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Everyday Rapture
The dance floor opens up for a noisy band from San
Francisco.
By Kimberly Chun
Toe to toe, dancing
very close. Body breathing almost comatose. Wall to wall, people
hypnotized. And they're stepping lightly. Hang each night, in rapture.
Blondie, "Rapture"
DEBORAH HARRY AND
crew didn't write the above lyrics about the band the Rapture
– after all, the members of the five-year-old group were probably
still in Grranimals in 1980 – but it's increasingly tough not
to think about the New York-via-San Francisco band now when the
new wave-throwback classic comes on the radio. The call to shake
that thing is the same for both bands, as is the need, running lightly
beneath the bare bones of their songs, to work out all differences,
toe to toe, on the dance floor. So just as Blondie brought together
first-wave rappers and garden-variety new wavers with that hit single,
the Rapture, once the darling of cacophony-philes, last year moved
trendoids, bred on punk and dance pop, to their single, "House
of Jealous Lovers," and a beat that echoed with the band's
no wave and post-punk inspirations. "Rapture" didn't keep
rap pure, and in the same sense, "House of Jealous Lovers"
promises yet another commingling on the club floor, as genres rub
up against each other, courting both punks and house heads.
Produced by DFA label
production team James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy, "House of
Jealous Lovers" bristles with sharp and pointy guitars, a driving
yet droning bass line, and an insistent cowbell that brings the
boogie. Buttressed by a loungified DJ Morgan Geist remix that jettisoned
vocalist-guitarist Luke Jenner's trademark yowl, put a Doppler effect
on the guitar, and injected horn flourishes, the tune became a critical
and buzz-gathering club success.
So as bands as varied
and unexpected as Numbers, Erase Errata, and Bratmobile have lined
up for their own remix and with Rapture returning to S.F. for a
hotly anticipated show at Great American Music Hall May 13, you've
got to wonder: why them, why now, and what happened between the
Bay Area and Brooklyn?
Goldsworthy, who was
in the original version of Mo'Wax's U.N.K.L.E., and Murphy, who
founded their studio, Plantain Recording House, say the undeniable
grooves of the "House of Jealous Lovers" remix was far
from easy. "It's incredibly difficult, actually, because they
are so physical, and if you're not careful, you step all over the
thing that they are," they collectively write via e-mail.
To remix or not to remix
Based on the prickly
sound of the Rapture's pre-"House" release, Out of
the Races and onto the Tracks (Sub Pop, 2001), which was also
produced by Murphy and Goldsworthy and embraced dissonance and drone,
some might say the band belong more in the no wave camp than anywhere
else. Talking on the phone from New York, fairly downtempo Rapture
saxophonist Gabriel Andruzzi brightens at the mention of the no
wave landmark compilation No New York, which he discovered
as a teenager immersed in Dischord-style punk in Washington, D.C.
"Hearing No New
York, it wasn't like anything I had heard before. It was dancey,
angular, and noisy, and it had a lot of different elements that
appealed," he says. "It just felt really good to listen
to. They did things with their instruments that I hadn't thought
of, like when you first hear Arto Lindsey [of DNA] play guitar,
banging on a guitar in a rhythmic way and getting lots of interesting
sounds, or hearing James Chance play sax – he takes a lot of
sounds that are found in old blues but also free jazz and improv
and uses them in a dance music context."
But that was then. Now
Andruzzi is frank about the fact that their club revision has made
the band's bottom line look friendlier. "The Morgan Geist remix
was good marketing. It got the record into dance stores," he
says. But the band members were also used to having their music
worked over, he adds, citing a Kid606 remix back in the days of
their first, brief album, Mirror (Gravity, 1999), and though
he feels like a lot of his musical peers are submitting to remixes,
he chalks it up to an age-old sense of experimentation. "People
have always tried to incorporate different elements. Kids have always
liked dance music," Andruzzi observes. "Who knows? In
general I'm not a fan of remixes, though sometimes the remix is
better, and the original song sucks. Usually they're not much better
– they're worse."
