Tonight is a special night for
Damon & Naomi fans, as the former rhythm section of famed indie band Galaxie 500 Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang come to the Brisbane Powerhouse for an intimate show. Supports are also strong, with Chapter Music founder
Guy Blackman and local experimentalists
Primitive Motion filling out the excellent bill.
Head over here to get tickets. I did an interview with the pair last month which goes down as one of the warmest, most personable interviews I have ever had (matching the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Lou Barlow, Bobby Gillespie, Beck and Emil Amos for best interview) - it went for forty minutes and still the couple were disappointed it was coming to an end! Enjoy...
After five
years as two-thirds of New York act Galaxie 500, and over twenty years as
ubiquitous duo Damon & Naomi, real-life couple Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang
are finally making their way to Australia. “It’s been a long time coming, for
sure,” Yang states. “It feels like we should have been there. We’ve been trying
to conceptualise (Australia), because on our maps here in America, it doesn’t
look that big. But on American maps it makes the US look enormous, so we have
no idea what to expect.”
The
incredibly amiable couple have crafted much of their current musical oeuvre
with Michio Kurihara (Boris, Ghost), thus becoming a pivotal part of the
evolution of Damon & Naomi. Yet Australian audience will have to wait a
while longer to see that incarnation in the flesh.
“Kurihara
won’t be with us,” Krukowski admits. “Playing and touring just the two of us is
something that we still do a lot; he lives in Tokyo, he has other commitments
too, so it isn’t always practical. We tour in a flexible configuration, where
it can be us or just easily a trio, or four, or sometimes five. We are an
interesting band in that we have never had a rhythm section, so as a duo it
stands as keyboard and acoustic guitar. When Kurihara is on board he adds
electric guitar. If we have more, it’s soprano sax and cello.”
The
absence of a rhythm section may seem like an aberration, or even a necessary
evil for such an outfit, but like most things about Krukowski and Yang, nothing
is that straightforward.
“Damon
plays rhythm on his guitar, so there is no need for drums,” Yang laughs. “It
came firstly out of necessity, because when we start out as a duo there was
nothing we could do about it. When recording we could play bass and drums and
all the other instruments, but live we found it much easier to discard all
that, Damon started playing acoustic guitar whilst I stuck to bass for a while,
but then moved naturally onto keyboards to the point where we didn’t need that
element any more. It’s never felt necessary that we needed other people for a
rhythm section, not because we consciously didn’t need one, but because our
songwriting evolved away from it. It didn’t need filling out in that way.”
“We
also shy away from telling people what to play,” Krukowski explains further.
“So when we invite musicians to come play with us, we don’t give them parts to
play. And I think people often expect that, so instead we try to work with
great musicians that can bring their own elements to it, it’s a collaborative
effort. Yet it’s always been the functionality of how we write; this goes back
to Galaxie 500, the song always started with guitar and a melody, then we would
come in after that. We are still in the habit of writing like that, with a
piano or guitar in our living room. The first two albums (1992’s More Sad Hits and 1995’s The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi)
we made as studio albums with no intention of going on the road. So when we did
decide to tour, it was a conscious decision to keep it intimate, to play how we
play at home. We invite people to add their elements just like you would if
guests visited your home. Bass and drums, we are somewhat possessive of that,
it’s what we do in the studio, so it’s the one area that we could get a little
bossy.”
“Although
it’d be fun to get Bootsy Collins in some time, get people dancing,” Yang
states cheekily.
The
“legacy” of Galaxie 500 has hung over Damon & Naomi ever since the band
split in 1991, yet the brevity of that outfit speaks volumes about the pair.
They have truly grown as songwriters and as people side by side, and it’s
allowed them more personal and spiritual development than Galaxie 500 ever
would have.
“We
came to focus on singing and melody more over time,” Krukowski muses. “We
didn’t start out as singers, and I think that’s why it’s so hard to think of
ourselves in that way. But when we go on stage now, just the two of us, it’s
just us and these songs.”
“In
Galaxie 500 we were the rhythm section for a reason – I wasn’t comfortable
singing live at all,” Yang adds. “But as a duo we were at the front of the
stage, and we had to do the singing live, there was no other way around it.
There was nothing else for it, and over time I had to be respectful to singing
and embracing the powerful instrument that it is, which was something you think
would be easy to take on for a musician. But Damon and I came from a punk, DIY
background where everyone was like, “Yeah, singing, whatever!” It was a very
different process to be at the front of the stage singing; you are communicating
something entirely different when you have language, people are really
listening, so you had better be saying something that’s worth listening to. The
emotion in the voice that can be conveyed is very different, so that was a huge
lesson for us.”
“It
changed our songwriting over time too,” Krukowski continues. “With Galaxie 500
the lyrics always came last, always. We changed the emphasis from the get go,
so even those first two albums were heavily lyric-based. Galaxie 500 was a
short-lived band, and a lot of bands are, but what we had a lot in coming with
those kinds of bands is we were focused on what the band sound was. It wasn’t
about the songs per se, nearly as much as it was about the sound of the group.
Which got to the point that anything we created had to sound like itself,
y’know? So it was enjoyable and fun to take someone else’s song and turn it
into one of ours, because we made something iconic in that way. As a duo we
have never travelled down that path, rather it’s always been about the songs
themselves. So when we play with different configurations it’s OK, because we
are still playing the song, but exploring it in different ways. We have often
reinterpreted songs over time too, which is a freedom and excitement that
wouldn’t have been possible to us back then.”
