It remains one of the most frustrating things about music-writing that no matter how much you love some bands there’s only so much you can do, and sometimes they never make it big. For me the preeminent example is Carissa’s Wierd, potentially my favorite band since The Beatles broke up. Seriously.
I wasn’t around for the very beginning, back in those heady days when pretty much every issue of The Stranger had a review insisting that you simply had to hear this band. The breathlessness with which the usually too-cool-for-school paper was hyping them should have clued everyone in (“Carissa’s Wierd is the kind of band on which you can easily develop a crush, just from watching them perform”), but somehow they continued to be the world’s best-kept secret. The fan base grew a little bit (including me in mid-2001 – one listen to “All Apologies…” and I was lost for good), but it never matched what we all expected.
Sometimes you just wanted to pound your hands against the unseen walls, rattle the bars, do something to make people understand what they were missing. We made mixtapes and CDs for friends, including a track from them on every one. At every chance we casually put on “Fluorescent Lights” or “The Color That Your Eyes Changed With the Color of Your Hair” or Drunk With the Only Saints I Know and hoped someone would (High Fidelity style) ask what was playing. We even tried to contact their (elusive) PR contact to bring them to our hometown out of own pockets.
Because you just knew deep down that if you could ever get people to take the time to truly listen it would all solidify, become as perfectly clear in their minds as it was in ours. Sometimes it worked, and the group of my friends who were fans grew slowly but surely. But each new one only made me want to tell more people.
And then, wonder of wonders, they were signed by a semi-major label (Sad Robot Records) and even got Chris Walla (whose job is pretty much to produce any meaningful indie pop record these days) to come in and lend a hand on their third record. And, unlike most bands – they did absolutely nothing to disappoint. Sure, Songs About Leaving might not have been quite as good as the previous couple albums, but it was pretty close.
So it was taking longer than expected, but it looked like they were finally on track for that move up. Remember, this is right when Death Cab and the Shins and all the rest were inching their way into the popular consciousness (pre-OC and Garden State by about a year), so it wasn’t unreasonable to think a band far better than either of those could find a place too. Sure, heartbreakingly intimate, low-fi songs with violins weren’t going to rush up the charts or anything but this stuff was just so good, surely there were more than enough people out there who could appreciate it.
And when we first heard their newest song Die, we began to wonder if we had set our sights too low. I mean, this song was beautiful beyond words, like all their others, but it also kind of…well…rocked. It had all the signs of a band who were ready to experiment with new sounds but lose none of what had made them great.
The pinnacle for me the concert on Valentine’s Day, 2003. It remains to this day the single best show I’ve ever attended – as good a proof as I’ll ever need for the existence of True Love. I had fallen, and fallen hard, for this band. And I realized that my love for them was all the more beautiful because it was always ready to be shared. I didn’t need to hoard them to myself. In fact, getting someone else to feel what I felt only made it that much better.
Then, before we knew it, it was all over. They broke up, moved on, and left us with just a few tantalizing hints of what could have been.
And now, not only are their records mostly out of print, and not only has virtually no one ever even heard All Apologies and Smiles, Yours Truly, Ugly Valentine (which is without a doubt one of the ten best songs ever written), and not only did they never get anything close to a fair reward for all the beautiful music they gave us, for the tears we shed, for the smiles and laughter and dreams…
Not only all of that, but to top it off, we have to listen to folks tripping over themselves expressing their love for Band of Horses (and maybe, if they’re really generous, mentioning that it formed out of the ashes of my beloved Carissa’s Wierd), and treating Mat Brooke like a random hanger-on for that band instead of as one of the musical geniuses of our generation.
For a few years I scoured every nook and cranny of the internet for news of a new project from him. For a long time there was nothing. And finally, what did emerge was Band of Horses, a good band but hardly what I was craving.
But the story doesn’t have to end there. From the ashes a fire shall be woken – and now, four years after Carissa’s Wierd, Mat Brooke still has songs to sing.
His new band is called Grand Archives and they have a few demos available, very rough, but revealing so much of what made me fall in love in the first place.
This is not simply Carissa’s Wierd, part II. Of course it couldn’t be, and I’m glad he didn’t try. There are few things quite as depressing as trying to recreate something that was once transcendent and ending up with a pale imitation.
So while these songs are still characterized by melodies that wrap around you like a blanket on a cold Autumn night, they also lope, maybe even dance a little. There is a lot more smiling here, maybe a little more of the sense of humor and self-awareness that comes with growing older. And there is even room for an anthemic buildup or two. And harmonies, harmonies galore!
Torn Blue Foam Couch – Grand Archives
I absolutely can’t wait to hear more. And in one of those ironies of life, a band with just a few demos has already been signed by Sub Pop after Carissa’s Wierd spent years far below the radar. But you’ll hear no complaints from me. Hopefully, this will be the chance for the rest of the world to hear what I’ve been loving all these years. In the meantime, check out their page at Sub Pop for some tour dates, a T-shirt, and a CD-R with the demos they’ve put together so far.
Finally, a few links. First, an article from The Stranger earlier this year about the band, including a great interview with Brooke.
Second, a glowing review from the Pitchfork Forkcast, including the following very accurate line: “No diss on ‘Fork folk favorite Band of Horses (or the country warbling of Sera Cahoone, or the bedroom confessionals of S), but so far, this sounds like the project most Carissa’s Wierd devotees have been pining for.”
Third, my previous trip down memory lane with Carissa’s Wierd (the second entry I ever made for this blog, in fact).
And last but certainly not least, a memoir on the experience of loving Carissa’s Wierd from Jake Barnes at Three Imaginary Girls, which says everything I feel about this wonderful band and more.