Marmoset

Their songs are unapologetic, poignant and raw. One minute they could be swooning, the next screaming at the top of their lungs. That’s the sonic signature of Marmoset, the Indianapolis-based three piece bent on making British punk/psychedelic tunes as short as they are sweet. The band, often sounding like their New York counterparts Pavement, promises their newest release in August, Tea Tornado, will be their best work yet. After a show at Spin in Indianapolis, I was lucky enough to have a street-side chat with bassist Jorma Whittaker, guitarist Dave Jablonski and drummer Jason Cavan.

During our conversation, I noticed Whittaker, with a slightly open button-down shirt, often reminisced about the band’s earlier days as his hair hung about his eyes like theatre curtains. As the band’s lead vocalist, he pointed out that the show that night was not one of their better performances. Jablonski wearing an old leather jacket over a muted green T-shirt concurred. Cavan, with a cigarette in hand, said that the band hadn’t practiced the new tunes they played that night, but he wasn’t fazed as the smoke wafted from his mouth and cocooned his beard in a white tuft.

Perfection isn’t Marmoset. Whittaker won’t be winning any American Idol competitions for his vocal work, Jablonski’s guitar parts don’t have the technical finesse of a guitar hero and Cavan’s straight-ahead simplistic beats are often no more than a live metronome – underneath the surface, their music more than holds its own. As I looked at three completely different individuals, I noticed an inseparable bond that took countless bar shows, songs, arguments and revelations to develop. As Whittaker put it, 14 years ago, they were ahead of their time.

SSv: You guys got started in 1994 is that right?

Jablonski: Actually it was Jan. 1, 1995.

SSv: What brought you guys together?

Jablonski: We went to a Halloween party in ’94. Cavan and I went to high school together, and then we ran into him [points at Whittaker] dressed like a full priest with his outfit on. They were talking about him and everything, like with us playing music in the future. Later on, it was you [Whittaker] walking down the street, and I was playing at his apartment and walked out of his apartment to grab some fresh air. I started walking down the street, saw Jorma and said, ‘Hey when are we going to get together again?’ And he said, ‘Let’s get together on the first.’ Next thing you know, we’re rockin’ every day of the week.

Whittaker: It was every day of the week. I mean literally. It was the whole four or eight track that got me together with them. We were together every day. Our first day, we did four songs. Sardina, another Indianapolis band, were recording in the same house. There was a lot going on.

Jablonski: And then it just sort of grew, and we said, ‘Let’s record an album today.’ We recorded 12 songs that day.

Whittaker: By mid ’95 we had over 50 songs.

SSv: What you guys do today, has it changed at all from when you first started?

Cavan: I hate both of them.

[Everyone laughs]

Cavan: I hate them both, but I still love them.

Whittaker: It’s a no-brainer. I mean, we still play a lot of that old shit, and we’re just going to it, you know? We sound better than we used to.

Jablonski: We still go in the studio and kick out a song and just write it right there on the spot.

Whittaker: With any band there’s different ways of songs happening. You know, somebody writes the song and puts lyrics to it or the band comes up with the song.

SSv: How do you guys do it? How do you write a song?

Jablonski: Either one of us [points to Whittaker] will write a song. He’s the main songwriter, and we’ll come to practice and iron it out.

Whittaker: There’s a million ways of going at it.

Jablonski: There’s no formula really.

Whittaker: On the new record, the song “Strawberry Shortcakes” is the best song we’ve done, really. And he [Jablonski] wrote the lyrics for the most part. It was a definite band collaboration really. It can happen any other way just like any other band I think.

Jablonski: The music will write itself some way or another.

SSv: When I listen to your music, a lot of your songs “get in and get out.” Is that something you intend to do when you write a song? How do you know when it’s done?

Whittaker: Are we ADD?

[Everyone laughs]

Whittaker: It’s the way it works out. I don’t think that it’s any particular way we try to do it.

