Strong, Chris
Office
Issue #33
A year of hype and hard work pays off with the band’s latest album, A Night at the Ritz
By Stacey Duggan
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
“Anybody that tells you it’s easy making records is lying,” says Scott Masson over a mojito on the patio of a Chicago bicycle bar called Handlebar. Everyone at our table — all members of the band Office — nods solemnly in agreement. Drummer Erica Corniel, guitarist Tom Smith, bassist Alissa Noonan, and percussionist Jessica Gonyea have had one hell of a year.
But Masson, lead singer and songwriter, perhaps knows best of all about the difficulties of making records. At the start of 2007, he spent six weeks practically living on the streets of Manhattan, putting finishing touches on the group’s first label release, the ironically titled A Night at the Ritz — the culmination of an album five years in the making. In the studio until the wee hours of the morning, and without a budget for a hotel or apartment, he’d often find himself with no place to sleep. Having spent countless nights roaming the frigid parks and avenues until dawn, it was a long winter for Masson. Now that the album’s wrapped, he can finally relax and have a drink.
A lot happened in 2006: Office’s second self-released album and official demo, Q&A, was washed over in a wave of indie-media hype; they dissolved a relationship with an exploitative manager; and they played a slew of industry festivals — SXSW, CMJ, and MOBfest — but still seemed no closer to scoring a record deal. “We kind of thought it was over — thought we’d missed our big industry chance,” Masson says. “The next thing you know, one of our songs was ‘Download of the Week’ on iTunes. We ended up selling like 30,000 copies of our demo. We were gonna be happy if a few hundred people owned it.”
That demo scored them amorous praises from the blogosphere and in a few Midwestern weeklies and monthlies, though it didn’t get much attention from the national press. Early critics often labeled the group — which started out performing in corporate-style apparel with a go-go dancer playing a vintage typewriter onstage (Gonyea, who is now a member of the band) — as a new wave act, name-checking a slew of bands from that genre in reference. It’s a misnomer that could be due to their flair for postmodern onstage dramatics or, more likely, from the angular instrumentation and the guitar- and rhythm-based nature of their strongest singles. Masson, too, might be responsible: His varied vocals slip from soaring croon to sinister sing-speak in a style that’s best likened to that of new wave poster boy David Byrne. Regardless, the new wave categorization has everyone at the table eye-rolling when it’s brought up. Office, it turns out, started as a folk band in 2004 (though Masson has been using the name to make music solo since 2001).
Those early origins are more apparent on A Night At the Ritz than ever before. That’s due in part to executive producer James Iha, who scouted the band late last summer and recruited it to his label, Scratchie/New Line (also home to the Sounds and Robbers on High Street). Rather than set the band to work recording new material, he had them revisit tracks from their previous releases. “I wanted to do a whole new record of material — I have over 20 new songs already done — but James Iha was adamant,” Masson says. “He was like, ‘30,000 people have heard it. You need to get it out to 100,000.’”
Logistically, that meant days of re-recording each instrument at home and in the studio. Five years worth of demos had featured Masson on almost all instrumentation. Until recently, he wrote all the song’s basic arrangements and taught each member their parts. (Smith has since begun to contribute in that capacity as well.) Re-recording with each of the group members on their parts allowed them to keep the original character of the songs — first recorded in settings as intimate as Masson’s parents’ basement in rural Michigan — while reflecting the personal style of everyone in the band. The results are dense, more textured incarnations of the original, ultra-streamlined demos.
Office is best known for a glittering, chiming sound mixed with a sort of cynical romanticism. “Wound Up,” for example, begs to drink away a lover’s sorrow with its chorus: “Let’s go to the beach tonight with a bottle of wine / It’s a lot harder to stay in when you’re wound up so tight.” “Possibilities” is a song about rationalizing a partner’s no-call, no-show behavior, its rhythm echoing that sentiment in a mid-song break with a digital arpeggio eerily akin to the tormenting tick-tock of a clock. Then there’s the album’s closing track, “Suburban Perfume.” Acoustically driven, it’s a nostalgic reflection on the vital cultural role of music in the somewhat vapid, boring suburbs, and one of the few tracks that betrays any of the band’s claimed folk origins. Suddenly, all of Office’s influences make sense: Masson details childhood disco sing-alongs with the record player and awkward school dances in adolescence. “Flash back to 1991 when Seattle went number one / I can’t remember much of anything / But I remember the flannel well / Flash forward to here and now / Still dumb still kicking / Forever proud and winning / Until death sings my final song.”
Office isn’t a new wave band — that much is certain on A Night at the Ritz. If we’re to learn anything about Office from their struggles and triumphs, we see it’s best to mask uncertainty by singing through it.
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