A shambling, unwieldy beast borne of country, punk, metal and anything else readily available, Brooklyn’s O’Death attracted plenty of attention with its first two albums. Fans of fractured folk music loved them, purists hated them, but the band’s divisive approach was admirable in an era of profitably risk-adverse indie rock.
Comprising intricate banjo lines, tightly wound drum patterns and carnival-barker vocals, O’Death’s genre mash is ever-changing. As violinist Robert Pycior explains, the original idea was “to sound like a drunk country band doing crudely performed, angular junkyard ballads. Over time we brought in some of that teenage punk rock energy we loved.” The band’s intense sound came out of a competitive drive among the players to continually up the stakes. “When there’s a fingerpicked banjo line that’s syncopated,” Pycior says, “naturally you want to incorporate that same kind of frantic approach into your instrument, whether that’s the violin or the drum.”
On O’Death’s forthcoming third album, Outside, they bring another element to their songwriting toolkit: restraint. Painstakingly arranged in the studio, the album’s densely layered songs demonstrate a talent for composition that previous releases only hinted at. It may seem an abrupt transformation, but according to Pycior, the new approach is closer to the band’s original vision. The band’s sound “went to the heavier side,” Pycior says, “but now we’re back to something closer to what we started with, only more refined. In the different stages of [the band’s] evolution, we grabbed what seemed useful and threw out what felt redundant. This album is much more varied and was put together piece by piece.”
The move toward a more nuanced form of songcraft is partially attributable to drummer David Rogers-Berry’s battle with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer he was diagnosed with in 2009. After Rogers-Berry endured 10 months of chemotherapy and a shoulder replacement, the band reconvened to record Outside. Pycior acknowledges the role that episode played in O’Death’s new approach.
“[Rogers-Berry] really wanted to do something that felt timeless,” Pycior says. “That’s something we all understood and felt. This isn’t the first time crisis has struck the band, but when we were younger, with the instability of our touring and home life, we embraced the anxiety. We threw that into our music. But this time we used our craft as a personal therapeutic outlet as opposed to a simple exercise of madness.”
O’Death
Friday, March 25, 8pm
The 418 Project, 418 Front St, Santa Cruz. $10
baneshows.blogspot.com
