Gary Reynolds
Bringing Back Vinyl Values
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A lot of CD's cross my desk, and I kind of don't know what to do with all of them. I don't have a CD player any longer -- haven't since college -- and my hard drive is kind of getting full. I usually end up putting them in my CD-ROM drive and listening to them through my crummy little computer speakers. Why make any more of an effort? It's just a CD. You could hook it up to the best hi-fi with the nicest speakers they make and it would sound more or less the same. Why go to the effort?
But when a record comes in the mail -- that's an entirely different matter. LP's are seductive. Cover art that looks bland and unappealing in a CD box looks mysterious and alluring blown up to full size and printed on sturdy cardstock. There's a fairly good chance that the CD version of Santiago's Vest, by Gary Reynolds & The Brides of Obscurity, wandered through here upon its initial release last year and I never took any notice of it.
But when the vinyl came, that was a whole different matter. I spend way more of my discretionary income on records than I can really afford while I would sooner set fire to my money than pay for a CD. The thought that someone had sent me a record for free? Clearly I had to spend some time giving this promo fair hearing.
I first spun Santiago's Vest on my turntable late one night, in the dark, while wearing headphones, and I was glad I'd picked that moment. What Reynolds and his band have done here isn't merely paying a few extra bucks to make sure they have a souveneir in the merch case for the diehards. Even in its digital incarnation, Santiago's Vest is a revival of vinyl-era production techniques. It's open, airy, anchored by crystalline drums and forefronted basslines that often drive the songs. The instrumental tones have as much to say as the melodies, and practically never do you hear a keyboard or guitar sound repeated.
The album's standout track, "You Are What You See," is a fast rocker rendered oddly dreamy by the production details lurking just beneath the regular mix. It's illustrative of what makes the album so unusual. In an era where first CD's and then digital downloads have deemphasized the importance of variety, many full-lengths can't be bothered to manage more than one mood for their entire durations. Santiago's Vest, while not perfect (some of the lyrics are a little too obvious), regularly juggles two or more moods at the same time.
I spoke to Reynolds as he was busy putting his laundry in a machine on a tour stop in Huntington Beach. He was enthusiastic to say the least to commiserate with me over his love of vinyl and explain how his band's latest project came to be -- and discuss the challenges of translating such an intricate work to the live stage.
"I always wanted to press a record," says Gary. With good reason he felt that "our music really would appeal to people that like vinyl." The impetus to finally turn the notion into reality was when a recording engineer colleague of Reynolds' brought an LP copy of Mudhoney's Under a Billion Suns over and played it for him. "Man, we're just going to do vinyl," Reynolds said to himself.
The decision to do so has paid surprising dividends. The Brides of Obscurity are selling more vinyl than CD's on their current tour. "Basically, the digital medium has no value," Reynolds says. But a vinyl record is a collectible -- an artifact, if you will -- and the experience is better, from side division to running time. "CD's are too long," Gary says, speaking my language. "No one wants to listen to 68 minutes [of music]." With discs and mp3's, all you have to do if you get bored is click to the next song. By contrast, "you have to get up off your butt to change the record!"
While Santiago's Vest was recorded with a five-piece band (featuring bassist Justin Friesen, drummer Perry Morgan, keyboardist Jeremy Manley, and guitarist Don Durham), the Brides are currently touring as a five-piece. Reynolds is very happy with the new sound. "It's a different energy. I used to play rhythm guitar and piano but now I play just guitar." The four-piece lineup has "a really good groove."
They also have to approach the music from the album quite differently. In some cases, Reynolds explains, Brides of Obscurity songs have three separate incarnations -- the song as it develops while Gary is writing it, the track that takes shape as the band arranges and performs it for the recording, and then the version they play live. "'Where Do We Go From Here' was written as a four-on-the-floor, strummy kind of song but was too happy so we switched [from guitar] to keyboard and it became a lot more layered."
"'Who Do You Love' was based around a guitar riff that's no longer in the song. It sounded like 70's Lynyrd Skynyrd and we wanted to do it more like Portishead. Then in order to get the song to come off live the bass player did like a U2 groove!"
If the idea of a group who moves a single song through Lynyrd Skynyrd, Portishead, and U2 arrangements in turn intrigues you -- and especially if you have access to a turntable -- you can find out more about Gary Reynolds & The Brides of Obscurity at their official site and their MySpace page.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.