Local Music in the Library

Frontier Ruckus Open It Up

This weekend, Michigan music-poets Frontier Ruckus release their grandest recorded statement: Eternity of Dimming. They celebrate the double-vinyl album (spanning 20 songs and nearly 90 minutes) with a performance at the 36th Annual Ann Arbor Folk Festival (at the Hill Auditorium on the U-M campus). 

An Interview with Matthew Milia

Photos: Doug Coombe

Dimming will prove to be "the apotheosis" of their characteristic haunting-nostalgia, as sweeping and cinematic, likely more so, than their first two albums' already-pressingly-poignant, head-spinning coils of richly jangled folk-rock jaunts into deep dark forests of memory's murk, of Michigan's geographic viscera, of their own nervous nightminds.

Mentally exploring the glorious phantasmagoria, through song. Mythologizing -through-melody- the supernatural charms inherent to coming-of-age in the Mitten.

"...you get used to answering the same questions a lot," said singer/songwriter/guitarist Matthew Milia of the consistent querying the band receive out on their consistent tours, listeners curious about all the various locales, freeways, parks and ponds dotting the maps of Frontier Ruckus' canon.

"The whole "Orion" concept was a big enigma to people, geographically, it seems," Milia said of their 2008 batch of knotty nocturnes, The Orion Songbook. "I could tell how far from Michigan I was in a given moment by how the person would say the word, like the constellation or lake Lake Orion as it's supposed to be. The word "Or-eeeeee-un" itself is so Michigan-nasal-sounding to me and beautiful."

On that first album, "Orion Town" is mythologized as this "humungous, almost infinitely sprawling, kingdom—" representing the entirety of Metro Detroit's "crazy system of connections and mingling worlds of stark affluence and poverty and all the memory that rides the gradient of Woodward from Detroit to Pontiac."

When Milia admits that "writing is all I know how to do to stay sane," I can relate. But those rigors of the road, survived together as a band of brothers (with David Jones, Ryan Etzcom and Zachary Nichols) and the unwieldy weight of Milia's memories heaved from his heart and out onto the page in sometimes painful fits of creation, will soon be rewarded, with a recent singing to UK based Loose Music and a forthcoming European tour.



Curious as I was about his process, I asked Milia to share more upon the songs that became this album, altogether a "cluster of themes" proving to be their "most nostalgic record..." Rife with images of a darkening, or a drifting-away... A loosing of one's grip... "On the borderline of losing my mind..."

Milo: Is there a sense of quelling a kind of panic that you find in lyric writing?

Milia: I wrote the song "Eternity of Dimming" sitting on this bench outside my house in the fall—one of my favorite places to write. The cicadas get so outrageously loud out there at that time of year that it is like a heightening feverish panic. They represent an internal panic of memory passing futilely or present tense squandered—they are the "shrilly insect sound" referred to throughout the album. As I'm actively in the rhythm of writing, though, I'm typically calm or in a sort of glad hypnosis. The panic is totally present but I'm overwhelmed momentarily by my agency of transforming it into language that harnesses it all, like personalized mantras I can chant back to myself in reminder of my instrumental role within this safe world I've created. Every line is a trigger of comfort to me, even if the line is personally tragic to me or evocative of some horrible memory. That I was able to face it and give it lasting breath in the song helps me to own it and make it all my friend.

Milo: What are some of the most important things you learned, developing as a musician...in the days spent right after forming this group with Jones in the early 00's out of high school (Country Day, northern Oakland County, 2002). And, then, some of the most formative things you experienced having launched off on a now constant whirl of tours, writings and recordings...

Milia:
The most important thing I learned before "Frontier Ruckus" became the creative entity it is today is basically what necessitated it in the first place: just figuring out my self-identity in this system, what I valued. It gradually became clear to me that I was perhaps a bit more sensitive to the passage of time than most, that it hit me pretty hard. This is admittedly a detriment to most healthy lives but I made a strong shift in my life, around 2005 maybe, not to deny that phobia or tendency or whatever within me, but to embrace it with somewhat of an obsession. For better or worse, it allowed me to create these hyperbolically intense documents of memory that I reside in and others have the luxury of visiting from time to time when they need a subtle dose. I'm glad to provide that and it's made me who I am.

