| Blonde Redhead have always been one of those unique bands that is impossible to shake. Even their earliest albums on the Steve Shelley-operated Smells Like Records label, while certainly in the shadow of patron saints Sonic Youth, carried the kind of personality and verve few other bands have ever maintained. Over the course of six albums, they’ve transformed from skronk-loving no-wavers to string-laden acolytes of the Serge Gainsbourg school of classic European orchestrated pop. The transition, however, hasn’t come without its roadblocks.
While a four-year gap between albums isn’t uncommon with similarly forward-thinking groups, Blonde Redhead’s absence between 2000’s pitch-perfect Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and last year’s Misery is a Butterfly was one marked more by strife and tragedy than studio tunnel vision. From his home in New York, drummer Simone Pace (identical twin to Amadeo Pace, the group’s guitarist and co-vocalist alongside Kazu Makino) mourns the time between their two finest albums.
"Amadeo and Kazu ride horses and they love it. Kazu was out jumping and she fell and the horse basically stepped on her jaw and broke it in a few places and that changed everything," says Simone. "We were writing music at the time – actually just about starting to record an album. To recover, her jaw was tied together and she couldn’t open her mouth. She was in bad shape and it took a long time before she got better, but that was just one incident that made us wait."
Were that not enough, the mother of their producer, Fugazi’s Guy Piccotto, passed away, throwing another curveball into the schedule. "It was all a bit of a disaster," Simone says. "We don’t write as quickly as other bands to start with – we always take a long time. So, between that and all the stuff that happened, time just went by."
From its opening track, the elegiac harpsichord-driven "Elephant Woman," Misery is a Butterfly is a stunning studio creation. Marked by fitting horse imagery on the likes of "Equus" and the opener’s mournful re-imagining of Kazu as the titular Elephant Woman, Misery is a Butterfly is an about-face as accomplished as it is surprising. Now that Kazu prefers the clavinet over the guitar as her primary instrument, Blonde Redhead’s sound has made a permanent shift towards the pastoral and away from the dissonant (although the likes of "Falling Man," one of the group’s finest rockers to date, keeps the noise in place).
"If a band doesn’t do the same thing over and over there’s always risk and surprise involved," Simone says. "I don’t want to talk about Radiohead, but I get this kind of experience when they come out with a new album. At first it’s crazy different and I’m quite surprised, but then everything starts to flow together really well and you can’t figure out which song is on which album anymore."
Misery is a Butterfly also came with a surprise label move to the venerable U.K.-based 4AD, home to the Cocteau Twins and The Pixies from Chicago’s workhorse indie Touch and Go. Unlike the drama that surrounded the album’s genesis, however, the group’s shift to 4AD was painless. "We finished the album before we knew we would be on 4AD. We were on Touch and Go, but we knew we didn’t want to put the album out with them because we’d already done three together and it was just time for a change and just to see how things can be different," Simone says.
As for what’s next, "different" seems to be the word that fits best. Slipping slowly towards another album session, Simone reports that all – for the time being, at least – is going well. "I’m surprised that we are where we are already. We’re not in a disaster stage – although Kazu and Amadeo are horseback riding today. But this time we’re not like, ‘Fuck, what are we going to do?’ We’re just taking it easy and giving slack. After so many albums you can get really panicky, but I don’t want to think about it." |
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