AEM072 The Laughing

All dig­i­tal 7-inches posted on The Ampeater Review include an A-side and a B-side, just like a clas­sic vinyl 7-inch. Most of the bands that we work with chose an acces­si­ble A-side to hook new lis­ten­ers and a more exper­i­men­tal B-side for the adven­tur­ous lis­tener. But Austin-based band The Laugh­ing has taken their selec­tion a bit more seri­ously and, upping the ante, they’ve pre­sented us with some­thing unprecedented—a con­cept 7-inch. Get ready for “pop music as envi­sioned by The Laughing.”

You’re prob­a­bly scratch­ing your fore­head right now and won­der­ing just who the hell The Laugh­ing is and what their vision of pop music could pos­si­bly entail. I’ll admit I was a bit skep­ti­cal too at first. But this isn’t the vague and far flung pile of bull­shit you tried to pass off as your comp lit the­sis, it’s a bold vision that The Laugh­ing paints with remark­able clar­ity and confidence.

The Laugh­ing is a four-piece rock band but don’t be fooled by the con­ven­tional lineup. Fea­tur­ing Logan Mid­dle­ton on gui­tars and vocals, Sean Neesely on bass, Grant van Amburgh on drums, and Adam Glass­eye on organ, the band likes to keep it fresh by toss­ing bells, dul­cimers, ukule­les, syn­the­siz­ers, clar­inets, flutes, an array of per­cus­sion, and any other noises they can dream up into the mix. They draw inspi­ra­tion from music, both pop­u­lar and exper­i­men­tal, that spans eras. The band explains that their var­ied instru­men­ta­tion and orna­men­tal arrange­ments “adorn core song struc­tures and melodies that take cues from the likes of Harry Nils­son, Os Mutantes, Jorge Bem, Sil­ver Apples, Love, Roxy Music, Sonic Youth, 13th Floor Ele­va­tors and more.” Yet the recipe is so com­pli­cated that the ingre­di­ents become obscured. What do they do? The Laugh­ing man­age to drum up the same excite­ment that pop music once inspired but now lacks. How do they do it? By milk­ing a century’s worth of music for every­thing its worth and fuck­ing it up beyond recog­ni­tion. The prod­uct cap­tures the spirit of pop with­out seem­ing deriv­a­tive. There are very few bands out there that can do what The Laugh­ing is doing right now.

Let’s lis­ten to A-side “Run­ner.” Mid­dle­ton explains, “we present a core melodic and chordal struc­ture of a clas­sic early 60’s R & B influ­enced Amer­i­can pop song, that got unknow­ingly dosed with some sort potent com­bi­na­tion of psy­chotropic sub­stance and amphet­a­mines.” Awe­some. “If some­one had informed Sam Cooke ahead of time how his bril­liant career was going to come to such a vio­lent and bizarre end,” Mid­dle­ton con­tin­ues, “he might have have leaned his later com­po­si­tions in this direc­tion. Incor­po­rat­ing a lit­tle 80’s new wave synth on top of Ham­mond organ the song is con­sid­er­ably faster, and more unhinged than the tra­di­tional pop form on which its based. Lyri­cally swap­ping out the inno­cence of the 50’s with a tinge of cyn­i­cism, all the while singing the same old song: I love you… I messed up.… now I want you back!”

“I messed up,” might be the dom­i­nant theme, but Mid­dle­ton deliv­ers it with such a cocky drunken Amer­i­can punch that one couldn’t exactly call it apolo­getic. In his deep vibrato and swoop­ing melodies I hear traces of Pres­ley to Pavarotti, Dr. Mar­tin Luther King to Oscar de Leon to a laugh­ing hyena. The Laughing’s style is bold and res­o­nant but a lit­tle wild, accom­pa­nied well by a whiskey on the rocks. And what about Sam Cooke? My hunch is that even if he’d had the fore­sight to imag­ine what hap­pened at the Hacienda Motel on that fate­ful night, he wouldn’t have cre­ated some­thing quite so per­verse as “Run­ner.” Yes, per­verse. Why? Because it’s out of con­trol. It’s an uncen­sored por­trait of the inner work­ings of the dis­eased mind. And you can’t look away no mat­ter how hard you try.

