Bodies of Water
Holding Their Diving Rods And Making Four Tells Into One Canyon
Jul 15, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Brad Kopplin
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Even in a Cave
original version appears on A Certain Feeling
When we were learning all of the songs from the Certain Feeling record, we wrote their names out on a giant post-it note. Have you seen these? They are about 18 inches square, but they are post-it notes. We stick them up on the walls of the garage when we're learning songs. Most of those that we were working on had temporary titles that explained what kind of jam they were. There was 'Stoney Jam,' '90's Jam,' 'Prog Jam,' etc. This one was called 'Jazz Jam' for OBVIOUS reasons. I have never driven into a cave and been trapped there by rubble. This song is not purely autobiographical. I have been helpless in changing how I feel, that much is true, but it hasn't been in a cave. In a car, yes, but not in a car that is in a cave. This is so stupid, I'm really sorry to waste your time like this.
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A Certain Feeling
original version appears on A Certain Feeling
This one always reminds me of a song called 'L'estasi Dell'Oro' by Ennio Morricone. There's a similar progression in the verse. The timing is different, but they have a similar feel to me. I'd never really listened to Morricone prior to our first record coming out, but then we started getting a lot of comparisons to him (mainly because of a song called "Doves" that we made which had a western gallop rhythm and twangy guitar parts) and when I checked him out I was delighted to find that he is great. Some of the tricks that we used a lot on the first record (and on the recent one, although to a lesser degree) are things that we discovered were characteristic of a lot of his music; voices and instruments to simultaneously double the same melody, mode changes that make the melody feel like it's continuously escalating, lots of synchopated bass and low drums, staccato brass accents, etc. I love this guy! A few people told me that a few of our newer songs sound like Yes, who I hadn't listened to before (but I had heard terrible things about) and since I've checked them out I've gotten really into their records. Listen to "Every Little Thing" from their first record. The early lineup gets overlooked because everyone loves Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman, but the original guys are really good, too.
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It Is Familiar
original version appears on Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink
This is the oldest song of this bunch. It dates back to about 2005, and was one of the first songs that was written with four singers in mind. Up until this point our singing arrangements had been of the lead and backup variety, or else everyone sang in unison. This was different for us in that it was built around four different voices weaving around one another. The verses use a melody from the major-keyed section about halfway through Tchaikovsky's 'March Slav,' which was one of my favorite songs growing up. That was a fun era, when we were figuring out how we could make music. It was still a really new thing; figuring out how to play together and how to come up with parts. I can't say that I miss it too much, everything took a long time to learn and memorize. It was a slow process. It's not blindingly fast now, but as that verbal and musical shorthand evolves, the need for expository trial and error gradually diminishes. For some reason, numerous people are really struck by the references in the song to tupperware and half & half, most finding it either bizarre or repulsive. I don't understand this! These are common, everyday objects. The vast majority of you people reading this have both of these things in your home! Tupperware is really convenient; you don't have to use a lot of aluminum foil or seran wrap - landfills are clogged with this stuff! I don't feel like talking about this anymore.
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These Are The Eyes
original version appears on Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink
This was written in about 2005, too. The line at the end about all of the yellow light becoming grey always reminds me of the scene in Indiana Jones where the plane propeller chops up the guy that had been beating the hell out of Indiana. This is a mystery to me. When I wrote it, I was thinking about a synasthesic experience that I had in a dream. I was running through the desert away from someone and I fell face-down onto a little embankment. As soon as I hit it, dirt flew into my mouth and yellow and grey lines started flashing in front of my eyes and moving back and forth. I am not sure why I now associate this with the airplane chopping up the villain in that movie. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Indiana Jones is laying in the dirt when the propeller hits the other guy. Maybe it is because I often dream that I am fighting someone who keeps coming at me no matter how hard or often I punch them, like Indiana in the scene. Perhaps the fact that these scenes are tied into my dream world somehow reveals a psychic connection between the two that I can only understand sub-consciously. Anyhow, that's what my mind frequently drifts to when I sing that line. It's funny how often the hero of a movie will punch some giant, monstrous henchman as hard as he can, and then the henchman looks down at the hero and laughs before he begins beating him. I did that a few times to my sister when we were kids, but I have never seen that sort of thing happen between two adults.
Bodies of Water guitarist and one of its singers David Metcalf alludes to the process of writing his band's songs as being an arduous and taxing one. It is a real labor of patience and brain/soul-busting that has to go into the making of the stretching and adventurous patterns and designs that they lay to the tape. They shame ordinary, straight-forward minded songs into submission, sitting on them and making them feel like phony bologna, just not ambitious enough for the taste buds of the hungry maker and devourers.
They've all four taken their divining rods out from their protective sheaths - where they also might pouch their frisbie golf discs and utensils when the divining rods aren't necessarily needed that day - and listen intently to their vibrations. Their willow witching turns up the stuff they're looking for in many different places below the ground surface. Meredith Metcalf might turn up a cool water cavern, a pocket of crystal clear vocals of pretty, but ominous lions and tigers, peacocks and bears. She begins hammering into the soil with a pick axe and when she strikes something hard and solid below her point, she gets down on her hands and knees and begins pulling the dirt out of the hole with her stringy fingers, anxious to crack that casing open and to get to the refreshment that's hiding inside. She shares the treasure in all of the group's billowing and blowing songs of compromised positions and the various ways that our wavy, tide-turning bodies make their ways through existences that are typically way beyond our own hands.
It might have something to do with a spiritual feeling, or it just may be the way it be, coasting through the chambers of a time-honored passage of time - all of it that goes bad and all of it that stays lasting as some sort of trophy, something that we put away in a spot that will require frequent dustings, but we keep it around, because it's good to remember. So, there's Meredith holding the two handles of her willow branch in her palms and believing what it tells her because it's rarely too wrong and along comes her brother David, with his own divining rod, keeping his head down and wandering, digging somewhere further away, around a bend, in different light, where the waters that he presents from the earth might have the taste of buttermilk or lilacs - just the faintest skimmings of them. He digs where he thinks it's right.
Drummer Jessie Conklin is led in another direction and bassist Kyle Gladden stakes out elsewhere, but when they dig enough in their separate places, eventually, all four holes touch and become one and that's where the songs from A Certain Feeling come from in their ultimate ancestry. They are the result of one great dig, a search for precious metals and more precious yearnings and inklings that could very well be the chattering of our unifying inner voice, the one that we all hear ourselves in. They make music that is undeniably challenging in its length and its frame, but is the part of us all that strives to be different and to look for our own thirst-quenchers and our own particular milieus, those brackets that accept our eccentricities as well as define them.
Bodies of Water is a band that will come to a Halloween costume party dressed as something or someone that will not be guessed by anyone. It should come as no surprise, however, as they do that the rest of the year too, constantly recalling idiosyncratic figures and shapes, dressing themselves and their art into clothing fit for fireflies making slow ascents, blinking out their lights just as a cupped hand is growing nearer and nearer to capturing it and its lovely bulb. When seen again, the lightning bug is well off, further to the left and higher in the air. Then, like the Bodies of Water, it repositions itself somewhere else you'd least expect it.
Click here to visit Bodies of Water's myspace page.
Bodies of Water Official Site
Secretly Canadian Records
