Sometimes you’ll hear a track, and your toes start tapping (think “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire). Perhaps the glossy mystique of an artist is so attractive you can’t look away (David Bowie). Maybe it’s so jarring you feel physical pain (Paula Abdul?). In rare cases, you’ll be drawn in by the sheer authenticity of the sound: to listen is to know the creator, and crave to learn more.
These types of albums require you to invest in a relationship: to listen again and again, studying the music until it integrates with your own experience. Good albums work their way into the framework of your life… captured in a falling-type love at first discovery, then mellowing out into a sustained affection over the years.
When the music is young, say, the first album of a new group, it asks you to stick around, and see how they grow as people and artists. Invest in their potential, and trust that it will pay off. HUMDRUM is a newer project, and you get the impression that this combination of creative energy synchronizes so well, it will only ripen with time.
On the St. Louis band’s first full-length album, Individual Man, the members set out to explore and create as one cohesive entity. Phil Strangman’s keys (an early 70′s Fender Rhodes Mark I) already sink masterfully into the temper of Mic Boshan’s percussion. Genre borders don’t seem to contain the foursome, as they frequently incorporate elements of jazz (“I’m In Love With A Mermaid”) and pop harmonies (“Kaleidoscope”).
Though HUMDRUM’s moniker is new, the band members are not new to their disciplines, or to each other.
Mic Boshans:
Dan and I have been playing music together for over 10 years now, so as a rhythm section we’re pretty well synchronized. We know how to communicate and how to bring the best out of each other when it comes to writing and performing music… the other half of this project was Paul and Phil writing and recording songs together.
When Boshans became a member of both groups, it occurred to him that the two projects would “mesh remarkably well…and HUMDRUM was born.”
It is obvious to the listener that the project didn’t evolve out of vanity, or in an attempt to create an image for themselves. These four people love to make music, and want nothing more than the chance to do it well.
Boshans:
One thing I’ve learned from playing in bands for so long, especially from Dan, is that amazing things can happen when you check your ego at the door and try to bring the best out of each other. Phil and Paul also exemplify this attitude and approach to collaboration, but that’s not to say that any one of us are passive about presenting our ideas. I think the best way to put it, is that we trust each other a lot.
Paul Maguire:
We’d all like to be musicians. We all have our days jobs, but they’re not satisfying. Music seems like the most fulfilling thing that I could do.
Formerly known as Hunger Artist, HUMDRUM dwells as much in their philosophic as they do in their musical influence. Many of their songs explore the relationship between the physicality of living in a space/time confined body and the ethereal experience of explorative meta-consciousness (see: Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk). A person attempting to grasp the interconnectivity of everything can simultaneously feel infinitely epic and ridiculously futile. Perhaps this struggle is addressed most directly on “The Abyss.”
Maguire:
The Abyss” was written while I was riding in an airplane over the Atlantic Ocean. I didn’t have any instruments, so naturally it came out in poem form. Look out from a plane at night over the Atlantic Ocean. If you ignore what’s going on in the plane, you might feel as though you are floating out into nothingness. This feeling spawned “The Abyss.” It also deals with purpose. If one’s conscious self, quite possibly, does not last forever, then what about that person is passed on after his/her death? That is what “The Abyss” wants to know.
The rest of the album takes this central dichotomy and fleshes it out across the spectrum of daily experience. There are moments when it feels like your mind has stretched out in an attempt to grasp the infinite nature of the universe (just try, TRY to REALLY THINK about a black hole). There are others when a person you love is standing in front of you (maybe you “only want to know if they feel the way you do”), and that single physical feature of your reality overwhelms all others. Experience can dwell in multiple layers of consciousness, but this kind of intentional exploration can be exhausting. Don’t forget to breathe.
Dan Meehan:
I know of a lot of my thoughts when it comes to writing a song focus on these types of impossibilities. The infinite nature of the universe, the possibility that this is a God, or no God. The insanity of existence (why are we here? what are we — just a bunch of charged atoms stuck together?) The human legacy…personal legacy, etc. We are one of those groups that have commited to exploring the unknowns of the universe.
In the midst of these existential crises, HUMDRUM doesn’t want to completely lose themselves. They recognize that in this type of progressive artistry, the deeper the creator is willing to go, the more they abandon a sense of mainstream accessibility. The listener has to conduct their own exploring to have any relation to what the artist trying to capture. But they strive to retain some simpler, relational themes. Songs like “Individual Man” and “For Everything Bad” capture this balance well.
Paul Maguire:
I know that some of the stuff we have done is considered weird by many, but hopefully, we will aid in the explorations of others. Ultimately, all we ask for is an open mind.
Loved this piece. Subsequently loved the album.
Also subsequently felt it necessary to watch “September” on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iknEJf9cPeY , for anyone else interested in that.
to the folks over at eleven:
i wanted to drop a line and say THANK YOU for including an in-depth article about a local band in your magazine.
apologies for getting on the soapbox here, but it seems as though talented local musicians are frequently thrown to the wolves or simply overlooked in hometown music journalism.
all the cool kids these days talk about “buying local” or “supporting independent businesses” … well folks, it doesn’t stop there! if the kids really want st. louis to be a thriving/innovative/sustainable arts and music scene, we’ve got to support our local bands!
print is a powerful tool to be reckoned with, so: more reviews! more interviews! more attention! more local!
over and out,
lauren.
Man. This is a sharp article. I love it when the writer comes in with a thesis, and something more than an opinion about the album s/he’s talking about. This piece directly approaches the central themes of Humdrum’s album, which allows the band to be their most eloquent, because they’re talking about things that are truly important to them. The touchpoints at the beginning of the article are a smooth way of creating a sort of context for approaching Humdrum’s album–the net is wide enough to catch David Bowie, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Paula Abdul, without having to claim that Humdrum “sounds like” any of those bands–and so the listener is able to think thematically, rather than generically. It’s very respectful of the music being reviewed, and I appreciate it as a reader.
Also, it’s great to read a review of a St. Louis band that doesn’t put the band in a local pigeonhole. I agree with Lauren above, that St. Louis bands are a great subject for a St. Louis magazine to write about. But I do believe that most bands think of their recordings relative the the other albums they love–all of them, not just releases by other local bands. And Eleven does the reader and the band, and the scene, a service by treating St. Louis bands on the same level as bands making music across the nation, or across genres, or across decades.
A well-written piece. My only complaint is that this is a relevant feature that would have looked great in the print edition.
Thanks.
[...] HUMDRUM, who previously went by the name Hunger Artist, are a group who know no creative boundaries. Instead of attempting to describe their vast range of influences, I’m going to cop out and differ to a review of HUMDRUM’s first full-length, Individual Man, written by Eleven-ite Nelda Kerr: Read it! [...]