Captured Tracks is one of the most exciting independent record labels fostering the imaginative, hardworking descendants of dark postpunk and shoegaze today that pull from Factory Records and second generation 4 AD. Two weeks ago San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord and label owner Mike Sniper (Blank Dogs) hosted a cozy, fog machine-insulated, candlelit showcase with SF’s confessionary, one man synth project Feelings, and C/T’s very own Blouse, as well as their brooding older brother the Soft Moon. We caught up with multi-instrumentalists Charlie Hilton (vocals/guitar) and Patrick Adams (bass/programming) after-hours, trading thoughts about the power of nostalgia, Mattel issued drum machines and early beginnings.
I want to start by talking about your life experience with music before Blouse.
CH: My dad is a pretty intense musician. He was in a band in the 70′s who signed with George Harrison’s record label. They were a devotional band and they followed this guru around and played a lot of music. He always played so when I grew up there were guitars around everywhere and when I was 11 I just kind started strumming on one of his guitars and one day I woke up, I didn’t know what I was doing, ha ha, and I had no idea and my dad – he’s a horrible teacher! But one day I woke up and there was a guitar in my bedroom. It wasn’t my birthday or anything and I just woke up and saw it there. It sounds really cheesy! But I saw it there and it was this really magical moment because I didn’t recognize it but it was for me. It was my guitar. He decided this and I felt that the guitar gave me reason enough to start learning chords and so from pretty much early middle school I played in my bedroom before I went to sleep.
I wrote really miserable songs about how miserable I was and I wrote a lot of bad songs. I’ve always felt really appreciative for those years because I wrote a lot of awful songs. They were really honest but they um, they um – I think you have to be able to write bad songs before you can write good songs. From there I just always played music after that. I was in a few bands when I lived in LA. Nothing ever got too serious. We never practiced. But it’s always just been kind of a default to play music but I’ve never been as serious as I am now about being in a band. It kind of happened really surprisingly.
What constitutes seriousness?
CH: Just practicing a lot. Practicing is something that you don’t always want to do, you’re like, “Okay, we have to practice,” but then you get there and it feels good. But it’s hard to treat music that way – like to treat it as something that you really need to work hard at because it always came really easy to me and I never took singing lessons or anything and I’m just starting to do that kind of thing now and do vocal exercises and stuff like that. It feels a lot more serious now.
PA: I think another reason why it’s become serious is just because of the way the band started, which we were actually talking about on the way here today between Eureka, CA and San Francisco on the 101 with the pounding rain.
CH: Yeah that was fun.
PA: We were just kind of recollecting just how this whole thing got started and I actually kind of needed to be reminded and luckily Charlie has a better memory than I do. We had multiple stages in the band where we weren’t exactly sure if we were going to take it seriously. We had defining moment when Jake (Jacob Portrait – producer for Blouse, Unknown Mortal Orchestra bassist) delivered some songs to us that he had mixed; it sounded really good to us. We were really happy with it. It was “Into Black.” It was the first track that we ever really heard and thought, “Oh this is something that we actually could take seriously now.”
That puts your relationship with Captured Tracks into perspective. You created something you really like and that someone else really liked and it seems like that was pretty smooth out of the gates for you guys. I’m wondering what it is then that you think that people are drawn to and attracted to about Blouse. What do you think it is about your sound that resonates?
CH: I hope that it is, I hope that it’s – it feels very mortal to me, it feels like, it feels like we, I’m really attracted to kind of messy music and songs that are aren’t perfectly curated and that’s been our experience in the studio. We go in and we experiment a lot with songs. We never really know how they’re going to turn out and I think that um, um….
I’m sorry. I’m really tired. And I just lost my train of thought. Remind me of the question again because I had a point.
I’m putting you on the spot.
CH: That’s okay.
It’s kind of like asking you, “What do you think you smell like?”
CH: Oh oh! I’m hoping that the songs are just, they’re really simple and the melodies are simple and they’re very like – we’re not doing anything that new, I don’t think, but I hope that the songs are good enough and honest enough? And I think our haphazard way of recording has made them feel natural when you listen to them. It doesn’t feel contrived to me at all and I know that a lot of people think that we’re this nostalgic, kind of like ’80s band. We get that label a lot but I’ve never felt that we’ve decided to do that. I don’t feel like we’re a caricature and I think that comes through in our music.
PA: And that can be said for all of Captured Tracks really.
CH: Yeah, yeah.
PA: At the end of the day it’s just good music.
That’s perfect because the next question I want to ask you about is what Blouse thinks about how nostalgia works. It’s such a strange thing. I wanted to know what your take on nostalgia is and how it works for the creator and also how it works for the listener. What is it about being alive and making music now and the genuflection to the ’80s. Why does it occur to us now? You’re both making music now and taking music in and listening to it. How does it work?
