Our Brother the Native
"When I call Josh Bertram of Our Brother The Native at his home in Pontiac, Mich., hes unwinding with hot tea and whiskey after one of those days at the office. The 22-year-old art director harbors an insuppressible passion for music, which is tough to convey to his older coworkers. I feel like they progressively get more and more weirded out by me, he admits. Bertram graciously welcomes my questions, speaking openly and eloquently about his new album, Vows.
At age 16, Bertram began recording with high school friend John-Michael Foss. They soon linked up with California resident Chaz Knapp and started collaborating via the Internet. There wasnt a lot of that kind of thing going on, says Bertram. Now, thats really common.
Bertram, Foss, and Knapp only met face to face after Our Brother The Native recorded its first full length album. Following its debut, Tooth And Claw, the band put out a host of material ranging from pretty folk to post rock on FatCat Records. Through all the style shifts, an avid fascination with circuit-bent instruments and layered sounds remained a consistent focus. After 2009s Sacred Psalms, however, the steady outflow of releases came to a halt.
Chaz and I were never really satisfied with the records we put out, says Bertram. Ive been documenting my artistic growth over the years. Its kind of like looking at embarrassing photos from high school. Finally, I was like alright, I need to slow it down.
Production slowed, but Bertrams been busier than ever. Its such an ambitious project to get all these players and instruments recorded, he says. It just took a lot longer. The self-described sound geek did all the tracking for Vows himself. Guitar, banjo, ukulele, piano, synthesizer, and alto saxophone were among the instruments he played on the album. Knapp wrote the orchestral arrangements, and Nick Cowman of Oaklands Religious Girls laid down the drums. A lot of these songs had almost 120 tracks of instruments and sounds, Bertram tells me. The final mixing of the album became an eight month endeavor."
"Vows (released late October) is a dynamic flurry of sounds. Dense arrangements of strings, wind instruments, and clattering percussion accompany harrowing vocals from Bertram and an ethereal chorus of friends. Theres so much to take in on this record, Bertram affirms. Its kind of exhausting.
In the course of recording the album, Bertram fell in love for the first time. I wanted to make it sort of like marriage vows documenting various stages of love, he says. This is the first [album] I feel has actual human depth. Ironically, its also the first time Bertrams had difficulty finding a label. Hes digitally self-releasing Vows in the hopes that someone takes interest in putting out a physical version. I dont want fame or fortune or anything, Bertram tells me. I just want people to hear it. If I could have a conversation with you about your art, my art... I just want music to instigate these sort of things.
- San Francisco Bay Guardian Online
- Recommended !
Comments
"Close in essence to CocoRosie and Animal Collective, the first output from Our Brother The Native, Tooth & Claw, released over two years ago, already showed strong signs of creative flair, especially for a band formed by three teenagers scattered around the US, who only met in the flesh for their first live set, shortly after the album was released. They returned earlier this year with the much darker and challenging Make Amends For We Are Merely Vessels, which swapped the glittering broken folk of their previous effort for slices of tortured spaced-out post rock.
With Parting Marrows, Joshua Bertram, John-Michael Foss and Chaz Knapp return to more purely pastoral tones, but this digital-only EP marks yet another departure, this time toward slightly bohemian moods. The songs presented here are much shorter and more compact than those of Make Amends, and the dense clouds of saturated guitars and primal screams have been replaced with more peaceful acoustic brushes, where guitars and piano form the main instrumental fabric of the songs. The random samples and instruments that the trio layer over these contribute greatly to the poetic aspect of the music, and this is further enhanced by the child-like vocals which have become the bands trademark.
While they often appear sketchy and rough, vocals are actually an important part of the music made by OBTN. Like early Animal Collective, there is an intrinsic trance-like incantatory aspect to these which gives the songs an unusual and at times totally disconcerting relief. This is particularly acute toward the end of Warm Refines, where the trio incorporate what sounds like traditional Eastern European or African tribal singing to the piece as there own vocals almost disappear in the background. Opening pieces Augural Wraith and Seminal Paws are perhaps more conventional, at least as far as alternative music is concerned. The former is a gentle campfire song which lingers for a while before briefly building momentum toward the end, while the latter, although more deconstructed, is more elaborated and complex. The most straightforward piece on this EP is undoubtedly the heart-warming Failed Panegyric, with its wonderful sweeping chorus, but even here, OBTN continue to inject snippets of environmental sounds and smearing them all over the instrumental backdrop. The closing title track is a much more reflective affair, which continuously echoes with film dialogues in the foreground while the band drop gentle lullaby-like soft tones in the background.
Our Brother The Native continue to develop and mature in a totally unique and exciting way, and this digital only EP is a further proof that their horizon is continuously widening. This EP is in turn melancholic, emotional and uplifting, but it is, above all, completely original and fresh. Unmissable!"
- The Milk Factory.
- Rec'ed by someone here a long time ago (possibly Bad Thoughts)
"Knapp is one third of Our Brother The Native, and the six tracks that make up Vie comme un Parasite Faisant la f
The first one was released on Fat Cat in 2006 when Chaz Knapp was only 16 years old and IMO one of the most moving listening experiences you can possibly imagine:
Musicians:
John-Michael Foss - Guitar, Drums/Percussion, Piano, Voice
Chaz Knapp - Voice, Guitar, Piano, Percussion
Joshua Bertram - Voice, Samples/Electronics, Banjo, Guitar
Jean Bertram - Voice
Kayleen Nilsson - Viola
- "A hugely exciting new signing to FatCat, Our Brother The Native are three young American guys (two aged 16, one 18) who we stumbled upon towards the end of 2005. Having checked out a link to their site on Myspace.com, and instantly loving what we heard, we got in touch with the band and this debut they were currently working on happily fell into our laps."
- Fat Cat Records
"'Make Amends, For We Are Merely Vessels is a bold and expansive album that ebbs and flows with huge power and considerable skill. The eight songs here clock in at between six and fourteen minutes each and take their cues more from expansive post-rock / noise rather than any freaked folk scene."
- FatCat Records.
Our Brother The Native - Terra Traipse
'- "Written and recorded with great care over the course of a year, Terra Traipse sees Our Brother the Native eagerly treading new ground, while continuing to haunt those places in music they've come to be associated with. The product is a powerfully dynamic blend of effected, familiar, and other-worldly sounds, performed and arranged in a manner that is as often meditative and gentle as it is bracingly intense. An ebb and flow permeates the songs, alternating between and sometimes blending phases of deeply felt melancholy, exaltation, sorrow, and hopefulness, telling of what comes and goes, confessing a love of Plath's poetry one moment, and recounting past grievances another, all in a voice that is unfailingly honest. Featuring an eclectic cast of musicians and collaborators living in Michigan, on the West Coast, and elsewhere, Terra Traipse lacks none of the technical ambitions, nor the sonic texture of past albums. But they are presented here in a refined form, and though it was drafted with an amplitude of pop sensibility, the music lacks none of the depth, spirituality, or darkness that characterizes the band's prior work. The twenty-six minutes make for an immediate and coherent kind of stepping-forth that is engaging throughout. Meticulous production handled by many capable ears helps to give the abysmal interior of Terra Traipse a sparkling surface, much like the surface of any great lake seen from the window of a West Coast bound airplane..."