After self-releasing their debut album, Baltimore duo Wye Oak were picked up by Merge for the album reissue. Their new record, The Knot, represents the first album they've recorded for their new label home. It is a magnificent, cohesive piece of music, combining folk music with shoegaze volume and textures that feature strong, melancholy songwriting.
I sat down with Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack at my home after their performance at the Mill in Iowa City, a fairly slow Sunday-night show in which they played to a small but rapt audience. We talked about their new record, the challenges and rewards of being a two-piece, and living in Wham City Baltimore.
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The Knot is the new record. How's it feel to have that out finally?
Jenn Wasner: It's pretty great, because the first record was so old by the time it was re-released, that it was kind of just a waiting game until we get some new stuff out there. It's definitely a relief. What do you think, Andy? Are you satisfied?
Andy Stack: No, but it's not our job to be satisfied.
It's not?
AS: Well, I mean I'm really happy to have something out there, and to have more than one record to represent us, but I think we also... it's just part of the process, where a band finishes a record and by the time it gets out you're moving on to the next thing, and you've spent so much creative energy on a project. Jenn had this saying that, "If you're not tired of it, then you haven't done it right."
Do you feel like now that it's out, you've already moved on from it?
JW: Absolutely. We're still playing the songs every single night, and I really still enjoy playing these songs, which is good, but you have to be [moved on]... It's tricky, this tour has already been awesome and I'm sure it's going to continue to be awesome, but in the back of my mind I can't wait to get alone and home so that I can start putting my mind toward the next thing. You can't really do that when you're traveling. I think it's healthy to want to move on.
You guys played very little off the first record tonight. Is that because you feel even more distanced from that record?
JW: I've actually found myself coming back to those songs lately. I harbored a lot of unnecessary resentment toward the first record because I was so ready for it to not be the only thing that represented us. Now that we have more of a broader spectrum, with the new record that captures more of what kind of a band we are now, I've been able to come back to some of the older songs with a fresh ear. Like tonight, we played "If Children Were Wishes" by request, and I haven't so much as thought about that song, played that song, even tried to play that song, in maybe a year. I enjoyed it. It's a moment in time, I guess, but even being able to stand there and play it and dig deeply into where I was and who I was when I wrote it was an interesting experience. And it's nice that people are still interested in hearing those old songs.
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"... it can be frustrating because you get really inside of it and inside of your own head. There comes a point when you're not really hearing it, not on a level plane anymore... That happened a bunch."
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Do you think about the possibility of expanding the band in a touring setting?
JW: Right now, no, but I'm sure it's one of those daydreams that we harbor. There are times when we're playing a song and I wish we could have something here or some part that we like, but it's just not possible. At this point, it's become a pretty big part of the band that we are. We've become so used to it, that I kind of forget how to play in a regular band.
AS: We still play in larger groups from time to time, but for this band it has definitely defined us. I think there's a lot of flexibility with just the two-piece. There's a lot of limitations that we feel also, but the more we do it the more we discover all these different approaches we can take to it. We're still working through that.
JW: I don't think we've exhausted it just yet. The more comfortable we get, the more options become available to us. We haven't quite hit a wall with it.
AS: There could also be an instance where some particular person steps in.
JW: I don't think either of us have ever been closed off to that possibility. We're not actively seeking it out, though. It's a matter of how the chips may fall, I suppose.
When the first album got reissued, part of the promotion, the selling point was this band has only two people, and one of those individuals plays drums and keyboard at the same time. That's not something you see every day. That hasn't been a factor in the promotion of the Knot, that I've seen.
JW: It's interesting because I guess the first record it was really more of a general promotion of the band as a whole. The one-handed drumming doesn't play a role in the recording process at all. Andy plays two-handed drums, I play guitar, we multi-track, we overdub, we do everything else. It's only in the live show that that becomes a characteristic of the kind of band that we are.
AS: That's only out of necessity. Wanting to be able to recreate as much of the record as we can with the minimal set up.
JW: I've gotten a kick out of trying to take these really highly expanded upon arrangements on this record and rework them back down. The original form of a lot of these songs was stripped down and we orchestrated them for the record. Now I feel like we're re-stripping them down, but with the mindset of trying to capture those expanded arrangements. There are parts that I'm playing live on guitar that I'm specifically modeling on something that wasn't originally on guitar when the song was written, and it became an element of the composition only after it was a part of the arrangement. That is kind of fun. I've really enjoyed reworking these songs for the live duo set-up. It's not going to sound just like the record and it probably never would even if we had a 10-piece band. But the idea is that the songs are there and the immediacy is there and hopefully people will still want to listen to the songs.
