cavernous, dive-y venue in Charleston, SC, was brimming with college students, some throwing bottles, some throwing up. They crowd-surfed during our song, “Felt Wings,” which was funny because that song is particularly moody, and, for us at least, “chill.” But the show was as fun as our dinner at Hominy Grille, which is saying a lot.

We’d wanted to see the Confederate Museum and the Haunted Prison but we ended up sleeping late the next day. We’re currently on route to Columbia, SC. Dear internet, if this is a dream then I don’t want to wake up. More Monday…

Love,

—Harlem Shakes