Milo: And, since the band formed and since-flourished, you've learned...?

Milia:
Coffee is the best drug. Spending every waking hour with the same four dudes for several years is an effective way for an only-child to get bros. Singing every night and smoking is hard to pull off. Treating people with respect is crucial and possible to achieve while still maintaining a cool ego and self-image. You can hurt somebody without even trying. Stretching works. Lies add up. The gulf between 22 and 27 cannot be underestimated. Shampoo every other day for better hold. Only enlist the services of people who you are convinced understand and believe in the overall ethos of your work.

Milo: You were an English Major (Michigan State), so I can't help asking you to assess Frontier Ruckus as though it were a work, a narrative...what themes have you found? What kinds of recurrent symbolism seem to haunt your tours' pages?

Milia:
One thing that's happened a bunch is the huge "break-through" opportunity being dangled in front of us, thrusting us into some existential decision of whether or not to take it, and then it being snatched away anyhow. It's pretty comical at this point. Like, a mainstream well-paying commercial that turned out super lame, or working with a celebrity producer who may have hurt the album had it happened—blessings in disguise when they dissipate. Another recurring theme in our story is comical misbranding or pigeonholing (which I don't think our band is unique in experiencing). There's always the megapopular band about that has a banjo that people lump us in with or attempt to compliment us by telling us we're "way better" than. And nothing against those bands or their success, I just don't hear the similarity in the sound whatsoever—any perceived resemblance is totally cursory to me.

Our songs do not have a  kick drum pounding on every beat with a constant air of epic triumph and danceable ecstasy. We're way sadder than that and I hope more interestingly complex. I think of us as an "album" band, and I like the Frontier Ruckus experience to shift markedly from song to song to form an episodic kind of trajectory through a record, throughout an interconnected catalog, yet always retaining some nebulous common denominator that vaguely defines our identity.

Milo: Another English-major question: you're most formative writing-influences? Be they authors or songwriters?

Milia: Diane Wakoski affected me most immediately as she was my mentor and the writer who taught me how to construct poetry. A lot of my usage of catalog and recurring trope or graphic images comes directly from her influence. I think someone like Whitman taught me not to shy away from grandeur in seemingly crude things—human anatomy, sexual physicality, sweat, the abject. Having attended Catholic school for 13 years, Christian iconography was unavoidable in my psyche and made its presence known, though that's waned a bit lately.

It's safe to say Dylan's left the biggest impression on me. For someone into lots of words and getting away with harshly caustic delivery there's just no one better. Then Young, Simon, Cohen, Mitchell, Sill. Eternity though, for how wordy it is, is actually our record most influenced by a heightened focus on chordal detail.

Milo: What about the prominent influences leading into last year's creation of Dimming...?

Milia: 
I got really obsessed with chord changes and pop music trappings—from Big Star to Gin Blossoms. Lots of 90s alternative rock influence in the electric guitar jangles, which in itself evokes the Byrds. Lots of Lowrey and Hammond organ, which is now as much the Wallflowers as it is Blonde on Blonde. Elliott Smith or the Beatles. All these now imaginary decades merge for me as, simply, shit I listened to a lot in a minivan in the 90s on the way to soccer practice. It was such a beautifully mindless absorption.

Read more on Frontier Ruckus in this week's issue of the Metro Times.

The 36th Ann Arbor Folk Festival, a fund-raiser for The Ark, Ann Arbor’s non-profit home for folk, roots, and ethnic music is presented by The Ark with the University of Michigan Center for Campus Involvement. The Festival takes place at Hill Auditorium on Friday, January 25 and Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. each night.

