Photograph by Jason Stoff
Last week, the local Britpop quartet Aquitaine offered up its second release, American Pulverizer, Part 2, a follow-up to the band’s recorded debut of mid-2012. As with the first EP, this one’s five songs, laced with British-inflected pop, circa ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s a fine sound and one that sets them apart from a lot of peers in the scene.
Since 2012, the group’s gone through a lineup shift and the usual challenges of adult life, keeping the band active, but not as on-the-scene as it may’ve been. But with the new release come new shows, including two this month. Dave Collett, a founding member of the band, originally and briefly named Supermoon, checked in with stlmag.com on the band’s recent efforts and upcoming hopes.
Before that Q & A, we’ll note that the group’s next gig is coming right up, on Friday, January 24. The venue is Plush, and Aquitaine’s sharing the stage with England in 1819, MusicEmbryo and Owen Pye.
Remind those of us who enjoyed the original American Pulverizer how this two-part effort came to be. It was always considered to be a double-release, with a bit of time between the two installments?
We set out to record the first American Pulverizer, Part 1 rather quickly, once we had a group of songs together and “ready,” but always with the intention that we’d want to do a Part 2 right after. I think we probably envisioned the second EP coming out a bit quicker, with less time in-between releases. There’s a span of about 18 months in between the two. However, once we got into the process of recording the second one, it became apparent that we wanted the songs on Part 2 to develop a bit organically—so we wanted to take our time to let the solos and some of the additional instrumentation “find themselves” before we decided it was all ready.
And for the predictable follow-up questions, can you give a sense of the writing, recording and releasing process this time out, including your decision to go with bandcamp.com again?
We really followed the same process that worked so well the first time around. We are a band that shares songwriting duties; and again on this record, there are three primary songwriters for these five songs. Our process is probably like a lot of other bands: one person has a fairly established concept for a song, but we hone and develop it as a group in our rehearsals. By the end of this process, the new song really reflects everyone’s input. We had a great experience with Jason McEntire at Sawhorse Studios with our first album, so we started there again this time around. We recorded with him in January 2013 and then took the foundational tracks that we laid down there back to our own homes and did some additional tracking on our own gear. Then, this past summer, we had an opportunity to work with Glenn Burleigh (The Union Electric, The Defeated County) who recorded some additional tracking and did some of the mixing work. Like with the first one, we finished it all up with our friend and Grammy-winner Greg Thompson, who did the final mix and mastering in New York.
We’ve found that Bandcamp makes an ideal “central repository” for the digital version of the album. It’s a very clean and streamlined service that’s user friendly for the listener, and ideal for indie rock bands because compared to most other services, it really favors the artist in terms of the compensation model. That means if our fans choose to pay us for a copy of the music, Bandcamp is the most generous in passing most of that money back to the band. That said, we certainly see value in putting our music all over the digital music universe—so it’s also available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, etc. And we have a limited amount of physical CDs to sell in our favorite local record stores and at our shows. In essence, we want to make our music available in multiple ways and multiple formats so people can get it if they want it.
When projects take a big of time to play out, changes can occur in people's lives, outside of their work in the collective. Were there any challenges or dramatic life-turns for folks as these albums came together?
I think we all experienced some level of good and bad life changes that occurred during the making of these two albums—marriage, loss, and other grown-up life events. But we are fortunate that our band dynamic stayed intact through it—if anything, helped us cope and provided a nice creative outlet for us all. Notably and recently: since we finished this EP, our friend and original member/founder Gerald Good, has amicably decided to leave the band. On the album, he plays bass and guitar as well as wrote and sings lead on Meteor Showers. We still remain friends, and we’re proud to support his latest business endeavor, Physics Punk Pedals—a line of custom high-end guitar effects devices. Graham Day, an amazing guitarist known for his work in the bands Give Her A Lizard and Prune, has joined us to round out the current Aquitaine line-up. (For live shows, I now play bass—but still write and record some of the guitar parts.)
What original groups in St. Louis inspire you right now? Which are the ones you enjoying playing gigs with, whether because of sympathetic sounds, or because they're simply good folks with whom to spend a night?
I’ve been somewhat active in the local music scene for almost 15 years—and I swear, I think right now it is strong as it’s ever been. There's a real good camaraderie among not only the bands, but the clubs/venues, the radio stations (notably KDHX), the rehearsal spaces like Utopia, and the local media. It's a great time to be in a band in St. Louis. We were very excited to play with Hidden Lakes and The Vondrukes, who are two of the most talented and entertaining bands in town, at our CD release party on January 3 at The Firebird. But there are so many good bands to go out and see on almost any given weekend. We’ve been honored to play with Karate Bikini and the Roundheels. I’m so glad Middle Class Fashion is getting their due respect; and I really like CaveofSwords, June Bug, The Dive Poets and Jungle Fire as well as the somewhat new band, Kadu Flyer, just to name a few.
Balancing out realism and enthusiasm, what's your definition of success re: American Pulverizer, Part 2? How would you like to see the work received? What's the distribution plan? What's the best-case scenario for it filtering out into the world outside of St. Louis?
For us, we’re really pleased with how this EP turned out and how well it reflects how we hoped it would turn out. So, in that way, it’s already successful. But we’re always glad when other people hear it and tell us that they really liked it and that it’s become something that they regularly listen to, rather than just something they listened to once or twice. That really means a lot. In this day and age, with the digital music services and the online nature of discovering and listening to music, we certainly hope people well outside the St. Louis area find out about it and like it as much as our local fans and friends do. I don’t know if we’ll do any extensive touring, so we’re really looking to use digital and social means to get the music beyond our borders. Meanwhile, we'll be gearing up to write, record and release another project; but it probably won't be called “American Pulverizer, Part 3.”
To listen to and/or purchase American Pulverizer, Part 2, check: http://aquitaine.bandcamp.com/.