Jablonski: We don’t think about, “Oh no we’ve got to make it three minutes.”

Whittaker: In fact, when a song is 1:50 or 1:56, I get a little upset. I want it to be 2:05. I like shit being a little over two minutes.

SSv: A lot of your albums will have 16 or 20 songs. Do you cut songs from the album?

Whittaker: Tons.

SSv: How many songs do you record for an album?

Jablonski: 30?

Whittaker: More. It’s hard to tell. It’s really scrutinizing especially at this point to say…

Jablonski: As a band you have to have material, whether or not you use it now. You might use it later.

Whittaker: Yeah. Half the shit we’re writing just isn’t in the mood. It’s just not good. We worked on these last two albums pretty much like they were together. Florist Fired was more throwing something relative and laid-back together while as our new record to me, is more, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. [pounds his fists together.] It’s more like, catchy song, catchy song all the way through. Other than the last song which he [Jablonski] hates, it’s a little psychedelic. It could have gone on the last record.

Jablonski: It’s all because I play drums on it, and he didn’t. [looks at Cavan]

Whittaker: We did tons of shit, and it’s whatever fills the mood of the record.

Jablonski: Really though, sequencing an album and getting that feel from the first song to the last song and maintaining an idea about what you’re releasing.

Whittaker: To be honest, we were very straightforward about what we were doing on the last album, Florist Fired, with Secretly Canadian, and they felt there wasn’t enough variety there, so we went back and added variety. And now this new record… I think there’s variety by default. I think this new record is…

Jablonski: Fun. You can put it in and it goes 35 minutes, and you want to play it again.

SSv: Do you have a problem if someone doesn’t like your music, or you get a bad review?

Whittaker: We honestly dealt with that when we started in the mid ’90s. It was a different musical landscape. You know, there was the whole Dave Matthews Band thing going on…

Jablonski: There’s always going to be something who is going to like it, and then there’s going to be someone who doesn’t like it.

Whittaker: And there’s always going to be punk rock and our rock.

Cavan: You know I’m a punk rock, metal-head myself.

Jablonski: He’s [Cavan] in five metal bands.

Whittaker: We’re his first group. You know I remember somebody yelling, “Dave Matthews Band.”

Jablonski: If I hear someone yell, “Dave Matthews Band when we play a set…”

SSv: That or “Freebird?”

Jablonski: “Freebird” is fine.

[Everyone laughs.]

Whittaker: You can’t go into a band thinking that everyone’s going to like you.

Jablonski: And if you’re going to take it personally, you may as well quit.

Cavan: One of my best friends was telling me one day that he understood what we were doing and it was great, but I really don’t like your music.

SSv: What’s the aim of your music? What do you want to accomplish?

Jablonski: It’s all about having fun.

Whittaker: Most bands we see are young kids getting into it. When we were young, we were getting into it, too. I like to see people be themselves and not give in to the bullshit, especially in Indianapolis. We always skipped Indianapolis. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing because we always skipped it. We love Indianapolis, we love our hometown, we love our friends, but we always went to Bloomington because they understood. Here, nobody was taking. When we started in 1995, nobody was taking us seriously. I just want bands to hold their own and be themselves.

Jablonski: We’re not trying to be anything. We’re not trying to be anyone else. We’re just doing what we do and write songs. He writes songs and I write songs, and it’s about getting together and saying hey, check out this song I wrote. Then that way, nobody really is against anything anybody else has done.

Whittaker: It’s different now. It’s different now. There’s a lot of bands in Indy that we feel akin to. We don’t have to go to Bloomington anymore. In fact we never go to Bloomington because Bloomington’s turned into…

Jablonski: We are playing in Bloomington June, 9.

[All laugh]

SSv: Do you think that the landscape that you were playing in during the ’90s. Were you more akin to that then or what’s going on now?

Jablonski: Now definitely.

SSv: Why is that?

