Generationals
Through The Thicks And The Thins, Great Sunniness
May 13, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Angry Charlie
original version appears on Con Law
This song came together over about four months. I first did a demo of the guitars while sitting in my room. My roommate was getting rid of this crappy electric guitar he had since he was little and never really learned to play. I just took it off his hands before he threw it out. It's a really lousy guitar and it had a crappy little amp that came with it. Somehow making a crappy little guitar makes you remember what it was like to play for the first time. Anyway that's where the guitar parts came from.
It remained an unfinished demo for months. I revisited it at some point to flesh it out. I added the B part but still wasn't satisfied with it. Then shortly before I was going to record it, Grant and I sat down and messed with it one last time and changed a few things and then added the bridge.
The end product is such a weird mish- mash of different ideas developed over such a long period of time, it's a miracle the song works at all. But it does. It rocks live.
-Ted
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When They Fight They Fight
original version appears on Con Law
This song started from a demo I did while in a hotel room. It stayed a really rough demo for a long long time. Probably too long. Because at some point, you can't think of the song as anything other than what the demo sounds like. Dangerous.
When I finally brought it to Dan, he helped me start thinking of how best to record it. Initially I thought of just keeping it stripped down and simple like the demo had been, but Dan encouraged me to develop it into a fuller arrangement.
I ripped off a lot of people on this song. I won't name them all now. But one of them is whoever wrote the Cosby show theme song. Seasons 1-3 specifically.
-Ted
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It Keeps You Up
original version appears on Con Law
This is one that cropped up during the recording process. It was one of the days when I was sitting upstairs at Dan [Black, producer]'s house fooling around with one of Faye [Black]'s little toy keboards. It developed from just singing along to keyboard and then we started adding more stuff. Not really the way I prefer to construct a song. But it turned out pretty good.
I've had two friends now separately accuse me of having written the song about them. No, man, I didn't write the song about you. That's weird.
-Ted
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Faces In The Dark
original version appears on Con Law
The idea of this song was to have a single lead vocal with a group of singers responding to him after every line. I like the idea of a back-and-forth going on in a song, it reminds me of that old song "It's In His Kiss" where the lead singer is telling the group of her girlfriends how to read a man:
"'How bout the way he acts?'/ 'O know that's not the way!'"
"Faces" was drawn up that way but stopped short of actually making the responses make sense in the context. They're more for the sound and the feeling of the group rather than to make a logical conversation.
To record it for this Daytrotter session in Austin, Mike the engineer just set up one mic in the middle of the room and we all crowded around it. Just two acoustic guitars and voices of everyone in the room, at least six of us. The elements are effectively mixed by their relative distance from the microphone, the group vocal being the most distant-sounding and "bigger" but less present than the lead. This was the first time we performed the song that way and we liked it so much that we actually perform it this way in our shows now. If I got my wish, the audience at a show would all sing the group parts back to me. I can dream right?
-Grant
The two men behind the creation of Generationals - Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer - don't know what they've done. They couldn't possibly have that sort of clairvoyance to perceive the effect that one of the songs they wrote has had on the few and will have on the many before the year is up. The song in question - "When They Fight They Fight" - is a HIT recording the likes of which summers cream for, the likes of which makes everyone go a little woozy and a lot bananas. It's the sunlight accentuated. It's a pulsing, slow-drip of Motown bass and slinky guitar, melded with plenty of sing-a-long moments and the most perfect set of pop lyrics about fighting and what seems to be unconditional love through the thicks and thins. But "Con Law," the debut full-length from this New Orleans-based band doesn't stop there. It's a record that's solid from front to back, serving up songs that are meant for unburdened afternoons meant for strolling, crawfish boils, lengthy and enjoyable conversations with dear friends, never-ending hugs, watermelons being sliced into pieces as thick as four plates and no hint of a sunset. Joyner and Widmer were formerly of the band The Eames Era, which took its name from the furniture designed by Charles and Ray Eames, known for its sleek and simply beautiful formations. They've expanded those principles and that simplicity into their current musical offerings, packing Generationals songs with enough teeth and muscle so that they could never been heard as over-simplified, but giving them all the touch of effortless flight. It's a trick that Carl Newman and Stuart Murdoch are brilliant at when they're making music for the New Pornographers/A.C. Newman and Belle & Sebastian respectively. It comes off as soft serve, with just the right dash of irascibility, of sexiness and forbidden allure. Where "Con Law" takes us is into a world that, on the surface, appears to be much like one that's sought after and yearned for with every ounce of fiber that most people have. There's domesticity lingering there - the young people enough beyond their college years to be settling into a wife or a husband and home ownership. It all seems so easy at the outset and then one-by-one, some of the complications seep in and there's water in the basement. It doesn't mean that the story is heading for ruin, just that there's some water in the basement and it adds to the plot a black sort of thickening that only helps to enhance the sunnier details. It's not a Revolutionary Road, but one that is realistically challenging, where the fights can have peaceful conclusions no matter how many there are and where the hauntings of a life that's being made up of a neighborhood of homes that feature lawns painted green, not grown green are really not all that detrimental. The seriousness comes solely from the perspective and the perspective that Generationals give to the bigger picture is that we can all just get down with it. We can crack those beers open, we can fire up the grill, we can tussle and scratch, scramble and moan, bicker and love, all to the greater good of what will be the proud essence of what will be written in our obituaries someday - loving father, devoted wife, sweetheart of a son, old softie. It's how everything on "Con Law" makes a body feel, as if all of the different dramas and difficulties that crop up - while never all that flattering or wanted - are livable and able to be seen for what they are, just the small stuff.
Generationals Official Site
Park The Van Records
