You might not be able to tell from the glazed psych-pop glimmer of We’re Already There, Mazarin’s new disc for the NYC indie I and Ear, but singer/guitarist Quentin Stoltzfus counts old-time gospel and country among his favorite and earliest influences. “My mom was a gospel singer and sang in a gospel choir, and I was infused with American music at an early age,” says Stoltzfus, whose Philly band opens for the Walkmen downstairs at the Middle East this Wednesday. “My grandmother used to sing Carter Family songs to me when I was a kid, so there’s a musical legacy that was passed down. I see music as being a continuum, where you can draw direct links from people who sat on their porch in Kentucky and played banjo in the early 1900s to Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan to practically everyone.”
Fair enough, especially when you consider that as a singer-songwriter Stoltzfus shares some traits with Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, whose stream-of-consciousness narratives were often compared to the Great White Wonder. Stoltzfus likes to mix up his arrangements and shift at a moment’s notice from a minimalist setting of mostly voice and acoustic guitar (“Louise”) to effervescent indie pop (“Northeast Winter”) to a krautrocking, instrumental sketch (“Kenyan Heat Wave”) reminiscent of Can. “We’re Already There” is built on a Fender Rhodes-driven groove.
Mazarin’s last few years have been fraught with strife and “major meltdowns” mostly stemming from a financially disastrous six-month tour in support of 2001’s A Tall-Tale Storyline (spinArt). But over the phone, Stoltzfus sounds refreshed. Without going into details, he reveals that the tour was “haphazardly planned . . . we had things promised to us and we didn’t get them and just kinda got ripped off in a few places. That’s what can kill you. I love to play but I don’t love losing my shirt.”
The fallout from the experience resulted in line-up changes, creative stasis, and Stoltzfus’s retreat from Mazarin just as they were building creative and critical momentum. “I spent three years digging out of debt and recovering from the emotional scars I had from that whole touring stint.” He built a home studio, started producing other bands, and even joined Blood Feathers on drums, the instrument he manned in his pre-Mazarin days with the Philadelphia psych outfit Azusa Plane. Only after Mazarin multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Brian McTear pushed his mate to begin writing and recording again did Stoltzfus make a fresh start. That may have rejuvenated him, but it took a year for Mazarin to find a label to release the new disc. “I had a very clear and focused idea of what I wanted in terms of production style and sound because I had learned a lot about recording.” Indeed, We’re Already There is laced with everything from bells and whistles to lap steel, autoharp, Farfisa, and even an atmospheric sample of the ocean.
“The first album was an amazing fluke. We were using complete crap equipment the wrong way, and somehow we came out with something that sounded good. We got lucky. But this is the first time I’ve done a recording where, when it was finished, I said ‘Yes, this is exactly what I wanted.’ ”
At first, Stoltzfus says, he and McTear toyed with “stripping everything down.” But they just couldn’t help themselves. No sooner would they peel a layer back than they’d begin experimenting again, dabbling with hypnotic loops of percussion, Hammond organ, or blips of random sound; coloring, embellishing, and smearing the core canvas of guitar, bass, and drums. “Eventually, the noise just found its way back in.”
Mazarin + the Walkmen | Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave, Cambridge | Jan 25 | 617.864.EAST
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Mazarin: //www.mazarinband.com/