The 1900s
Issue #34
Chicago’s ensemble band uses their collective efforts to smother their city in lovely, psychedelic pop sounds with Cold & Kind
By Dana Stewart
Published: December 1st, 2007 | 4:05pm
All too often, tragedy inspires greatness. The first full-length album from Chicago’s the 1900s sounds like it was recorded on a sunny, carefree weekend, but this is far from the case. Cold & Kind, released in October on Parasol, is actually the result of an arduous and bumpy recording process punctuated by the death of a friend. That devastating experience inspired the album’s standout song and the record’s most resonant line: “If I died, I would live again in your body.”
“Acutiplantar Dude,” and specifically that culminating line, acquired extra significance when the band learned that their late friend’s girlfriend was pregnant with his child. 1900s vocalist Caroline Donovan, who works full time as a nurse, noticed that the following track, number seven, starts with a pulsating drum and bass clarinet line that sounds like a metronomic heart monitor. If Cold & Kind were a vinyl LP, “Acutiplantar Dude” would be the obvious, yet tragic, end to the first side. “When We Lay Down” -would start the opposite side with the heartbeat sound and the continuation of life and art in the face of death.
The resulting sound is complicated, ensemble-driven psychedelic pop with catchy hooks and balls-out ’70s jamming, woven through themes of destiny, personal agency, and love. The album’s dozen songs are about iconic emotional moments in a young person’s development; many lyrics seem to describe the position of standing on a fulcrum between two possible paths and the tension that comes from making these decisions.
The best example on Cold & Kind of such a moment is “Two Ways,” a fable of a rebel lover, played by the 1900s songwriter and lead guitarist Ed Anderson (“A good-looking guy, who’s super cut and drives a Camaro”). The song describes a couple stranded in Louisiana before Hurricane Katrina; they’re on the run from the hurricane and the law. His beloved is forced between following her lover into the eye of the storm or escaping with her safety. In it, Anderson sings, “You’d be better off with Ed / Come with me to the eye of the storm / And you laughed and you said / You would never be lonely / But you cried when I walked out the door.”
Most of the 1900s’ lyrics are relatable tales of youthful indecision, many of which seem to exist happily in retrospect. As for the band itself, the central question would seem to be their identity as a locally famous indie band with the chops to make it big. With seven members in the band, Anderson says he doesn’t think the 1900s will ever make enough money for everyone in the band to quit their day jobs. As drummer Tim Minnick emphatically states, “Right, but we’d all like to do that. We’d all drop everything in a heartbeat.”
Cold & Kind is a testament to dedication, a trophy of victory over that which would impede its birth. Some of the recording tribulations included a disastrous computer crash, endless months of overdubbing, harrowing personal situations, and a severe lack of funds. But the album is finally finished, and the 1900s’ tenacity lifts Cold & Kind to a sublime level, far beyond where it would fall without proper context.
1900s favorite stuff of 2007:
1. Getting “behind” one another — "I'm so right behind you on that."
2. Music: We've all talked quite a bit about Dr. Dog this year. Plus, OOIOO, Boris, and the Boredoms. And there's always a looming and disturbing love of Will Oldham in this band.
3. TV: Not too much time for TV, but the dudes like to discuss the Wire from time to time, and then there's competitive cooking shows.
4. Movies: 51 Birch Street
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