As for the producers,
Murphy and Goldsworthy were drawn to Jenner's trebly guitar sound,
which, they explain in their e-mail, "really sounded conscious,
as opposed to all the other monkeys with the same sound." The
Rapture also just stood out among the other bands in town, the pair
say. They were just "better than the other bands. They were
messy and scared and trying. Very little stupidity."
They continue to stand
out among the Strokes, Calla, and a slew of other groups as one
of those noisome few closest to the origins referenced in the upcoming
Atlantic compilation Yes New York. If anything, the very
name of the high-on-New-York-Rock-City release shows the new marketability
of the onetime firmly outsider music. Not that it has much to do
with the genre, longtime no wave defender Weasel Walter fumes. "Calling
a comp Yes New York is a pathetic, flippant attempt at romanticizing
the past," he writes in an e-mail. "It's unoriginal and
crass. Boring."
Sax and rock 'n' roll
As for Andruzzi, who
joined the Rapture's vocalist-guitarist Jenner, drummer Vito Roccoforte,
and bassist Matt Safer last year after the group moved to New York
from San Francisco (with a prolonged pit stop in Seattle), he finds
himself fielding a flurry of questions about his instrument, the
antithesis of cool since, oh, Bruce Springsteen fell from the pantheon.
"People say to me, 'How do you incorporate this jazz instrument
into rock 'n' roll,' and I say it started out as a rock 'n' roll
instrument."
Associations with kitschmeister
Kenny G, rather than with cool kid Karen O, dog him. "As far
as I can tell, people just think it's a real cheesy instrument,"
he continues, theorizing that it was only a matter of time before
bands returned to horns. "I grew up with a really DIY ethic,
a snobbish attitude. Growing up, certain things were cool and accepted,
but you get tired of that. I think the music got boring. Rock 'n'
roll got boring.
"Now I think a lot
of new sounds are getting accepted into mainstream cultural consciousness,"
he continues. "I think the bigger rock bands that have broken
through, like the Strokes or the White Stripes – people weren't
paying attention to those sounds 10 years ago. When Nirvana broke,
they weren't paying attention, but it existed for a long time in
the underground. Same with the Rapture, the Liars, and DFA."
Still, the Rapture never
promised a no wave gangster's paradise or a dance-floor revolution.
Rather, Andruzzi says their hotly awaited debut album will be eclectic,
with moody ballads, aggro rock songs, and electronic forays.
Such a clear-headed,
middle-ground approach may indicate an annoying eagerness to please
everyone at all times, but Murphy and Goldsworthy disagree. "They
are very difficult to work with as producers, but very rewarding,"
they write. "They are strong personalities with esoteric goals."
House of family dining
In fact, Andruzzi delivers
some fairly straightforward criticism when you try to compare the
Rapture to other beat-happy New Yorkers such as !!!! or Radio 4.
"!!!! – they're just a bunch of stoned hippies from Sacramento,"
Andruzzi says with a little sarcasm. "For some reason it's
OK for white people to be funky right now. I think everybody wants
to be in a hip-hop band, but white kids can't be in hip-hop bands,
so they're in a hippie funk jam band."
The Rapture, for their
levitation-friendly, ecstatic name, are a lot more grounded than
that, he explains – half of them are married, and the DFA lifestyle
resembles a close-knit family unit rather than a 24-7 beach house
party, which Murphy and Goldsworthy can get behind.
"It's like a family
here, which means we don't even like each other sometimes, but we're
related," they write. "We're all the mom or dad, or older
or younger sibling at some time. We listen carefully as often as
we can. We eat food together. There's a lot of roundabout discussions
of things like 'claustrophobic' or 'baggy' or 'swingy' where one
or more people look at the floor and get passive aggressive....
Feelings get hurt. Someone always eats an unfair amount of the pizza.
We make records that we feel really attached to."
The Rapture
play Tues/13, 8 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell,
S.F. $13-$15. (415) 885-0750.
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