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It\u2019s been a lot of years and a number of different styles for San Francisco\u2019s French Cassettes. But on the long-gestating Rolodex<\/i> \u2013 released December 11 on Portland, Ore.-based Tender Loving Empire Records \u2013 the group gets it right.<\/p>\n
Guitarist Scott Huerta formed French Cassettes in 2006. \u201cWe started having a concrete lineup around 2008,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s when we were like, \u2018Okay, this outfit works. Let\u2019s start playing some serious shows.\u2019\u201d His brother, bassist Thomas Huerta, has been with the group since its start, and the lineup has been \u201cpretty solid with minor changes for more than six years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huerta laughs when asked if French Cassettes\u2019 current musical character resembles the vision he had for the band when it began. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m deserved a little slack here,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause I was in high school!\u201d At its start, the band modeled itself after what Huerta calls \u201csemi-experimental psych rock like Mars Volta. We just wrote this really math-y, progressive rock stuff. I don\u2019t know how well we succeeded.\u201d<\/p>\n
French Cassettes took its time finding a style that fit. \u201cWe even went through a stage in high school when we decided, \u2018We need a horn section,\u2019\u201d Huerta recalls with a chuckle. \u201cWe had trombone and sax. They were awesome players; it was cool, and it worked for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huerta doesn\u2019t regret the group\u2019s varying guises; they all led to where French Cassettes ended up. \u201cI think a lot of indie bands get the temptation to make their own Arcade Fire,\u201d he says. \u201cWe got to do ours for awhile, and then we were like, \u201c\u2019All right: four piece, keep it simple, pop songs.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
That happened by 2011, when French Cassettes released its debut EP, Summer Darling<\/i>, followed in 2013 by a full-length, Gold Youth<\/i>. Those records reveal few hints of the band\u2019s early prog and horn-pop approaches; instead, there\u2019s an emphasis on catchy melodies, with Thomas Huerta\u2019s hyperactive, sinewy bass lines adding complexity to straightforward, energetic pop tunes.<\/p>\n
And while some seven years would pass before French Cassettes returned with Rolodex<\/i>, the pure pop values have remained at the center of the band\u2019s sound. Yet there are subtle changes: at times, the nervy vibe of Gold Youth<\/i> feels like a cheery rethink of Radiohead, but Rolodex<\/i> is the sound of a confident band that has found its footing. The skittering, glitchy percussion on tracks like \u201cUtah\u201d gives the songs an edge, but Huerta\u2019s lush melodies steer the album confidently back into ear candy land.<\/p>\n
The complexity is there in the songs, but it\u2019s understated. \u201cOn Gold Youth<\/i>, we picked a theme,\u201d Huerta explains. \u201cRock out from the first five seconds of the song.\u201d In contrast, many of the tracks on Rolodex<\/i> change things up, even inside the framework of under-four-minutes pop tunes. \u201cThe beginning won\u2019t sound anything like the end of the song,\u201d Huerta says.<\/p>\n
Seven years is an eternity in the world of popular music, so it\u2019s fair to ask why French Cassettes took so long to release its second album. \u201cI hope that people assume that \u2018They needed to take the time because they wanted this to be the one<\/i>.\u2019\u201d Huerta says. But he admits that the long period between albums wasn\u2019t planned. It had more to do with the fact that the band members live in different cities, and because they were experimenting with different methods of writing songs.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of rehearsing and writing for ten hours every Sunday in our apartment in San Francisco,\u201d Huerta explains, \u201cwe didn\u2019t get in the same room nearly at all to write.\u201d For his part, he was living in a closet \u2013 \u201ca big upgrade from the pantry where I had been living before,\u201d he says \u2013 writing alone.<\/p>\n
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\u201cImagine just staying up until 7 a.m. and you\u2019re tired out of your gourd and just trying to write and record demos alone,\u201d Huerta says. \u201cA lot of weird stuff came out of those little closet demo sessions.\u201d But he cautions other songwriters against following his lead. \u201cI would never recommend it,\u201d he says. \u201cIf someone\u2019s trying to get a song done under two years, that is not the way to do it, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The band demoed some of the songs before hitting the studio to make Rolodex<\/i>, and many of the tunes found their way into the group\u2019s live set. Huerta admits that some of the band\u2019s longtime friends and fans might hear the new record and say, \u201cThey played that song at a show four years ago!\u201d<\/p>\n
But Huerta says that he learned some important lessons in the five-year period in which the Rolodex<\/i> songs were written. \u201cI [used to think], \u2018Oh, I gotta write a hook. I gotta write a melody. As long as you write a good melody, you\u2019re good.\u2019\u201d But he eventually discovered that lyrics are more important than he had thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never really thought I had anything to sing about, because I didn\u2019t think my point of view was interesting,\u201d he admits. \u201cFor Gold Youth<\/i>, I was like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ll just sing about whatever.\u2019\u201d But he was inspired by the work of groups like Magnetic Fields, and says that he realized, \u201cLyrics can be ten times more powerful than the perfect melody or the perfect hook.\u201d So during those pantry and closet writing sessions, Huerta put more effort into the words. \u201cI was like, \u2018Eh, just try to turn it up a little bit. Talk about stuff honestly, at least. Then if they suck, they suck. But at least it\u2019s an honest account.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Rolodex<\/i>\u2019s production aesthetic has an intimate, you-are-there feel that reinforces the honesty Huerta aims to put across. And the album balances the increased lyrical emphasis with the part of French Cassettes\u2019 style that was already working: catchy melodies. The group\u2019s press materials go do far as to label French Cassettes \u201cpower pop,\u201d a term that can sometimes paint artists into a stylistic corner. But Huerta doesn\u2019t see it that way; he thinks of it more as pop with a little something extra. \u201cWe try to pack a lot into each song,\u201d he suggests, \u201crather than just find one thing that\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s cool\u2019 or \u2018That\u2019s catchy,\u2019 or whatever and just ride that into the sunset.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s been a lot of years and a number of different styles for San Francisco\u2019s French Cassettes. But on the long-gestating Rolodex \u2013 released December 11 on Portland, Ore.-based Tender […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,55],"tags":[4408],"class_list":["post-20294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-powerpop","tag-french-cassettes","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-55-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20294"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20340,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20294\/revisions\/20340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}