Some­times when I’m lis­ten­ing to music I’ll zone out and with­out any con­scious effort I’ll orches­trate an elab­o­rate scene for which the music is the sound­track. These scenes play out in my mind shot by shot, as if I were read­ing the sto­ry­board of a film. “Run­ner” is the sound­track to a chase scene. Fran­tic synths and gui­tars push the nar­ra­tive along at break­neck pace. As the momen­tum builds, the cuts get more rapid. The scream­ing gui­tar becomes the scream­ing of breaks. Alter­nat­ing drum and noise breaks on the bridge mark cut to after cut to! The drums break into a steady roll and the song explodes. Don’t expect to lis­ten pas­sively. This spirit is contagious.

B-side “Help Me” is a lit­tle less fran­tic. Mid­dle­ton explains that “it slows things up and strips things down.” But please don’t get the wrong idea. “Help Me” is no bal­lad. It’s a dancing-on-the-kitchen-table-in-your-underwear-and shouting-into-a-broomstick kind of song. To put it more directly, “Help Me” is not a song for nor­mal peo­ple. Though out­wardly upbeat it’s deranged at the core and has a decep­tively calm energy that builds steadily through­out. “Bring­ing in the ukulele and sub­sti­tut­ing the the per­sis­tent drums with hand claps and shak­ers,” says Mid­dle­ton, “we depict a more per­sonal account of some one in a sticky sit­u­a­tion that stub­bornly wants to be left alone to sort things out for him­self. The title along with the overly re-assuring lyri­cal con­tent betray this idea though, instead reveal­ing that this per­son, really does need help! Com­plete with synth arpe­gia­tors and a ghetto-blastered-out finale we wanted to give the lis­tener some­thing to shout along to, while their ‘subs’ rat­tle their neigh­bors coffee-table collectibles.”

“Help Me” lacks the force of “Run­ner” but more than com­pen­sates for that with catchy hooks and uncon­ven­tional instru­men­ta­tion. The cho­rus is beau­ti­ful for its sim­plic­ity. At only three words and four chords it’s easy (and nearly impossible)to for­get. “Don’t help me…” As Mid­dle­ton empha­sizes, in con­text the lyrics appear ironic, the music sus­pi­ciously peppy. The plea is alto­gether uncon­vinc­ing, it lacks composure.

Both “Run­ner” and “Help Me” come from The Laughing’s debut album, FEVER, which they released in 2009. Bor­row­ing from the pro­duc­tion tac­tics of gen­res as diverse as clas­sic dub and noise rock, the album was col­lab­o­ra­tively engi­neered by Erik Wof­ford (Black Angels, Vox­trot), Danny Reisch (The Lemurs), and Mid­dle­ton him­self. FEVER jux­ta­poses the “warmth of ana­logue tape and vin­tage effects” with the “infi­nite other-worldliness of dig­i­tal.” Every track is mem­o­rable, inter­est­ing, and the­atric… even the ones decep­tively titled “(((pause)))” and “(((silence)))” Mid­dle­ton explains that FEVER is named after a book he dis­cov­ered as a child that dis­cusses his grand­fa­ther Dr. John Frame’s dis­cov­ery and treat­ment of Lassa Fever in Africa many years ago. “I liked it as it the­mat­i­cally ties in with the topic of the dis­eased (mostly men­tally dis­eased) peo­ple through­out the album, but can also equally refer to a sense of fanati­cism for some­thing,” he adds.

Maybe it’s a dis­ease and maybe it’s a fanati­cism, where do we draw the line? What­ever the ‘fever’ is, The Laugh­ing has it. Just lis­ten to their wild and metic­u­lously arranged music and I think you’ll under­stand what I mean. This band is a lit­tle bit crazy and a large bit bril­liant. Catch them next month SXSW.

Nate Green­berg

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