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"It didn't seem inappropriate to put a country waltz on it."
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Did you self-produce?
JW: Pretty much exclusively.
AS: The first record was... I would say that "self-produced" would be a fair description but it wasn't like it was an intentional decision, it was more like we didn't know what we were doing. Whoever was able to contribute threw in their 2 cents and it became this messy, collaborative thing. Messy in all the positive and negative implications. On this new record it was a little more deliberate in that I recorded it and I mixed it. There were still some other voices weighing in, especially in technical areas that I felt a little short in, but it was essentially all between the two of us. In a lot of ways I'm glad we chose to do that, and in a lot of ways it can be frustrating because you get really inside of it and inside of your own head. There comes a point when you're not really hearing it, not on a level plane anymore.
JW: That happened.
AS: That happened a bunch.
JW: Going back to the previous idea that if you aren't tired of it, you haven't done it right, I had to tell Andy that so many times. It's understandable, when you're trapped in a room by yourself, listening to the same mixes over and over, 8, 10, 12 hours a day for a month, alone -- I was there for a lot of it but to a certain extent there's only so much I can do. But it was an intense undertaking.
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"You mean there weren't any impromptu performance art troupes at Camden Yards?"
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It is a really great sounding record. I think it exceeds what you accomplished on your first record.
AS: I think in a lot of ways we were approaching this like it was our first record. The first record was recorded pretty much as a hobby. We had some songs sitting around, it was recorded before we really had any of our live set-up nailed down, we didn't have a label, we didn't have any shows booked, we didn't have any expectation that anyone would hear it. In some ways that was really positive because we took some liberties with that first record that we may not have taken. It didn't seem inappropriate to put a country waltz on it -
JW: Because who gives a shit!
AS: Yeah, it was just for fun. They were just songs that were sitting around. On this record it was a little more deliberate and it became stressful, naturally. You can understand, the first time that you're creating something that you're like, "Well, I'm going to have to explain myself," and you know that this is going to stand up for something. That can get in your head.
JW: It has it's positives and negatives. I really valued going into the recording process with that mindset. It was really important to me that these songs stood together as a cohesive sounding unit, as a record to be taken as a whole. The process was different for that reason, we pretty much just holed ourselves up and focused on that for a good chunk of time.
AS: It was the only way to do it.
JW: It was a totally different experience [than the first one] for both of us, and a big part of why the album turned out sounding the way it does.
About the music scene in Baltimore – it seems like there's a big artsy scene with Dan Deacon and the Wham City scene, and a lot of more lo-fi sounding bands – you guys don't really fit into that scene sonically, but what's that community like for you?
JW: Super, super awesome. It's very open and accepting. We played at the Whartscape Festival this year, which has an extremely diverse line-up. There are tons of bands that most people probably haven't heard of, but that line-up is in no way one kind of sound or one kind of style. I think of them as a really powerful force and a welcoming, accepting group of people. Very genuine, very fun. It's a great part of why Baltimore is an awesome place to live.
AS: The thing that gets me, especially about Dan, is that he's an incredible organizer. Aside from his music being really visionary on some levels, he just has this energy and this ability to bring people together. We're not totally in the fold with the whole Wham City thing. We're pretty good friends with a lot of those folks, but we're not directly involved with a lot of that stuff. We've never felt excluded from any of it, and Dan is very deliberate about keeping the community in a wider scope and bringing everyone under that umbrella. It's a really positive thing.
JW: Yeah, Baltimore is the shit, straight up.
AS: It's a really cool time to be there.
I was there recently, I didn't see much of that influence, personally, but I was also getting drunk with my brother at an Orioles game.
JW: You mean there weren't any impromptu performance art troupes at Camden Yards?
I did not get the sense just walking around, for example, that it was a new Williamsburg.
JW: Oh, no, Baltimore is a very real city. It is in no way magical hipster fairy wonderland. It's kind of like a secret city. You have to know where to look, it's not going to jump out and grab you. That's part of it's charm. Charm City!
