Houston noisemakers Indian Jewelry deliver prosperity to the masses with Free Gold!
By Camella Lobo
Published: May 16th, 2008 | 1:30pm
Houston’s Indian Jewelry is shrouded in an impenetrable veil of mysticism, deafening electronic fuzz, and spellbinding drum-circle chants. The aesthetic these musical mediums conjure has been called mesmerizing and seizure-inducing all in the same breath. The band’s live shows have the power to transform venues into ominous, intoxicating fields of sound and witnesses into devout followers.
Erika Thrasher, an appropriate moniker for one-third of Indian Jewelry’s current noise-making lineup, speaks from the side of the road somewhere between Washington and Utah on the first leg of the band’s tour supporting Free Gold! (Now We Are Free), its most recent offering to the gods of drone rock.
“This is the slimmest tour we’ve ever been on,” she says. “We’re only riding three-deep.” The bare bones of the Free Gold! touring band is composed of its founding members: vocalist Tex Kerschen, guitarist Brandon Davis, and vocalist-guitarist-synthesizist Thrasher — although the number of Indian Jewelry members waxes and wanes. The band is known for picking up members of its loosely connected musical collective in most of the major cities it hits.
In places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where the Indian Jewelry fan base is the most dense and audiences are presumably more open to experimental music, there can be anywhere from three to eight people on stage and hundreds of fans contributing to the throbbing wall of sound that characterizes the band’s live performances.
But in regards to Indian Jewelry’s hometown, Thrasher says that is not the case. “There’s tons of great music that comes out of Houston,” she says, “but there’s just not much of an audience for our stuff.”
Whether playing to a packed venue or a sparse crowd, Indian Jewelry is always an arresting force and one that can sometimes be difficult to grasp. The sounds the band churns out are as equally threatening as they are soothing, and Free Gold! is a perfect example of the band’s ability to consistently achieve that delicate and elusive balance. In comparison to its much noisier, electronic-based albums like 2003’s We Are the Wild Beast, the new album reveals the heavier-hearted, more accessible, but also unpredictable evolution of Indian Jewelry. “We’re not a cartoon band,” says Kerschen. “Our records are our records, and they’re always going to be what we want them to be.”
The band has always made use of available musical instruments, which has had an influence on the progression of its sound, says Thrasher. “The idea is to keep moving forward with what you have instead of being stuck or doing something you think you should be doing,” she adds.
From earnest drum-machine beats to clashing cymbals, deep floor toms, and steadily building synthesizers, the band retains its signature hypnotic sound no matter the mechanisms or members Indian Jewelry procures along the way.
“Tex is yawning at me right now,” says Thrasher as she explains how the two, now married, connected in a small community of noise and experimental music in Houston more than 10 years ago. This insight subtly contradicts the band’s MySpace page, which tells an elaborate tale of outcasts and how they found music and each other. “That’s all part of the game,” says Kerschen. “We’re unrest makers and we like games.”
All in all, the band’s shape-shifting persona — a cut and paste menagerie of intriguing and politically tinged imagery — is difficult to decode. This is not accidental. Presumably well-read in history and politics, Kerschen himself can be notoriously cryptic and evasive. Digging deeper into the core of who the band is reveals a group of people with a positive agenda.
“I don’t think there’s any way to separate our music and political and social issues,” Kerschen says. There was even a time during a live show when they attempted to use subliminal messages to promote freethinking, he adds. They’re still not sure if it worked.
Although Indian Jewelry vows to never give what is expected of them, one thing is certain, it’s always going to be something unique. Kerschen assures, “We don’t take orders from anybody.”
Issue #35
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