Chicago quintet Tortoise spoke to Clash Magaizine for the August 2009 issue. Read the full interview below
“I guess I don’t really expect people to know that we have a sense of humour, because we’re pretty serious about our music,” admits quietly spoken Tortoise bassist Doug McCombs, a stubbly chin cupped in his hands as he considers less than laugh-a-minute pre-conceptions of his band in a London boozer. “There is humour in our music but it’s overshadowed by how serious we are about playing. Our sense of humour often comes out in different ways: press photos, the way we title our songs. And on tour we’re like any other band: being on tour is basically one long joke. People probably don’t think that. They probably think we sit on our tour bus reading Faust. But we’re pretty fun.”
Saddled with the burden of the ‘post-rock’ label, in reality Tortoise - McCombs, plus multi-instrumentalist band-mates Dan Bitney, John Herndon, John McEntire and Jeff Parker - have rarely navigated such straight and narrow paths. Krautrock, jazz, lo-fi noise, even hardcore punk and dance nods, have all gone into the blender with frequency. It would be a stretch too far to suggest ‘Beacons Of Ancestorship’ - its title, McCombs says, drawn from the notion of “being part of a continuum or line that goes through music throughout time” - will make it onto too many party playlists in the near future. Although electronics-packed track ‘Northern Something’ could slip into the record bags of a few unsuspecting Chicago house or Detroit techno DJs should it ever cop an unlikely white label release. Yet for all their serious intent, a modest playfulness snakes through the new record; a synth twinkle here, a joyously loose noodle there. “On this album there’s definitely not too many weird time signatures,”
McCombs considers. “It’s more of a 4/4 feel. Even samba. Dance or party-based music is something we’ve always tried to incorporate, even though our music tends to be less about dancing and more about something else.”
‘Beacons Of Ancestorship’ marks Tortoise’s first regular full-length record for five years. In the time since its predecessor, ‘It’s All Around You’, they released weighty rarities retrospective ‘A Lazarus Taxon’, plus ‘The Brave And The Bold’, a covers album re-imagining Devo to Elton John with bearded Americana icon Will Oldham, AKA Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, on vocals. If that suggested Tortoise were comparatively killing time, however, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, ‘Beacons Of Ancestorship’ was variously laid down over multiple studio sessions spanning the past half-decade.
“We’re not really comfortable with deadlines,” McCombs explains. “For the most part if we’re under pressure to produce something it’s not going to be good, so we would rather take our time and make sure it’s something we are happy with.”
A plethora of side projects kept all five members busy during downtime among aforementioned stints recording. These are men who very much live for music, which for the rest of the band means they have little time for the music press. “There are members of Tortoise who can’t stand to talk about our music to other people,” McCombs concedes. “Almost all of them except for me. They don’t want to do it and that’s fine. But if people want to know about our music I’m happy to tell them.”
Unlike the giant Galapagos Islands creatures with which Tortoise share their moniker, McCombs and company aren’t about to lumber blindly into old age. Unafraid to unfurl EP-length epics with nonchalance, Tortoise resolutely remain an albums band. Despite swimming against a tide of opinion suggesting the format faces imminent extinction, their next mooted post-‘Beacons Of Ancestorship’ move is aimed squarely at counteracting the digital age. “We make albums that stand on their own as a piece of music, songs that seem like they have to be part of that whole thing more than they would ever be a single,” McCombs muses. “But we had an idea to do a series of shorter pieces of music that would be presented on five-inch vinyl. Thatlimits it to two minutes per side. I love the fact that format still exists and that’s almost reason enough to do it, release one every month for a year or something. “I’m so behind the times,” he sighs. “I don’t even have an iPod. But certain things are interesting to me almost as a relic. It’s time to go back and find ways to present music that’s as interesting as the music itself.” With invention still at the bleeding heart of their craft, almost twenty years since the band’s formation, the creative fires still burn strong as ever for Tortoise. “It’s really all I want to do,” McCombs asserts, settling into an almost contented tone. “I know I’ll continue to have good ideas and interesting ways to express ourselves. And I’m sure that we’ll continue to be a band for a pretty long time.”
BEGINNERS GUIDE
Tortoise’s discography for bluffers.
‘Tortoise’ (1994)
The debut Tortoise LP contained glimpses of the multi-faceted ingenuity that was to become their trademark, and, in ‘Ry Cooder’, a cheeky nod to the eponymous veteran guitarist.
‘Millions Now Living Will Never Die’ (1996)
Joined by Slint guitarist/post-rock pioneer Dave Pajo, ‘Millions…’ is widely acclaimed as a modern classic, fully fusing Krautrock complexities onto dub and electronica exoskeletons.
‘TNT’ (1998)
A jazzier adventure than ‘Millions…’, traceable to the addition of genre- loving guitarist Jeff Parker, replete with cover art that was, supposedly, simply scrawled on the cover of a blank CD-R.
‘Standards’ (2001)
Licensed to the ever-wonderful Warp Records in the UK, further expeditions into electronica fittingly flourished within ‘Standards’, which disappeared on unrepentant tangents fit to make Animal Collective sound like Girls Aloud.
‘It’s All Around You’ (2004)
Dismissed in some quarters for perceived failures to push the Tortoise template, this is probably the band’s least celebrated full-length; by any other standards, though, it’s still jammed with jazz-inflected outer limits exploring.
Words by Adam Anonymous
Photo by Jim Newberry