Phantom menace
The peripheral presence of Barbaro
by Carly Carioli
Like much of the music being made in Allston Rock City -- which is less a
geographic distinction these days than a closed-system wildlife preserve, a
microcosm of discarded musical habitats -- the debut album by Barbaro is
notably lacking in anything resembling commercial potential, or even the sorts
of markers that would link it to some tradition outside itself. It fits into no
identifiable subculture save the one in Allston that supports many such
introspective endeavors regardless of the specific contours of their species,
so even if you happen to find yourself -- as I did -- playing Barbaro
(Polterchrist/Curve of the Earth) over and over again, you may be at a loss to
explain what it is you like about it. It is a phantom of an album, the kind of
thing that creeps into your pores and lingers, and the pieces of it that stay
with you are peripheral, as something glimpsed out of the corner of an eye.
Barbaro have made an album that is wholly out of fashion, and mostly
fashionless: the object on the cover, which they refer to as a sculpture, was
made by the drummer, Mike Ushinski, out of some wire, a piece of paper, a chunk
of scrap metal, and a welding gun, and there are no photos or lyrics inside.
There is just enough information so that the package does not function as
minimalism in the manner of Slint or Shellac; they are not interested in
shoving their fashionlessness down your throat. There are no tricks to Barbaro,
either in their music or in its presentation; and yet it is still difficult to
figure out what it is they're being straightforward about.
Prior to forming Barbaro, Andrew Schneider was one of two bassists in Slughog,
the local thunder gods whose primordial pummeling and seismic time signatures
were more likely to get measured by the Richter scale than by units sold. Of
late he's also become a sought-after engineer and producer; in addition to
helming sessions for heavier outfits like Claymore and Scissorfight, he's
tracked for the Blue Man Group band and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Guitarist
Meaghan McLaughlin was in a number of weighty outfits including SK-70,
Libertine, and Bloodletter (a family affair: the other members were her sister
Kate and brother Sean) before striking out on a solo career that has produced
one fairly amazing disc, on her own Press Records. Meaghan McLaughlin
was a surprise both for the patient and sinewy demeanor of her songs -- dark
and woodsy without approaching anything as standard as folk, hinting at a kind
of nightmarish art-song cabaret -- and for the sheer expressiveness and range
of her voice, an instrument that had been obscured on previous efforts but
that, laid bare, has a biting resonance. The comparison often offered is to
P.J. Harvey, and I don't find this to be an exaggeration in the least bit. When
on Barbaro's "Ditch" -- my favorite cut, if I had to pick one -- she
sings the line "In the dark," you don't so much picture darkness as taste it,
feel its rise and fall in the lingering tremor of the line's echo; and this
more than anything else in the song -- its shimmering, autumnal melody and
sweeping, waltz-like cadence -- is, for lack of a better word, its hook.
Schneider and McLaughlin share Barbaro's songwriting and singing duties
evenly, and though it might be helpful to think of the band as a simple
cross-pollination of their tastes and abilities, what I hear on Barbaro
is a kind of conversation -- the beginnings of a new internal language between
the two of them, with little precedent in their previous work. On "Cut Outs"
you can hear them reaching for common ground -- the beginning is barely more
than a whisper, slow and slack, feeling around for the right tone, and it's not
till a full two minutes later that the guitars come crashing in full force; by
"The Funnel," Schneider is adding his own accents, the slightest tug of menace
as the melody ebbs.
"I think Andrew and I are still evolving together as songwriters," says
McLaughlin during a break in the band's hectic schedule. She's already late for
practice with the Rock City Crimewave, in which she plays bass; and Schneider
is on a dinner break from engineering a Roadsaw session. "I'm still getting
used to being in a band where the bass player is a predominant songwriter. We
both write pretty equally, but it's a wicked different format to get used
to."
