Broken Language: The Mysterious Disappearance of The Natural History
Some music albums are linked, inextricably, to particular periods of your life. It’s a Shame About Ray by our dear old Lemonheads, will always be about my high school contingent of friends, about the hours spent drawing on our Chuck Taylors with Sharpies and shouting out car windows at the top of our voices, “She’s the puzzle-piece behind the couch/that makes the sky compleeeeete!”
And then there are some records you never, ever tire of listening to. The album I’ve had in mind I’ve only owned for five years, so it may be too early to classify it as Timeless.
But there’s a second component to this sense of fascination. There are bands who put out a really stellar first album, and then an all-right second album followed by a so-so Record #3, the bands who just sort of peter out of your life. And then there are the bands who shine so hard that they’re difficult to look at directly. To use a worn-out turn of metaphor, these bands explode. And then just disappear.
Like, Eddie and the Cruisers style.
On the Dark Side
I first saw The Natural History perform at the Earl in Atlanta in 2002, when my boyfriend-at-the-time’s band opened up for them. Following his band, a group of us all stood around the stage, politely waiting for this headlining band we’d never heard of instead of going home, because that’s what rock ‘n roll etiquette calls for. Then they came on and started playing. And we all did that looking-at-each-other-thing. That Oh, my god; who are these people? thing.
I’m bad at writing about the direct experience of music, but I’ll try to describe The Natural History: Three young men from NYC, a guitar-bass-drums deal, and their music was an angular, muscular, extremely-rhythmic thing. The chords were all jangly and broken up weirdly and the whole thing, put together, was insanely catchy. If you wanted a real idea of exactly what the hell the above is supposed to mean, I guess I’ll just list influences I heard: I’d guess early Elvis Costello and Gang of Four and I heard others say early XTC, but I don’t know about all that.
They were also really enthusiastic about what they did. The singer, Max Tepper, played guitar and wooed the audience like freaking Elvis. He and his brother, Julian, who played bass, would shoot each other glances before pounding down on these cathartic chords together—and Derek Vockins, the drummer, was all the right mix of understatement and brashness and complexity. Just mesmerizing to watch.
So they rocked our world; turned The Earl on its head that night. It also helped that they were really nice guys; they gave Hunter a copy of their five-song EP, which took up permanent residence in my car’s cd player for weeks. It managed to sound just like the band did live: really raw and energetic and barely restrained and catchy and poplike, too. In the months that followed, I felt myself becoming something of a groupie. I was keenly aware of this and tried to play it cool, but still, every time the band came to Atlanta, I found myself back at the Earl, right there in front, dancing and dancing and singing along, loud.
Beatlemania.
It would be misleading if I kept from you the fact that these were not wholly unattractive gentlemen.
They came out with a full-length album, Beat Beat Heartbeat, which lacked some of the raw spontaneity of the EP, but the songs were still great. Then they stopped touring, said they were putting together a second full-length record. Their website said they were looking for a new drummer, and then there were these articles about shows they were playing in New York with larger and larger ensembles; they were trying for a new sound. This didn’t sound good to me, but I waited, still. Waited months. And then their website went down. And then, nothing.
And still. Every now and then, I search the web for something, for any piece of news online about what happened to this band, which, whenever I hear them I’m forced to declare to be my very favorite: The Natural History. What happened? Where’d you go? Jeez; give a fan some closure, at least. Don’t just disappear without a word.
Some music albums are linked, inextricably, to particular periods of your life. It’s a Shame About Ray by our dear old Lemonheads, will always be about my high school contingent of friends, about the hours spent drawing on our Chuck Taylors with Sharpies and shouting out car windows at the top of our voices, “She’s the puzzle-piece behind the couch/that makes the sky compleeeeete!”
And then there are some records you never, ever tire of listening to. The album I’ve had in mind I’ve only owned for five years, so it may be too early to classify it as Timeless.
But there’s a second component to this sense of fascination. There are bands who put out a really stellar first album, and then an all-right second album followed by a so-so Record #3, the bands who just sort of peter out of your life. And then there are the bands who shine so hard that they’re difficult to look at directly. To use a worn-out turn of metaphor, these bands explode. And then just disappear.
Like, Eddie and the Cruisers style.
On the Dark Side
I first saw The Natural History perform at the Earl in Atlanta in 2002, when my boyfriend-at-the-time’s band opened up for them. Following his band, a group of us all stood around the stage, politely waiting for this headlining band we’d never heard of instead of going home, because that’s what rock ‘n roll etiquette calls for. Then they came on and started playing. And we all did that looking-at-each-other-thing. That Oh, my god; who are these people? thing.
I’m bad at writing about the direct experience of music, but I’ll try to describe The Natural History: Three young men from NYC, a guitar-bass-drums deal, and their music was an angular, muscular, extremely-rhythmic thing. The chords were all jangly and broken up weirdly and the whole thing, put together, was insanely catchy. If you wanted a real idea of exactly what the hell the above is supposed to mean, I guess I’ll just list influences I heard: I’d guess early Elvis Costello and Gang of Four and I heard others say early XTC, but I don’t know about all that.
They were also really enthusiastic about what they did. The singer, Max Tepper, played guitar and wooed the audience like freaking Elvis. He and his brother, Julian, who played bass, would shoot each other glances before pounding down on these cathartic chords together—and Derek Vockins, the drummer, was all the right mix of understatement and brashness and complexity. Just mesmerizing to watch.
So they rocked our world; turned The Earl on its head that night. It also helped that they were really nice guys; they gave Hunter a copy of their five-song EP, which took up permanent residence in my car’s cd player for weeks. It managed to sound just like the band did live: really raw and energetic and barely restrained and catchy and poplike, too. In the months that followed, I felt myself becoming something of a groupie. I was keenly aware of this and tried to play it cool, but still, every time the band came to Atlanta, I found myself back at the Earl, right there in front, dancing and dancing and singing along, loud.
Beatlemania.
It would be misleading if I kept from you the fact that these were not wholly unattractive gentlemen.
They came out with a full-length album, Beat Beat Heartbeat, which lacked some of the raw spontaneity of the EP, but the songs were still great. Then they stopped touring, said they were putting together a second full-length record. Their website said they were looking for a new drummer, and then there were these articles about shows they were playing in New York with larger and larger ensembles; they were trying for a new sound. This didn’t sound good to me, but I waited, still. Waited months. And then their website went down. And then, nothing.
And still. Every now and then, I search the web for something, for any piece of news online about what happened to this band, which, whenever I hear them I’m forced to declare to be my very favorite: The Natural History. What happened? Where’d you go? Jeez; give a fan some closure, at least. Don’t just disappear without a word.
Labels: music
posted by Alice at 8:19 AM
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