Numbers like “Frostbite” and “Time Is a Lie” chew on issues of personality and place, but none so much as the disc’s closer, “Percy’s Revenge,” with its oddball chorus of “This is how I spell my name out/C-H-R-I-S-T-O-P-H-E M-A-S-C-A.” That misspelling of Mascara’s name appeared in a school yearbook when he was a kid, but the song’s bloodlines of heritage and emotion run a lot deeper.
“I enjoy reading biographies of artists, filmmakers, poets. I read a book about Lord Byron and the legacy of his friend and fellow poet Percy Shelley. There was that night when they all got together on laudanum and Mary Shelley invented the story Frankenstein, so there are those elements of their literary legacy in the book. But I was fascinated by the idea that Shelley was so crazy one night he took a skiff out into a raging storm at sea and that’s how he died. They had a burial and pyre for him on the beach, and legend has it one of his friends took his heart and saved it in a box, saying, ‘This is the purest thing.’ So there’s a line in ‘Percy’s Revenge’ where I sing, ‘Take my heart/May it stand for something other than what I am.’
“It’s asking what’s the purity of my heart and soul versus the identity I’ve been given, which I am a little hung up on because I was adopted. I don’t take heritage and identity and family for granted. For me, that’s really a raw song.”
He’s equally inquisitive about the nature of guitar sounds and their emotional effect. To that end, the four gleaming hollow-bodied six-strings waiting on stands nearby like obedient servants as we speak are all in different tunings: standard for the ripping leads, and then Mascara’s own tunings constructed around open strings that hit various unisons, fifths, and octaves when plucked together. They produce combinations of notes that grind, create uneasiness, or soothe — all at the whim of a player who developed his extensive grasp of harmony, rhythm, and melody as a child organ prodigy. Two — a Gretsch and a Gibson — are recent acquisitions that have already inspired Mascara to write a batch of songs for the full-length he plans to start recording in spring.
“The combination of my unique tunings with the open, breathy sound of the archtop guitars is my signature as a player. I love the feeling of discovery, and that’s part of my effort to sound like nobody else. Eddie Van Halen sounds like himself; same with Jorma Kaukonen. If you’re gonna be a lead guitar player, you’ve got to do something that really expresses what you’re about.
“Each of my tunings have a specific body of songs they go with, and they’ve inspired me to write, so I really love and value them. But that doesn’t mean I won’t twist a peg on a headstock tomorrow and find another tuning — and maybe, then, another group of songs that I’ve just gotta write.”
MASCARA + BINARY SYSTEM + RAMONA SILVER + ADAM GLASSEYE | Lizard Lounge, 1667 Mass Ave, Cambridge | Jan 20 | 617.547.EAST
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On the Web:
Mascara: http://www.mascaramusic.com/