For his part, Schneider's still wrapping his head around being the only bass
player in the band. "Definitely with the 'Hog, man, no one would shut up. There
were four people playing all the time. And that was part of what was beautiful
about it. Bloodletter and Slughog played a bunch of shows together, and
Bloodletter were one of my favorite bands. We would go see 'em and Brian
[Wright, Slughog bassist/singer] and I would say, `Why didn't we come up with
that? We should have come up with that. Why did they come up with that?' I saw
Meaghan do all that stuff with incredible intensity, and then obviously I saw
her do solo shows with the same extreme focus and this outpouring of emotion.
And that was the exact place that I wanted to be in -- a place that could have
all of that in one thing. In Barbaro, we do a lot of stuff where we switch off
who is the rhythm and who is the lead, and that's exciting for both of us --
for me, to have to be the only bass player and actually play like a bass
player has been a blast. And then for Meaghan, she's gotten to play in a sort
of laid-back, rhythmic sense and not as melodic at times."
When Ushinski saw an early incarnation of Barbaro in which McLaughlin and
Schneider played as a duo, he thought they sounded a bit like Codeine; there's
still a trace of narcotic stillness, but it rarely sticks around for very long.
Barbaro's closing "Listen," which appeared in a different version on a
Polterchrist compilation last year, is closer to the bombastic riffage
Bloodletter and Slughog were known for, except the off-kilter groove is more
elastic, and, well, it's just a better riff. The only recurring resemblance is,
perhaps, to the dusky, bleak-is-beautiful elegance of Come; on a couple of
tracks you can hear McLaughlin and Schneider complementing each other in much
the same way Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw do, though Barbaro seem to have
arrived at the same place by a completely separate route, and after the
similarity passes, the two bands arrive at different destinations.
"It's mood music for sure," says Schneider. "I think all of us are pretty
dramatic people, so it's very easy to understand where each of us is coming
from and to hook into that."
Ultimately, though, their language is largely unspoken. For as long as she can
remember, McLaughlin has written most of her lyrics on the day they were
recorded, and it seems fitting that her cues come from a place that's somewhat
pre-verbal, just beyond linguistic consciousness. "I feel like I'm really bad
communicating verbally in general -- but my lyrics are more about the blabber
before you have actual words. The thing that gets me most about lyrics is the
vowel sounds, where they are, and the consonants, and how they sound. You could
end up with some run-on sentence, but if the vowels and consonants are all in
the right place, that's like music itself. Of course, it's cool if it matches
up and you actually say something."
"I listen to old David Bowie records, and I still don't have the slightest
idea what he's saying," says Schneider. "But the emotion that comes off the
record is something you feel in the songs. For me, anyway, listening to music,
vocals are just another texture. And that's how I hear music -- textures and
emotions rather than parts and lyrics -- so for me writing lyrics is a strictly
personal thing. If people are interested, come up and ask about 'em. But people
don't need to know about my bad trip in '95 or something like that." (Barbaro
play a CD-release party at the Middle East this Saturday, November 13. Call
864-EAST.)
Andrew Schneider was behind the boards when the latest Allston-rock
supergroup, Milligram, checked into New Alliance Studios several months ago.
There was a palpable sense of awe a couple months back when the band -- then
going by the name "The Dead Formerly the Stones" -- made their debut downstairs
at the Middle East. Singer Jonah Jenkins's last band, Miltown, got as far as
recording their debut for a major label before the band imploded; drummer
Zephan Courtney was part of the Stompbox line-up that made one ill-fated album
for Columbia earlier this decade, after which he played in Chevy Heston;
guitarist Darryl Sheppard left Roadsaw last year after an on-stage brawl.
I'm guessing the audience for Nebula, Fu Manchu, and Monster Magnet will be
interested, but from the handful of dates I've seen, Milligram will have
implications far beyond the usual stoner-rock suspects. And that may be in part
why the band chose as their first release a cover of Black Flag's "Nervous
Breakdown," which in their hands sounds even farther in-the-red and as
completely off the charts as the first Hellacopters disc -- bold and furious, a
blacker, harder beast than punk, rawer than metal allows. This, folks, is pure
animal rock and roll. The song is on a split single with Quintaine Americana --
who do their deep-fried, adrenalized version of Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" --
and both bands play a release party at the Linwood Grille on November 20.