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 Retribution Gospel Choir
From the very beginning of our conversation, Alan Sparhawk proves to be exactly how I expected him: open, honest, thoughtful, intensely energetic - but always a little unsure. These are the qualities I have always heard in his music, from the deep, restrained sound of Low to the blues-sprawl of the Black Eyed Snakes and now the drone-rock of Retribution Gospel Choir. Each band has been critically acclaimed from the beginning, and Sparhawk is considered a hero among a small but growing clique around the world.
The first time I saw Low, I was in a crowd of no more than sixty in the sprawling surrounds of Fowler's Live, a venue that could host a crowd closer to 500. Yet there we all were, cramped at the very front, greeting the trio with admiration and pindrop silence. Eight months later, in the opposite corner of the world, I happened upon them in Malmö, Sweden, and the reception was exactly the same.
The curious distance between cult veneration and mainstream recognition is not lost on Sparhawk. "Well, yeah, it's a weird thing, you know, because anybody who is somewhat interested in talking to you or interviewing is generally pretty positive. They're writing about it because most writers don't write about stuff they hate. We've been pretty lucky, over the years, generally the only people who've been interested in talking to us have been because they actually want to talk. It probably gives me a skewed vision of how people are perceiving it."
The occasion for this conversation is the release of the second Retribution Gospel Choir album, simply entitled '2' (the debut was, predictably, self-titled). This band formed some years ago as a noise-filled, dub-inspired side project. These two albums, however, have sidelined the band's dub experiments and have put Sparhawk front and centre; his sensual, fractured guitar playing, his searching baritone, and his keen sense of melody are at the fore. At this point, drumming style - Mimi Parker's barely-there brushes against Eric Pollard's speed-thrash sticks - is just about the only thing separating Low from RGC. The two bands also share a bass player (Steve Garrington) and, quite often, the same songs.
"I'm never very intentional with writing," Sparhawk explains. "You get little fragments of ideas, they come together. I don't know, I don't say 'I need to write a Low song' or 'I need to write a Retribution, I need to write a song about this... I'm feeling this way, I need to write a song about it'. Ideas come, something comes, and some resonance, as far as the spirit of the song, makes itself known. Generally the song will tell you when it's done, or right. Right about then is usually about the time you know where to put it, or who to try it with first/"
That said, none of the songs on '2' have featured on Low albums yet, and it's unlikely that we'll see any minimalist reinterpretations of them any time soon. "It doesn't look like it, no," is Sparhawk's frank assessment. "I think this record, all the songs are pretty solidly Retribution. We've got a whole pile of other things that Low is working on right now. Probably not as much crossover. I don't see it in the near future. But I don't know, I think the first record was more just the fact that I was playing some songs in both bands. And we still do, we still play Breaker and Take Your Time live."
For all the shared members and material, there does seem to be a genuine difference in personality between Low and RGC. In Low, Sparhawk and wife Parker question the universe in an earnest, searching way; on RGC the same comments are often made with humour ("those damn kids, don't they understand, that you can't do shit like that...").
"Oh, yeah, yeah. It's, I don't know - maybe the humour is a little more obvious. With Retribution, it's a little bit more of a 'hey, three guys onstage, hey everybody, woooo!' Which if you're being honest about it, you can generally pull it off without being too much of an idiot. Yeah, I don't know, I don't want to say that Retribution's more positive because that would say that Low is darker, more negative, and I've always felt like Low was positive. Maybe it's just that we're playing a lot faster."
At the very beginning of Retribution Gospel Choir, there was Sparhawk, Pollard, Garrington and a fourth member: Red House Painters/ Sun Kil Moon guru Mark Kozelek, on second guitar. Kozelek only played on one tour, and never fully joined the band. However, it was Kozelek who produced the debut and release it on his own Caldo Verde records. "He has played onstage with us - he did a tour - but as for him being in the band, well, not really, it's just him playing along with us." Sparhawk says, gently laying the topic to rest.
"You know, he encouraged us to do the first record, had us come out to San Francisco, paid for it, worked really hard on it and put it out. And that's sort of also why we kind of regard him as another member, but he doesn't play on any of the records and he hasn't played live with us for four years. But he's still a good friend and we'll keep doing stuff completely randomly, as we always have."
Kozelek's input into '2' is minimal - the band has moved to Sub Pop for this second release, and they also decided to work with anew producer this time. "As far as the production, we really wanted to track it at home here, and we went with someone who would be bold and would take a certain approach with it that we were looking for," says Sparhawk. "You go to the person who would do that, and you don't necessarily go to your friends to do something they don't do."
So the band went to Eric Swanson and recorded in a converted cathedral in their hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. The result is a big album. Not stadium or ethereal big - this is really big, bottom of a pit big, back of a cave big. Pollard, already one of the world's great undiscovered drummers, shines throughout. As far as Sparhawk can tell, there are no secrets, no tricks; it's all Pollard.
"I know it sounds kind of mystical but really, a lot of it has to do with the drummer. I'm a huge fan of great drummers, and I really think Eric's a great drummer. He's got good tone. A lot of people don't really understand that when it comes to playing drums - to get good tone, and to get good tone you can make a drumkit sound big and dynamic. Sure there's tricks you can use in the studio; there are a couple of songs where we doubled the kit, and that can do some things, but I really think it has to do with playing well. Some drummers are different, some have that and some don't. You can argue that's better than having another skill, but for some reason this man, he makes them sound big. It's not a very big kit, so it's weird."
Not only can he play; it's his falsetto harmonies that sound so sweetly. "It's like walking a high-wire. It's very weird. I don't know. You've got to come see it, I guess."
Does that sound like an invitation? To a Retribution Gospel Choir show, in Australia? "It seems to me like, I think we're getting enough interest so far, at least as I can tell, it seems pretty simple to come by the end of this year." You heard it here first.
Finally, and on a bit of a sidetrack, I have one last comment for Sparhawk. In 2007, he appeared in a documentary, 'Low: You May Need A Murderer'. In one striking scene, he sits in the driver's seat of a tour van, explaining to the camera that America's obsession with debt and consumerism is going to lead to a great economic crash. One year later, the crash arrived.
"Well, I felt like it's been pretty obvious the last few years, that there's been something fishy. I don't necessarily think I was predicting anything or that I necessarily had any insight into anything, I think anybody who's taken an economics class in college and had their professor map it out ... I don't think it's going to surprise anybody."
With a new president, a new economic focus, things could be improving. Right? "Well, no. What, are you kidding? No! No-one's building any factories in America any more. Someone's figured out how to stave it off for six months or something, dude."
'2' is out now on Sub Pop through Stomp.
Ben Revi
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