Jablonski: Nirvana. Then you go into all the copycat bands, and all those big labels were all about finding whatever copycat band doing Nirvana or whatever. Trying to pick up the one or two sounds and deciding all these bands that sound like that were good. Nowadays, with the whole mp3 thing, nobody is really trying to go for that. They’re looking for something that’s demographically sound. It’s not record labels controlling everything anymore. The ’90s was like the end of the record labels controlling what you hear. The year 2000 forward was so much more fun, especially for us.

Whittaker: I always knew we were ahead of our time.

SSv: How does the way you play a song change, or does it, from when you record it to when you play it live?

Jablonski: Tracking. We’re a three piece, so we’re able to do 24 or 48 tracks. We’re able to do 10 guitars or play other parts…

SSv: Maybe what I mean is perception. Your perception of the song from when you first record it to when you play it.

Jablonski: That’s exactly what it is. It’s perception. Recording is exactly what our perception is of what we think of our music, whereas live, we may not be able to portray that exactly. We know we sound better on CD in my opinion than we do live because it’s just hard to really portray what we do. I would love to be able to play guitar and keyboard at the same time, but you can’t do it.

Whittaker: You know, especially on the new album, there’s examples of this on the new album, some of the stuff when it first comes together. Like “Strawberry Shortcake,” here I am referring to track three on our new album Tea Tornado, is recorded off the cuff, right at the beginning. A lot of stuff is just inspiration that comes out. I wrote this song in New York when I lived there and catered toward Marmoset. When I moved back, I had 20 songs, and you [Jablonski] had 20 songs. A lot of stuff is bare-bones inspiration. And it’s not like we’ve rehearsed stuff a million times in the studio. We’re going at it for the first time and adding stuff. Going to play it live is kind of a deal for us.

Jablonski: It’s just like adlibbing you know. We try to sink our teeth into songs we haven’t really played together very often.

Whittaker: But we do it, and we like to challenge ourselves. We do whatever we need to do. We’re not afraid of an adventure.

SSv: Where do you derive your inspiration from for your songs?

Jablonski: Sometimes you don’t know what it is. You just wake up and you have that feeling, and you don’t know what it is exactly. You can’t really put your finger on it – maybe life in generally, or your thoughts. I hammer out some things and throw some words on a piece of paper and sort of just let it fly.

Whittaker: It’s not so much bands. In the past, during the ’90s…

Jablonski: … and then they well, they sound like fill-in-the-blank band. Sometimes, it was like we’re only going to get signed if we sound like this band.

Whittaker: We’re not sitting down thinking we need to write “Honky Tonk Women” because that’s sort of what it would be…

SSv: Maybe it would be like a phone conversion or looking at a picture?

Jablonski: Exactly, you just have that feeling. A lot of times it’s not anything big.

Whittaker: It’s just what you know and situations in your life. That’s really what it is. It’s not so much band songs.

SSv: What can we expect from your new album, Tea Tornado?

Cavan: I hope people like it.

Whittaker: I think people will like it because it’s not the authority record. It’s listenable.

Jablonski: You can play it for your friends at a party. Driving in your car, and you can listen to it.

SSv: What I really like is how your songs will sometimes be really heavy and sometimes abrasive to a point – like a train wreck. It still has so much life to it a positive energy. It’s very raw and refreshing.

Whittaker: On our new record, we picked recordings we liked from the last few years. Most of them are left behind. I did my solo album that way. We went in to a studio, recording 13 songs and 12 of them had to be on an album because that’s what I recorded. That’s not our mindset. We pick and choose the tracks.

Jablonski: We have to like it. It’s got to be what we’re after. If I went to the music store and picked up our own record, I would be like, I love this record.

SSv: What would you like to accomplish next with your music?

Whittaker: Money for touring the West Coast.

Cavan: Another album.

Whittaker: A manager would be nice too.

Jablonski: I don’t think any of us have any expectations, just whatever we get.

Whittaker: We’ve been a band for 15 years. I’m convinced we’re an anomaly.

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