Wednesday, 25 January 2006 06:41

Frontman Richard Edwards, who classified his band’s music in previous interviews as everything from “scarf rock” to “sex-folk,” seems to think that loving a band and not knowing how to describe them to strangers isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

 

 

Call it the paradox of good taste: The most intriguing and artistically satisfying books, film, and music are always the most difficult to quantify and classify.

Take for instance, the delirious cinematic fantasias crafted by director Wes Anderson or the literary light-speed madness of author Dave Eggers—or the beautifully damaged, slightly off-kilter music of the Indiana-based collective Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s.

Frontman Richard Edwards, who classified his band’s music in previous interviews as everything from “scarf rock” to “sex-folk,” seems to think that loving a band and not knowing how to describe them to strangers isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“I just think it’s hard to do, you know?” Edwards said recently. “I don’t really know what we’d be called anyway, even if I thought it was a good idea. I don’t know if I could find [a label] that would work.”

Speaking of Wes Anderson, Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s not only draw their name from Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in The Royal Tenenbaums, but the band has also been known to project sequences from Anderson’s films onstage during their sets.

It’s not hard to make the logical leap that Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s are a sort of aural analogue to Anderson’s masterful, warped visions.

“I really like [Anderson’s] sense of humor and I also like the emotional core of those movies; the mood of them,” Edwards said. “The whole thing is pretty great; I like the look of them, the sense of humor, and the dialogue is amazing”

Likewise amazing with a surprisingly tender emotional core, The Dust of Retreat, Margot’s debut album, is willfully unclassifiable: dense, literate, and ever so slightly frayed, Edwards’ evocative vignettes (“On a Freezing Chicago Street,” “Jen Is Bringing the Drugs”) amble along, content to etch brief moments in time in sharp relief.

Formed in the winter of 2004 by Edwards and Andy Fry with a mutual admiration of the Cardigans and Paul Simon (whom Edwards calls “one of my favorites ever”), the newly christened Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s (also composed of Jesse Lee, Emily Watkins, Chris Fry, Casey Tennis, Tyler Watkins, and Hubert Walker) quickly released The Dust of Retreat on Standard Recording Co., an Indianapolis record label. A quiet, below-the-radar fave of 2005, the group soon signed with Artemis Records, who will re-release Dust in March, on the heels of the band’s SXSW performance.

So does Edwards mind being lumped in with other current indie “It” bands of the moment, such as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah?

“I don’t think we’d have the freedom [on a major label],” Edwards said. “I’m not, like, musically turned on by the fact that we’re independent, for the most part, but I don’t have somebody saying, ‘Why don’t you put more singles on there?’ I think it helps; we can grow at our own pace, try new things.”

In fact, the seemingly overnight explosion of DIY indie bands breaking out into the mainstream is a current music trend that baffles the soft-spoken Edwards.

“I still don’t know what any of these bands sell in terms of records,” Edwards said. “I feel like yeah, [indie rock is enjoying a resurgence], that’s true. But I also feel like it might be a media thing and no kids have the records.”

For an album such as The Dust of Retreat that feels so singularly authored, Edwards allowed that the band’s creative process is actually quite hands-on and group-centric.

“There’s stuff I have for [a song] and we figure it out,” Edwards said. “For the most part, it’s really collaborative; everyone puts in what they want in reference to each other, kind of like a jam band. It usually starts out with one or two guys and a hook, with everyone else falling in. Everybody here is like a family; I think everyone tries to chip in a little creatively and compositionally.”