photo by Victoria Holt

I submitted some questions for the Seattle-based duo Thousands last week, and when I got guitarist/vocalist Kristian Garrard‘s responses I wanted to immediately write back with more questions for him and his counterpart Luke Bergman (The name wasn’t meant to be ironic? You’ve played on both a beach and in a graveyard?). I was surprised at the raw honesty as well as the thoughtfulness with which he scrutinized the project itself, and further blown away by the nonchalance with which he waxed articulate about every other topic. I felt both humbled and fascinated by Kristian’s words and read them repeatedly, soaking up the details of Thousands‘ deep understanding of music theory, the current musical landscape, and the ways in which they pay homage to or transcend the rules of either:

Laurel Kathleen: Tell me a little about your album The Sound of Everything that was just released on Bella Union. In what ways is it musically progressive, conservative, or both?

 

Kristian Garrard: This album is a collection of songs that have been written over the past couple of years, the arrangements of which have been slowly honed by the two of us while living together in a house in Seattle. Style-wise, we sort of fit into a singer-songwriter/folk idiom, but I think we take some progressive steps with regards to melodic progressions and arrangements that don’t follow standard folk conventions. We both have backgrounds in jazz music, and I think that experience informs our harmonic decisions more so than classic folk music. You could call the recording and presentation of the record somewhat conservative. We didn’t take any steps to add “sparkle” to the songs, but rather present them exactly the way we perform them live. The record has no overdubs (other than a flute on one track), so what you hear is really what we are.

LK: Is there an underlying message you’d like listeners to take away from the album?

KG: Most of the lyrics of this record reside in a sort of hazy dream-world, where nothing makes a whole lot of sense (and doesn’t need to).  It’s really more of a visual record in those terms, where I’d picture some scene and try to describe elements of it. Lyrically this album doesn’t have any unified message, as the songs were not conceived as a unit, but were selected out of many songs I’d written over the last few years.

LK: How did you come up with the name “Thousands” for a duo?

KG: It’s not meant to be any sort of joke (although a lot of reviewers etc seem to think so), it’s more of just a label for the band. We were performing just as Kristian Garrard, or K. Garrard for a while, and I thought Luke needed some recognition, so we decided to have an umbrella name that didn’t lean on either one of us. The specific word came from another album I’d released a few years back (on Debacle Records). I liked the look of the word visually, there’s not really any other deeper meaning behind it.

LK: Have you found that your individual or collective musical interests have changed since you’ve been playing together as a band?

KG: I can’t say being in a band with Luke has changed anything about my tastes, but we definitely share new discoveries with each other. Luke and I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, so each of us is always finding new things and showing the other. I probably write with a sharper eye on detail now than I did before, because I know that the song is going to have to be arranged for two guitars, and there can’t be any wishy-washiness in the parts. We come up with pretty solid arrangements that can take weeks to figure out and learn how to play expressively.

LK: What exactly is your songwriting process?

KG: I usually do all the main writing on my own, starting with a vocal melody that inspires me. My cell phone voice memo thing is full of these ideas. They’re always kicking around in my head, and it can sometimes take months from the seed of an idea to a completed song. Most of them end up going nowhere. I have a pretty high standard set for myself, so I’ll only take the time to finish a song that I think is inspired in some way, or presents some new harmonic idea or something. Once the lyrics and everything are finished, then I present it to Luke and he figures out how to wind his guitar parts into mine and thicken the whole thing. Generally the last thing we’ll do is add any vocal harmonies that are needed for emphasis.

LK: What’s the strangest place you’ve ever performed or written a song?

KG: I guess we’ve performed in some pretty strange places, given the nature of our record. We did sessions on the beach in the middle of the night, with huge waves crashing, in a graveyard in the snow; wherever. We’ve done shows with an audience on rooftops, in a lot of living rooms.

LK: Are there any topics or styles in music that you feel aren’t broached enough?

KG: I think reviewers are given altogether too much power in people’s listening choices. Getting album reviews is like getting a report card in school, except that instead of from a teacher, your grades are coming from underclassmen peers with no qualifications to speak of.  Their word is taken as some kind of truth by the general public, rather than as a personal opinion. If I could have my way, people would have to listen to the music before ever being able to be swayed by reviews that they might read before-hand. As an artist, it’s hard not to be swayed by other people’s judgments of what I do. It should be enough to say “I know it’s good, or it’s at least good in my personal creative standard,” but honestly sometimes I can be deeply affected by this stuff. Everyone in the world has their own way of thinking about and qualifying music, so comparisons between one artist and another are pretty much meaningless as public statements.

I’m not saying this because I’m not grateful for the good reviews we’ve gotten or some of the mediocre ones, but more for my own sake. I hate to think that someone who might love the album (but dislike some of the artists a reviewer might compare us to) might pass it up because of what they’d read.

LK: What is your biggest fear, either musical or non musical?

KG: Sand fleas.