CH: We met in graphic design, we were studying and I was taking a lot of art history and one of the weirdest things was that art movements and art always looks back, it seems overly simplistic but, they skip back and they’re always looking back. It’s like it’s this natural thing that you do when you’re making art because you don’t know where else to look because you can’t look into the future and so… Nostalgia – it’s like it happened before and so there’s something about, we all – it’s all we have kind of. I mean your memories, it’s all – we’re kind of, it’s what we’re made of and I think specifically in relation to myself I do not have a good memory and I don’t remember a lot of my childhood. I just remember feelings, I remember feelings that I’ve had and specifically I was deep as a child. I thought a lot about death and I just felt really old but it was in the most beautiful way.
All the time?
CH: Yeah I felt like an old woman. I don’t know. It was weird. I don’t think that’s special. I think maybe we all did when we were little. We just kind of have a better sense of what life is.
So perhaps every human being considers death and the end and it relates to making music in the sense that it’s a way of coping, you make or listen to a kind of music that existed before. Do you practice any kind of resistance in terms of not reaching into the past, to try to not go there?
CH: I do. I do because you hope that it can only be helpful. It’s not good to reach into the past if it’s not helpful. If we’re just talking about the ’80s specifically there’s just these really like clear, catchy melodies and simple song structures and a dreaminess in vocal resonance and reverb.
Like Cocteau Twins?
CH: Yeah sure, it’s like spooky and mysterious. There’s so much mystery in life and I feel like that kind of music kind of draws you into that mystery a little bit and lets you have a little bit of wonder. I don’t know if all of our records are going to sound like that or if they’re going to sound as muddled and spooky but at least right now it feels like the most natural thing to do for us.
I’m really curious about equipment. I’m really curious about programming and what I’m hearing on the record. On the recording I’ll think that I’m listening to organic drums from track to track and then all of a sudden I think it’s a drum machine instead.
CH: Yeah the drums on the record are totally like – some of them are completely synthetic and some of them are, there are about four different drummers that played on it. Paul (Paul Roper, ex-The Mint Chicks) played on “Into Black.”
PA: It’s kind of an all-star cast of drummers actually because it’s Keil (Corcoran) from Starfucker, Paul (Roper) and Jake (Portrait) did a bunch of stuff too.
CH: And that was just a product of us being in the studio and Jake would play the drums but he’s not a drummer and we were just like, “This song works with synthetic drums and this song needs a live drummer, who could we can we bring in to play?”
What are the synthetic drums coming out of?
CH: We have an Alesis D4 and all the drum machine songs came from that then there’s the one with the pad.
PA: Mattel made a toy drum machine in the ’80s that has really awesome sounds on it as well and we use that.
I want to get into some of the lyrics, specifically on “White.” I want know why, why…
PA: This is Mike Sniper
CH: This is Captured Tracks.
Hey Blank Dogs.
MS: Oh you’re doing an interview?
CH: Yeah, yeah you’re included.
PA: Officially.
MS: Noooooooo.
Yes.
CH: There’s no video.
I don’t have a camera. There might not be anything after this interview. This audio recorder is digital it’s raining and I could crash my bike on my way home and all of this could be lost. But back to “White” because it’s a confusing song. I want to know…
CH: What the hell it’s about?
Well lyrically it’s intriguing because to me it’s this story about, it’s something about a girl who’s all in white and she makes this point to say that she’s employed and the employment part is…
CH: Employed is a verb, it means distracted and it doesn’t just mean to have a job, it actually means to be distracted. It’s a story about a girl who is really drawn to someone and is really uncomfortable in a space with this person in the same space and that’s what’s employing her.
The knee is a safe place?
CH: Yeah. It’s just kind of that feeling that maybe all of us have had when you’re just, you just want someone to touch you so badly. It’s just this sort of, you know, the knee is just… it’s just…
Wait, why the knee?
CH: Because it’s right there!
PA: Ha ha ha ha. It’s a tender spot.
And “save me“?
CH: “Save me” is just kind of like, “Save me from my mind.” Like to “save me” from my mind and from being distracted like as soon as you put your hand on my knee I don’t have to think about it anymore and feel exposed. “Save me” from the attraction and from that feeling of wanting a person, wanting someone to touch you. And white is just something that makes you feel more exposed and pure. I’ve always loved that Church song too, “Under the Milky Way.” There’s a line in there somewhere about white and it’s just really nice imagery and the white is in a dark space. White stands out and there’s that feeling, you know, of maybe not wanting to stand out.
