1 Photo by Jacqueline
These Are Powers
Guitarist-vocalist Anna Barie talks about the group's newest release, Taro Tarot, and how the band’s experimental sound can’t easily be labeled or classified
By Bess Korey
Published: April 2nd, 2008 | 1:30pm
New York's These Are Powers began in spring 2006 as a low-key project for vocalist-guitarist Anna Barie and guitarist Pat Noecker. But it soon became a full-fledged band with the release of the duo’s first LP, 2007's Terrific Seasons, and the addition of drummer Bill Salas. Salas has been a part of These Are Powers (TAP) since the summer of 2007, and his electronic drum beats are very present on TAP’s latest, Taro Tarot (Hoss).
On the five-song EP, the band uses tribal drum beats and raw, primitive-sounding female vocals in a way that evokes late-’70s–early-’80s post-punk groups, then takes this sound to another level by adding an electronic twist. The results are songs that are instrumentally multilayered, with Barie’s emotive, abstract singing serving as an instrument within itself.
On the eve of Taro Tarot’s release, I caught up with Barie via phone while on tour in Virginia. In the following interview she talks about the new EP, what makes TAP different from their predecessors, and what the group's plans are for the future.
How do you feel about your group being compared to post-punk bands from the past, and do you see these comparisons as valid?
We've gotten a lot of post-punk and no wave comparisons. I don't see it as entirely accurate. I take it as a compliment, but it's definitely not a direct influence at all. Our approach to making music is to try and make our guitars not sound like guitars in a lot of the frequencies and tones. Bill only has part of a drum kit. Instead of a kick drum, he has an electronic foot trigger. It's like an electronic kick drum that he makes bass and drum sounds through. There's a box [in his drum kit] that he can sing through, and he does live sampling and looping.
I think it's nice that people can draw comparisons to music of other eras, like a frame of reference. But as far as what we listen to and draw influences from, we don't really listen to too much of that stuff at all. We listen to a lot of dub and reggae, especially when we're on tour. It's not anything overt on our part. We're really a performance-based band. I think it's more about having something else take over when we're on stage and channeling that, being like a lightning rod.
Where did the phrase describing your sound "Baby John Coltrane in a Stroller" come from? Do you relate to that at all?
We didn't come up with that one. A friend of ours [thought of it] after we played in Stanbury, Connecticut. He was kind of half joking when he said to us that we were like "baby John Coltrane being pushed in a stroller." It was a really rad compliment, something kind of unique. As far as descriptions that try to define what we do, [that one] is something that is a bit more abstract and has something a bit more artistic to it. People will say we remind them of Throbbing Gristle or the Boredoms, things like that. Everyone has their own take on it, and it has to do with where they're coming from. It's all valid, but how we define it ourselves, we tend to shy away from labels like that.
I understand where you’re coming from in not wanting to be labeled, but I see relevance in comparing you to Coltrane and jazz, especially when a similar level of experimentalism can be found in your music. Do you agree?
We take more of a visual approach. Kind of using the same technique of certain art movements when creating music — like the idea of a collage or a painting — and applying that to putting a song together.
As far as a jazz goes, we use elements of improv. We listen to each other and have an intuitive sense of when to play and when not to play — the idea of silence with guitars, as John Cage defined it — pulling from a lot of different influences but figuring out what works for us, what's honest, what's genuine, and definitely not wanting to sound pretentious.
When we write, I think it's a lot more emotive. It's not like we decide that this is the kind of song we want to create or that we want to sound like X, Y, and Z. For me personally, I feel that 80% of it is performance-based and that playing live is the most rewarding aspect of it. You can labor over a song as much as you want, but once you perform it for other people it takes on a life of its own. What you meant when you originally wrote it, might not hold true any more, because it's going to be interpreted so many different ways. It's also valid, and it's also exciting and interesting, since it furthers the evolution [of the song].
Do you have any plans to record another full-length album in the near future?
We're going to come back to Chicago this summer [2008] for a few months to write and record our new record. We're going to Austria in May, and after we get back, we'll take some time out to craft something new that kind of reflects where we are going and where we'd like to be.
Will the album be very different from the EP?
I don't know if it's going to be radically different, but I think the EP is kind of like a taste. I don't think we really know what we're going to sound like until we get into it. We're all really excited about writing new songs. I don't know how radically different it's going to be from what we've been previously doing until we start to do it. Hopefully we've started to craft a sound that will continue to be interesting to people, but can still be defined as us.
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These Are Powers' MySpace
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