We Can Never Stay Quiet for Long: A Conversation with Resurrectionists

Your new release combines an EP from last year with completely new material. How does it feel to finally have these two halves put together as one complete project, and why do they belong together for you guys?

 

Resurrectionists: There was a practical side to it, producing vinyl for a four-song release just doesn't make financial sense. But once both projects existed, the pairing felt right. Each EP is four songs, so there were natural correspondences to draw between them. What made it interesting is that a lot of the material was actually being written around the same time, just sorted toward different tones. The softer songs wound up on one, the harder songs on the other.

 

They were recorded in different cities with different engineers; the first in Chicago, the second in Milwaukee, and there are real distinctions between them. The first EP is all guitar songs with no backing vocals; the second mixes banjo and guitar and has a softer overall feel. Smushing them together on the same slab of vinyl felt like the right move once we had both in hand.

 

You guys mentioned that the album deals with modern dread, but ultimately winds down to a glimmer of hope. What do you hope that young people who are navigating a pretty difficult world right now take away from the mood of these songs?

 

Resurrectionists: A clear-eyed understanding of how bad things are, without falling into paralyzing despair, that's the hope. The band became more of a rock band when things opened up again after lockdown, because of the joy and excitement of getting to play out and see people. Even when the lyrics are a bit dire, something about the performances is sometimes celebratory. That's part of getting through rough times. Picking those moments to just enjoy the feeling of being alive.

 

Tracks like "Let's Play King" feature a banjo that abruptly explodes into heavy guitar feedback. What is the creative process like when you're mixing traditional acoustic instruments with loud, aggressive rock music?

 

Resurrectionists: The banjo is always amplified, it's never recorded with a microphone in front of it. It runs through the same amplifier and the same set of pedals as the guitar. When you stomp on the overdrive pedal with a banjo attached, you're not really getting a musical sound out of it anymore. It just shrieks. There's a fun to having a gentle, swampy song where the vocals are almost crooning, and then suddenly it erupts. That contrast is very much intentional.

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Your music is so distinct. What were your earliest or even childhood inspirations that really carried you through to the genres you make now?

 

Resurrectionists: Joe Cannon, (guitarist/banjo/vocals) didn't really start forming a musical identity until late high school, when he got into punk and goth, Bauhaus and The Damned are still top shelf. He was doing college radio in the early nineties, right when Nirvana hit, and watched the feeding frenzy that followed. The bands that stuck as major influences were X and the Minutemen, acts that could play something frenetic and then turn around and do a perfect CCR cover completely straight. Gian Pogliano’s (guitar/piano) wide-ranging tastes came out of growing up in the nineties, when variety was seen as a good thing. Lollapalooza lineups, skate culture mixtapes with Bad Religion and Slayer and Ghetto Boys back to back, classical music at home. In high school he started digging backward, getting into Syd Barrett. That eclectic sensibility has always fed into the way the band approaches sound.

 

What brought you guys together to start creating music, and where did the inspiration for the band come from overall?

 

Resurrectionists: Joe and Jeff Brueggeman (bass) had played together in a previous band called Work which was a more overtly punk trio that ended when the drummer moved. The original idea for Resurrectionists was to build something around the quieter, more strangely arranged songs that Work would occasionally do, and make a whole band out of that. Over time, noise rock and punk came back in. The band went through an early lineup that included a pedal steel player, and when he moved, Joe gave Gian a batch of voice memo demos and just asked what he would do with them. Gian's answer was to approach it like a keyboard player rather than a lead guitarist, floating over the interplay between Joe and Jeff, playing countermelodies, staying in a different frequency range. That's still how he thinks about it, even playing six-string electric.

 

What are some pieces of advice you'd give to people, especially younger people, who want to start their own band, try something new, or create music on their own?

 

Resurrectionists: One of the most liberating things was accepting that there was never going to be any money in it. Once that pressure is gone, you stop worrying about whether people are going to like it. A lot of people who do make it didn't get there by compromising anyway, so you might as well follow your muse wherever it takes you. There's a saying that every writer has five hundred terrible stories in them, and the job is to get through them as quickly as possible. Music is a learn-by-doing thing, if you keep at it, you will get better, and when you get better, people will respond. One other thing worth knowing: as a younger person, your social world is active. Friends are around, people come out, there's an energy that gets harder to sustain as people get older and life gets busier. That's actually an advantage worth using while you have it.