Film School

Film School “Lectric”

from Hideout (Beggar’s Banquet)

shoegaze express// Out Sept.11

( review/interview, orig. pub. early Sept. 2007)

                                  

Film School is an appropriate name for the ongoing Frisco-based independent musical study project directed by Greg Bertens (AKA Krayg Burton), whose combos, whatever their lineup, explore synesthetic traces of love in the shadows (steamy sonic emissions, mistaken for a bubble bath, by one swaying on the subway platform, et cetera). Familiar themes to many a consumer, and here they’re re-worked via the basic components of  late 80s/early 90s bands known  as shoegazers: mainly Brits, like Ride, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine, whose Colm Ó Ciosóig appears on Hideout. Among those tagged shoegazers, MBV were among the most extremist, the most noisist, yet with no loss of atmosphere. It’s hard to push this style’s diaphanous envelope, but (while not trying to beat MBV at their own game) at least thematically, Bertens can’t let the hungry ghost of deep focus go, and good for him. Hideout’s songs are often overheard addressing a lost love that can’t remember or forget, find or lose the singer, song, or other. (How much of the blurry presence of the other is really a projection of the Film School narrator’s own haze? Not all of it: her wounds, her appetites, and her she-ness, are real enough, wherever they wander, and hover.) Voices (mostly the guy, but females brush by) are overheard reaching, trailing through lines they probably know are tapped, while bass and drums beat insistently against the curving walls of compartments, from inside or out.

Main prob is that music, like any other drug, builds up a tolerance in the listener, and those walls of safety and loss through which apprehension and other thrills must pass can get too thick. So probably this 49-minute CD could be better shorter. Yet eventually, after losing their way too successfully,  outlaw lovers reach a peak of focus and vertical activity on “Plots and Plans”, as a female voice (possibly that of bassist-singer Lorelei Plotcyzk, although Tracy Uba and Leah Piehl also guest star somewhere on this non-specifically-annotated promo) moves up front for once.  “Our confessions” even form (or at least join) “a night procession, discolor in sunlight,” but don’t disappear, because she continues to remind somebody, ”If we should follow through and fake our own deaths, I’m hoping you’ll show up, no funeral wasted.” Bertens (is it still him? Sounds so bold, so up front now) quickly responds, with the sudden thought of a funeral (a film, too?): “without a director, so satisfying,” and this anarchy sounds transcendently outlaw, masks meeting broad daylight (even if they’re discolored by it): “Our love steps ahead of plots and plans.” But that’s just a moment, plenty relapses ahead for these wild ones, of course.

 In “Lectric,” our usual male “I” peels himself far enough from the bubblewrap to go out walking alone, but he sounds happy as he croons, “Down to Mission Street, deciding where to meet. I have all night long, I’ll wait on my own.” Sound-clusters, like instant afterimages from pressed eyeballs, pins and needles from a numb foot waking up, swoop along the hilly blocks, where the singer’s little notes reappear, sure as checkers jumping across a board. He knows where he’s going. “I have all night long, I have all night long.” He sounds really proud of himself, but most of all delighted with the extended moment of anticipation. “If you can want, you can care,” like Smokey Robinson says. Life’s so fun if you care, but not too much. “Teach us to care, and not to care,” prayed T.S. Eliot, seeking balance but “Teach us to sit still” is too much of a balancing act for our boy, at least tonight. Because right now, he knows how to walk! “Look both ways before you cross or leave the street. I have all along, I will all night long.”

Film School frontman Greg Bertens on “Lectric”

Did this song seem to appear out of nowhere, or did you already have some ideas that came together because of a specific incident, or in a certain moment?

Yeah, this song did kinda appear out of nowhere. I think I was playing around with drum machine hand-claps and getting frustrated (which is what happens with drum machine hand-claps), so I just decided to soak the entire thing in a reverbed-guitar bath. Most of my favorite songs came about like that—getting frustrated with a direction and doing something completely contrary and then finding a way to make the two work together.

How much of the song was written (in your head, on paper, in demo) before you recorded this performance?

Most of this song was written and performed at the same time. Originally I was planning on demoing songs for this album in my home studio and then re-recording instruments later in a “real” studio, but many times it didn’t work out that way. I wrote and recorded most of “Lectric” in my studio when I was in the center of the song and layering different instruments. Dan Long (our engineer) and I later tried to  re-record some of the original takes I did at home, in some of the nicer studios, but…many times the new recordings would color the song differently, either screwing up the way the layers sat together, or worse, watering down the feeling of the song. What we ended up doing was re-amping my home studio recordings through better amps and recording those amps with better mics, which improved the overall tonality.  Oddly, the drums on “Lectric” were the last instruments to be recorded, and James Smith’s amazing performance really brought the whole song together and to life, as his drumming did for a lot of the songs.

Most songs about nights and streets are meant to seem spooky and/or tragically glorious, yknow like Springsteen. This actually sounds happy, what’s up with that?!

I could see how you’d think that because of the sweet, sorta innocent melody, but I don’t think you’d say that if you knew the lyrics. I like contradictions in music and I really like a dark song sung sweetly. Elliot Smith did it beautifully on “St. Ides Heaven.” “Lectric” is one big contradiction—washy, dreamy guitars and growling, driving rhythms. or, go-to-sleep-forever/do-everything-in-one-second. Lyrically the song developed that way too—the contradiction of the all-night drug runs on Mission and 16th in S.F.,  sung about in an innocent way. Vocally it’s the closest I could get to skipping.