Freelance Whales
A conversation with Chuck Criss
(June 2010)
It’s getting close to three months now since the Freelance Whales busted their way into indie-rock kids’ hearts at SXSW. And the love for the band is still going strong. After their March concert at LA's Echo, I introduced myself to a couple members of the band and told them they’d be receiving an emailed interview from me soon. They seemed excited, and joked that they were free right then. It was a joke, because they’ve been anything but free. But even with another show at the El Rey last month and about a billionty shows elsewhere (that’s a word, right? Billionty?) they found time to answer a few questions I’d concocted for them.
Can you talk about the Roulette-ish way that you do live shows, where there is a lot of switching between bass, guitar, and keys?
We definitely switch instruments a lot, but it's pretty rehearsed as to who plays what on a given song. We have a lot of sounds on Weathervanes that we also want to have translate in the live show, so it requires a lot of switching around.
How did the banjo come into play?
We really like to mix together organic and synthetic sounds. The banjo has an amazing rural quality that fit really well into that aesthetic.
Please tell me a bit about Kevin’s full and luxurious beard.
This is a source of debate. Kevin had a beard on our last tour (which is now shaven) but Jake has had one much more consistently. In both cases, yes, they are full, luxurious, and made of 99% human hair, and 1% leftover food.
You mentioned at the Echo concert that someone had given all of you necklaces based on what he thought your personalities were like, and it was said he was correct. What were the necklaces?
Yeah, his name is Shane. His company is called Elegantly Disheveled. The necklaces are all put together from a lot of antique and thrift store scouring. We're similar in that we all consider ourselves collectors in a musical sense.
If you don’t mind me asking, who’s Hannah?
"Hannah" is loosely based off a mumblecore film called Hannah Takes the Stairs, starring Greta Gerwig. All the lyrics are based off dream logging, and elements of her character crept into one of our songs.
Do you really feel like life is long enough?
Within the context of the song, yes.
Were you guys prepared for the onslaught of love the band has been getting?
There's no way to prepare for it really. The internet moves very quickly, and it's been really wonderful having fans at every show who really love what our band is all about.
What’s everyone listening to right now?
There are lot of amazing records out right now. The new Beach House and Morning Benders records off the top of my head. We still can't get enough of Cymbals Eat Guitars and Bear in Heaven, even though we toured with them for a month. We also listen to a lot of Radiolab podcasts. Those are great for longer drives.
There’s something very intriguing about that line in “Broken Horse” about God moving in your bloodstream. Can you talk about that line/song?
"Broken Horse," read literally, is a song about a rural couple's failed attempt to domesticate a wild animal. Sometimes, in our interpersonal relationships, we try to do something similar to that. We find people that have a different nature than our own, and we romanticize and idealize that estrangement. We alienate ourselves from them, by thinking of them as fundamentally different creatures. And/or, we try to change their nature, and turn them into a species of beast that they are not. We hope to domesticate them in a strange way, and make them beholden to us. This song is about a female character that craves autonomy more than she does closeness to another person. Genetically, she is human, but she's starting to show signs of turning into a more liberated creature. The line "a goddess moving in your bloodstream" suggests that there are chemicals or spirits (or humors) moving in our blood, that are responsible for our emotional impulses, in this case, the desire to remain self-sufficient, and free.
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