My Education's Neorealism
While so much rock music is based on lyrics, messages, three chords, and a broken heart, My Education have taken all those factors out of the equation to create music that is tear- and wank-free. Theirs is a sonic viscera, pulled from the soft pink underbelly of experimental music.
Yes, the Austin sextet – that's Brian Purington and Chris Hackstie on guitar; Eric Gibbons, bass; Kirk Laktas, keyboards; James Alexander, viola; and Sean Seagler on drums – plays instrumental music, a term that, in recent years, has been associated solely with a small group of bands (namely Tortoise, Mogwai, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor). My Education sounds nothing like those bands and, in fact, even they have trouble describing their cosmicrockwormholejams.
"We've been called 'ambient punk rock,'" says Laktas. "That's not necessarily what we would call it."
"Angelic retarded accidents," injects Seagler.
"Don't forget 'advanced ecstasy,'" offers Alexander.
My Education formed when friends Seagler, Gibbons, and Purington all moved to Austin from San Angelo, Texas, in the late Nineties.
"I believe it's the mohair capitol of the world," Purington cracks. "The town has been in a state of draught for something like 30 years now. In other words, human life should not exist there. Back in high school, the punk band I played in rented out the La Quinta Inn's ballroom and hosted shows for touring punk acts."
From these humble beginnings, the group came together in 1999 from local bands like Cinders, Stars of the Lid, and Ultrasound, and a two-track 7-inch resulted. In 2002, My Education released 5 Popes, a five-song EP of beautifully orchestrated land-mine pop – chaos and free-skrazz colliding in the desert on the hottest day of summer. The group toured on and off for the next few months, playing to 10 people in Minneapolis and 600 in Winnipeg and, according to their Web site, were offered speed by an Iranian in Houston and one member almost threw another out of a speeding van on I-95. There was also a lot of puking and urinating. Like their academia-themed moniker suggests, the band takes a very abstract approach to the music.
"There's no director, it all builds off an idea," says Hackstie, a Florida transplant. "An idea may come in one way, but the end result will be completely different. Each individual personality is represented."
Literally. In fact, the band explains their relationship in terms of a TV sitcom family: Purington is the smart teenage sister, Gibbons and Seagler are the obnoxious twin brothers, Hackstie's the dad, Laktas is mom, and Alexander is the lovable uncle who also happens to be a classically trained viola player. After hanging out with these guys for a few hours you begin to realize it's true. And much like a TV sitcom (sans the canned laughter), these guys aren't as serious as their music seems. You may think for music as ethereal as theirs, that they sit around writing in velvet-bound journals and meditating Eno-style. Not so.
"I think my favorite way to do it is when someone comes in and says something like 'pork chop' and then we all think about it for a few minutes, and then we just start playing," explains Seagler. "Sometimes, if one of us has an idea that we can't express, I'll be like, 'Ya know, it's a-bum-bum shee ...'"
"Then I'll be like, 'Doo-doo-boom,'" finishes Gibbons. "And everyone's like, 'Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about.'"
The band started recording their most recent disc, Italian, in 2003 at the Bubble in Austin. Whereas 5 Popes only took about a week, Italian remained a work in progress for the entirety of its creative process. This time around, money and time became an issue, but the end result was a labor of love.
"From one song to another could be a time lapse of a year," says Hackstie.
"Chris left the band to become an aerobics instructor," adds Seagler. "That took a year."
"It was pretty frustrating," Hackstie continues. "We were ready to be done with it."
Italian is 12 songs of combustible, pilot-light-igniting melodic squall, an impressively ambitious sophomore LP for a band so rooted in the Texas rock scene (austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-04-29/music_phases4.html). It transcends a simple post/psych/punk rock moniker.
"Whether anyone wants to admit, I think we all think of [the music] cinematically," asserts Hackstie. "I think we would do best to come from a cinematic point of view. I think we work well with something like that."
Fittingly, the band took songs they already had and used them as a live soundtrack to Mamoru Oshii's 1982 film, Angel's Egg, which screened at the Alamo Drafthouse last spring. This year's SXSW proved especially fruitful for the band in terms of exposure. In addition to a sound guy excitedly telling them they hit 120 decibels during their set, their performance at the Velvet Spade gained them one new fan: Johnny Ramone haircut icon and Rolling Stone senior music critic David Fricke.
"It was definitely a proud personal moment," Seagler acknowledges as the others nod in unison. "When I think of him, I think of his interviews with Wilco, Brian Wilson. For him to throw a little attention on us ..."
"We were like 'Holy fucking shit,'" Gibbons finishes.
"He insisted on buying both CDs," Hackstie says.
Hilariously, Fricke's praise of Italian may have inadvertently helped My Education reach a greater audience, one with their feet in the pews and their hands on Jesus' coattails. "We're doing pretty good on the Christian scene," Laktas reveals, speaking of the Christian Web site that reviewed 5 Popes. "They loved it."
"Well, especially since we don't say anything," Purington says.
"They haven't played it backwards yet," Gibbons deadpans.
When asked if there are any religious undertones to their album titles, the reply is a resounding "no."
The band is currently working on an EP and has two new songs. Naturally, My Education is a learning experience, and this wacky little family of melody-philes is making sure their music speaks for itself.
"I was at a loss for a band name, and looking at my bookshelf I came across William S. Burroughs' My Education," Purington says. "I thought that summed up what it's like growing up playing in a band – a process that's still ongoing."
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