Photo by Phillip Lynott
alaska!
Imaad Wasif reveals his band's innermost secrets
By Jim Keller
Published: May 28th, 2005 | 4:20pm
alaska! began solely as a collaboration between guitarist and vocalist Imaad Wasif (lowercase) and bassist and vocalist Russ Pollard (ex-Sebadoh), but after the duo's 2003 release of the emotions LP on Flying Nun Records, it was clear the band needed a live drummer to help flush out its fury. Lesley Ishino (Red Aunts, drums) was enlisted to play, and the trio began beating out Wasif's romantic vision. After a near-death experience, however, the trio banned together for survival, strengthening its live performance and wowing audiences with a unique blend of rock seasoned with pinches of pop and dissonance. I spoke via email with Wasif about the band's brush with death and its new album, Rescue Through Tomahawk.
I understand Russ and yourself created your first record, emotions. What prompted you to seek out a third member?
emotions captures a period of two years of freedom I had from the idea of a 'band'. We played a lot of those songs for two years before recording them. We were in their core, they were lived in. alaska! needed a drummer to perform the record and tour.
In 2002 Lesley Ishino joined alaska!, how was it that she was introduced?
She was introduced beneath the salvation sign at the Silverlake Lounge in Los Angeles. She played three songs: “The Western Shore, “Love”, and “In My Time”. It was cathartic. I felt like she understood where the songs needed to go.
How has Ishino's introduction changed your live performances?
Lesley Ishino became a part of the necessary triangle of Rescue Through Tomahawk. The performances flow into wild uncharted seas. I know she is willing to go too far and push these songs to the brink. The last year has inspired some of the most intense and passionate shows that I have ever been a part of. I feel like the songs have control over that.
Rescue Through Tomahawk reads like a story about taking back control of life at times. Was there a conscious effort to have several of the songs tell a story?
Initially it was a simple idea. I thought the songs were going to form a cycle, crossing the line between chaos and restraint, then coming full circle, but the events of the last two years conspired against me and changed the shape of my life and the record. At times I shut down into myself. I felt so fucking fragile. I learned you can only push things so hard before you lose yourself so deeply in what you do, and become invisible to the ones you love. You become an ugly, dark thing hiding within yourself, lurking in the shadows. This record goes through a tunnel but it comes out into light.
It's clear when your van flipped over in a snowstorm of 2004, it changed the way you thought about life. What ran through your mind when you first realized that your van had flipped over?
I still haven't been able to shake the fear. I feared life again for the first time since my early twenties. Life and death are inseparable and all around, all the time. I think about it every time alaska! performs the record. The wreck was a catalyst for change. I've been writing about change for many years, but I understand it now in a different way: change takes time, change is the nature of time. Its effects are infinite, the waves never stop.
What changes have you and the other band members made to your lifestyles after such a harrowing experience?
alaska! will never again tour in the winter. Every omen I see, I heed.
I am quite impressed with the liner notes of Rescue Through Tomahawk. What inspired you to have them laid out like a map?
It originally had something to do with “Through the Years”, but I don't remember exactly what.
Is there a particular significance to this?
The crest on the cover of the record serves as a legend — it's full of symbols from the songs. The map came from that — it's meant to document the time we made this record and the web of these songs. It's meant to grow old and decay, to be lost and found, to be there after we're gone.
Issue #35
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