FRIDAY
CITY AND COLOURRODRIGUEZTRAMPLED BY TURTLESDELTA RAECARL BROEMELFRONTIER RUCKUSBROWN BIRDCOLIN HAY, MC

SATURDAY
THE HEAD AND THE HEARTLUCINDA WILLIAMSDAR WILLIAMSFRANK FAIRFIELDTHE STEEL WHEELSBROTHER JOSCEPHUS AND THE LOVE REVOLUTIONDREW NELSONCOLIN HAY, MC

Springtime

http://blowout.metrotimes.com/

Best-Worst Year (...Michigan Music)

Look. Listen, I implore you...

I’ll only have your attention for the next 47 seconds at best and that’s why it’s been the worst year but it’s also been the best year because you already endorse my satire for endemically-shredded attention spans. You already know.

You know how fucked it all is, how fucked we all are; you already know because it’s the internet and we’ve heard everything that I’m about to rail against: like our reserves of morality and empathy now emptied down to crusty flakes as we hunger for escapism as insatiably as locusts. Glowing gadgets keep us connected as we stay-mobile and the 24-hour-news networks remind us how many children died (and how) thousands of miles away from us as we slept, and day jobs still feel like devilish treadmills.

But it’s been the best year because of how oddly rewarding it feels to have retained perspective in days of modern madness – - that there’s always solace if you know where to look and where to listen.

This was the best worst year because it will still feel like the last one: We’ll still basely sum up some new band’s new song as if it sounded “Beatles-esque” and we’ll still think a pop-song can take the pain away and we’ll still feel self-conscious if we haven’t yet heard of the band being talked about by your perfectly-strange-stranger-Facebook-friends-in-the-flesh, rapping at the bar between local bands that might be breaking up in a matter of months anyhow…but Hey…you are here, and still alive and you aren’t being shot-at in the streets or being mercilessly zoomed by drones and earthquakes are not on your list of concerns, nope, nor are volcanic eruptions or sieges of zombie hordes.

This was the worst best year because, well, floods, droughts and fatal, and sometimes futile street-protests are all the new norm, as is an incompetent, if just intrinsically dysfunctional national legislative body, but then there is the catharsis that does come, however fleeting, in a song, in a musical recital or recording, whether at the edge of a stage where a guitar neck skims the hairs of your chinny-chin or whether with heads-viced between cushy headphones as the rich tones, snapping percussion and fuzzed timbres emitted into your ears and into your body because no matter how sordid the shuffle of superficial Facebook flumes, you can still feel something, you can still tap into something, the sound is still tangible.

This is the worst-best year because bands you love are making exciting, creative, invigorating music and its tangibly enriching and uplifting the culture and collective spirit of the community. It’s the best year because you feel a sense of community, even if we’re just gathering out for a show to drink some beer and hear some music and yes, whittling each weekend summit down to just that, then, again, it is the worst year because of how much things feel the same despite how much things have changed.

I know it feels the same, day to day, but if you look, if you listen, in the right spots... There's bands out there making music in refreshingly unworldly languages...Throwing their whole damn bodies into it, to boot.

It’s the best year and the worst year because I, and I’m willing to bet you, too, can’t recall a time when there were so many bands…anywhere, everywhere, even just locally.

It’s the worst because there will be a lot of noise. It’s the best because creating something (albeit anything) has become compulsive.

We could all be at a Nascar race sanctifying the wasteful burn of fossil fuels and toxic dump of RV sewage tanks, but instead we’re standing (not sitting) close together (no longer disparate as we are, this morning, on our respective facepaged-feeds) and nodding along, undulating in a weird but heartening meditation to the rhythm and the roar…of noise-made-by-neighbors.

What’s the harm? What’s the point? Wasn’t it great?

Or...What was so great about that?

There’s …just… energy here, though, and I feel that’s worth something. (Worth what? You ask? That answer doesn't come for at least another year). I don’t know why you or we do what we do…gather and regather, sing and re-cite and re-plug in and re-tune and re-string and re-position the bass drum after that last plod of kicks.

