“Nelson and his Suffocation Keep posse craft some solid tunes, speckled with hooks, topped with epic choruses, and wholly unpretentious.”|-Pitchfork |FROM ROLLING STONE: Suffocation Keep’s Next Wave Built to Spill side project begin building simple pop Built to Spill bassist Brett Nelson’s synth-drenched side project, the Suffocation Keep, entered a Boise, Idaho, studio last weekend to begin recording a follow-up to their May 14th debut release, John Hughes Was Never So Wrong. According to Nelson, who wrote John Hughes at home with his four-track and then recruited local musicians and friends to play on the album, the band has solidified, and the current sessions will result in an album that reflects the cohesion. “On the new songs,” he says, “we have more input from everyone else as opposed to just my ideas. [Keyboardist] John Mullin writes his own songs, and we collaborate on a lot of stuff. And everyone contributed some ideas.” Also, while the band rushed to finish John Hughes — “We just had a small budget, and we wanted to get something out that we could sell on the road,” says Nelson — they’ll take a full year to finish recording this time around. Through the five-piece Suffocation Keep Nelson (who sings and also plays keyboards) explores musical interests that fall outside the scope of the guitar-rock-oriented Built to Spill. “It’s kind of a New Wave, Eighties sound — which I’ve always loved,” he says. “Just kind of simple pop songs. There are no raging solo guitar jams, like in Built to Spill. It’s focused on keyboards, and the guitar parts that are there are played more like keyboard parts. We cover ‘Send Me an Angel’ by Real Life. And we’re going to do ‘Star Man’ by David Bowie, but obviously that’s a lot harder to figure out.” The Suffocation Keep will tour this summer between recording sessions. Meanwhile, Built to Spill are on a break, and frontman Doug Martsch is working on his own solo album. Next spring, the band plans to reconvene to begin work on a follow-up to last year’s Ancient Melodies of the Future. AUGUSTIN K. SEDGEWICK (May 21, 2002) |
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