“When
you record a song, it’s like you’ve hardly even known it,” Yang stresses. “It’s
a work of art that you have relatively just written, you may have played it a
few times in its entirety, but after you have lived with it, you have played it
for a month on tour, or two months on tour, or a year, you have a better knowledge
of what that song is supposed to be. You live with songs in the present, not
just the past, and it seems natural that you would adjust the songs as you
grow.”
“There
is only so much you can do with two people and two voices,” Krukowski finishes.
“You can’t always turn the volume up, but you can turn it down. It is the subtle
variances that make the most difference. Our growth never ends, we are always
exploring what we can do. When you play really quietly you grab people’s
attention, and when you want something stronger you have somewhere to go.”
The
last two albums Damon & Naomi produced stands by that aesthetic, yet
embodied emotions and themes that were very much the polar opposites of each
other. Within These Walls dwelled in
the disruption and despair that a tumultuous, dark series of events can cast
over one’s life at any given moment, whilst False
Beats & True Hearts offered a buoyant counterpoint, the light at the
end of the tunnel. The immediacy of the new record was something that they
really wanted to stress.
“The
previous record was very dark, it came out of a dark time for us, and we wanted
to move a little more forward and make ourselves a little more public in a
way,” Yang espouses. “On Within These
Walls the challenge was how dark can we be. It was our state of mind then,
and it showed, but once we were writing we wanted to see how far we could take
it. And I think we succeeded, it really is such a dark record. So we came out
of that and started writing again and we wanted everything to be brighter and
more joyous. It’s much more forward and present, rather than “oh, you have to
come into our world now.” We are really writers that live in the moment,
especially in the lyrics. I think that constant shift in emotions, that
rollercoaster ride, is something that everyone has experienced in their lives.
Really dark times and a sense of loss can be offset by those better times. Live
we have learnt to harness both those abstracts of our music, and to some people
when it’s all intermingled it might all sound the same, but it makes sense to
us.”
“A
musician like Bryan Adams can go through those extremes of emotion all within a
minute of one song, from verse to chorus,” Krukowski laughs. “It’s true of us
too, but over a much slower arc; over whole albums that take us years to make.
But we get there in the end.”
A
Damon & Naomi show is one of nuance and envelopment, requiring the audience
to step outside of their own selves and immerse themselves in the performance.
Yet crowds are fickle beasts, and not always guaranteed to offer the space that
is required to maximise the experience.
“When
everyone is quiet, then you know it’s a good show,” Krukowski chuckles. “The
thing is we have played with a somewhat classical line-up, and when we started
out we were quite loud. And when Kurihara plays with us it can be extremely
loud – he’s in Boris, who are louder than Dinosaur Jr in my opinion, so that’s
to be expected! But maybe it comes from nepotism from the very beginning, where
generally we are presenting less than what people are expecting. There is a
kind of invitation there, where you have to come into the intimacy of the show
and experience it.”
“We
actually ask a lot of the audience,” Yang concurs. “We are asking people to
concentrate, to listen and get involved, and that’s a very different thing to
most live shows that people are generally going to encounter. So it’s a really
nice thing when the audience is willing to participate in that way, it can be
really powerful and intense, and we are really grateful for that. But we
definitely get those situations where there are people coming on stage or it’s
a really loud bar, people want to have really loud conversations every three
minutes. There was this woman once who was talking really loudly at the front
of the stage, it was all we could hear. Everyone else was really quiet in the
room. We just tried to ignore it, whatever, and we might have asked her to go
talk up the back or something. Then after the show she came up to us and she
apologised, and she was all emotional, telling us how she’d just been through a
break-up and was keeping emotions at arm’s length, and the music was forcing
her to confront them…she was talking as a defence mechanism! Our music is
dangerous…”
The
past couple of years has seen the other Galaxie 500 founder, Dean Wareham,
touring the band’s music on his own, revisiting the iconic material in its
entirety without Krukowski and Yang’s input. The situation doesn’t offend the
pair so much as perplex them.
“I
think of it as his zombie band – The Galaxie 500 zombie band, resurrecting the
hits,” Yang laughs. “For me, I would never want to do that. Talking of growth,
what is the benefit of that? It’s nice to revisit a song from time to time, to
reanimate it, and we’ve done it before. I think it would be one thing if you
had this burning desire to discover a new interpretation, but to go out and
play the music you used to play when you were 25 in exactly the same way you
did when you were 25, it’s a denial,
a lack of growth over the past twenty years. It bums me out; I would feel
really sad doing that. It’s not an artistic gesture, it’s a financial
opportunity. And it’s great to make some money, but that is so far from what
music is meant to be a focal point of – to be remembered as the girl who played
those songs with those big earrings, to “there’s that old lady playing those
songs, with those same big earrings” – it’s just creepy.”
“We
thought it was kind of weird and surprising,” Krukowski admits. “Being in
bands, you often come up against that kind of problem where you get to see
these bands again, and I have certainly gone to some of those shows where bands
have reformed in order to see bands play that I never thought I’d have the
opportunity to. But at the same time there is a weird feeling for me, because
they are not playing to me, really. We have state fairs here in the States,
local agricultural carnivals, and there are bands that tour that circuit. When
we were kids the bands were the big hit bands of the 50s would be playing these
days alongside the biggest pig competitions, with one original member or
sometimes no original members left in the line-up. The melancholy of that
really sticks with me, so when I see something like the Pixies or hear of
another Dean Wareham Plays Galaxie 500 show, even if they are playing these
massive places and are in some ways bigger than they were originally, I can’t
stop thinking of the local state fair.”