It’s fleeting, Frank Woodman told me, as a disarming pensiveness flared his slightly-bloodshot eyes, in just that moment, uttered before being drowned out by feedback from a fuzzed-out amp, a band tuning up behind him up on stage.

And if you’re so sure that it’s been the worst year, then you’re likely not to appreciate those two words from Frank. Come the end of 2013 you’ll wonder why there’s no good bands around anymore…when you might have been in the middle of a moment of our greatest (as of yet, anyhow) potential... Can we muster more? We’ll see in 2013.

Ten (from 12-) Locals

Jeff Milo's Top Ten Songs of 2012

10) The Anonymous - I Do My Other Thing...

A groovy, surrealist, space-funk rap jam about preoccupation, hesitation, delays and distractions from Woodbridge-based rap duo who (finally) put out their fine LP Why Am I Grinding My Teeth... hopefully they also (finally) get around to maybe doing a video for this ... if they ever finish that other thing.

9) Jamaican Queens - Water

This new-ish trio (born from the ashes of long-lost freak-folk quintet Prussia) are all abuzz across local (and, now, international) blogs, honing super-cool vibes and a sensibility for blending synth-fuzzed churnings into a tweaked, spacey indie-pop thing. This song was a staple in their various live appearances but won't be out until their LP Worm Food drops in February.

8) Child Bite - Scum Gene (Trash Vibrato)

It was hard to single out one of Monomania's battering ram, bristled beauties — each have approached the fullest potential of their signature freak-metal incantation, so we might as well rock the one with the band's characteristic circuit-bent joystick wailing its way over the murky monster grooves.

7) Doc Waffles & Self Says - Wings Over Detroit/This Year

Two of the most dynamic and quirky wordsmiths on the local hip-hop scene, SelfSays (Charles Vann) adds charming banter to the brass-bolstered R&B-tweaked rants of Doc (Ben Ness) against the transit system; "Year" is Self's gamer-allegorizing resolution to take total control of his life and his music and advance to the next level.

6) Chit Chat - Communication

Ann Arbor-based lo-fi shredders blend psych-pop to a disarmingly sweet, shimmering surf-rock thing; their debut demos had some cool grimy sock-hop moments and their recent 7-inch conjures Link Wray via a poppier Cramps.

5) The Ashleys - Kids Are Dumb

There are vibrant bands and nifty jams coming from all across the new class of local pop (HandGrenades, DeadBeat Beat, Kickstand Band) but the Ashleys' goulash spills over skuzzier slabs of distorted glam and riffed-out space-rock.

4) Frontier Ruckus - Black Holes

Major keys, cheerily percolated banjos gleaming over propulsive drum fills and hooky melodica. Characteristically dense, dark, epic-scaled folk-rockers lighten up a bit for this sure standout from the forthcoming double-album (Eternity of Dimming) for its palatability and rollicking pop vibe.

3) Johnny Headband - Hot Button Topic

It's like when old-school new-wave, disco or hip-hop acts released their "Extended Dance-Mix" versions — our charismatically kinetic space-funk party-starters go for the jugular halfway through their Who Cooks for You LP with this 8-minute track; it's bracing and buoyant and right at the end it pulls the rug out from under you and gets meditatively atmospheric.

2) The High Strung - Parachutes

I think ?Posible o' Imposible? proved to be the piece de resistance for these veterans of dashing, radiant, jitter-rock, so you probably can't go wrong playing it back on random. This tune, though, billowy and soulful, strikes a startling and sweet poignancy.

1) Matt Jones & the Reconstruction 
- Special Forces

One of the first songs I heard of the year; rousing, marching percussion, sunburst cymbal shears, soaring cellos and violins chopping into rhythmic cuts at the bridge as soothing harmonies and reverb-twanged guitar build and build into this explosive, anthemic chorus only to crash down so suddenly — coaxing you, then, to just play it back just once more.

...

More info from The Metro Times