THE FOR CARNATION

by Josh Modell, Milk Magazine April 1996

But we can start at the very beginning (a very good place to start) with Squirrel Bait, of which Brian was a member for three years. Squirrel Bait included David Grubbs, who later went on to form Bastro and is currently in Gastr Del Sol. Bastro also included current Tortoise drummer John McEntire and ex-Tortoise man Bundy Brown. Most of Tortoise was Brian's back-up band for the first For Carnation EP, Fight Songs. More on that later.

Squirrel Bait mutated into Slint, a band that included Dave Pajo (currently of Tortoise and M) and Ethan Buckler (King Kong). Slint put out two records while most of them were still quite young, and then they broke up. Nobody took much notice and Brian took some time off. But, for some reason, Slint's second record, Spiderland, kept on selling, continues to sell. It became obvious over the next couple of years that people in bands had been listening to -- and copping moves from -- this one little record. It's now regarded as a classic, which is funny, because McMahan has already topped it.

"We worked really hard on Spiderland," he says. "I mean, I definitely felt much more personal about it. I thought it represented us as people, musically, a lot more than Tweez did. That's about it. It seemed like when we were around, and actively playing and stuff, that people's responses to us were fairly ambivalent. I thought it was funny when the press picked up on it. For an independent release, it had a strange sort of audience and kept selling three or four years after we recorded it; it still sells more copies than when it first came out. I guess I don't know what else to say. It's just a record, you know?"

And then that band broke up, and Brian "got a job and settled down into a pretty normal existence." He moved from Louisville to Chicago about four years ago, but didn't play music regularly for a while. Then he was invited to play with Will Oldham, who was starting a new project called Palace Brothers.

"I really enjoyed that music," says Brian of his Palace participation. "And I was really pleased to see that people were interested in it and that there was an audience for that, just because when Slint broke up it seemed that there weren't any people that were into it or could figure it out. It was hard for me to justify spending so much time doing something that people, my parents, were saying, 'You're wasting your time.' Not that that was the creative inspiration... I guess I could just say that Will got me back into doing music."

It was around this time that Slint almost got back together. Corey Rusk, who runs Touch and Go, convinced the band to let him release a couple of songs that had been recorded in 1990 but lay dormant. Steve Albini tried to convince them to go back in the studio, but no new material ever materialized and The For Carnation was born.

"I started kinda messing around with the Slint guys again -- Britt Walford and Dave Pajo -- and we started writing some new stuff. We were kind of planning on recording another record, but it didn't happen. The songs on the EP were things I was kind of hoping to work out with Slint, but when that project didn't pan out, we just worked on them some more. And I still ended up playing with Dave Pajo."

By this time, Pajo was pretty busy with Tortoise, but he and Brian recruited some other Tortoises -- John Herndon and Doug McCombs -- to flesh out Brian's songs and complete the lineup for the first For Carnation recordings. "Doug and Johnny were really busy, but they were really cool in wanting to help out. I really enjoy their playing."

Fight Songs is 15 too-short minutes of deceptively pleasant, quietly confrontational, completely engaging music. The differences from Slint are obvious. Let me quote the mighty fine Tuba Frenzy 'zine, because they put it best: "...the things that are missing from the Slint formula are the broad dynamics, the sinister displays of rhythmic skill, and the overall tendency to rock out." Rock out is exactly what The For Carnation doesn't do, and that's what makes it less predictable. The other obvious difference that I would point out is that this time around, you can hear what Brian's saying, and sometimes he's even singing it. It's certainly a change from the just-below-the-surface, sort of menacing spoken word of Slint and a thousand Slint-a-bes. The words themselves are just as offbeat and interesting as you'd hope them to be, though. My favorite line: "With crackheads/And assassins/And burn victims/And millionaire's sons."

"All of the Slint recordings, while we took a lot of care with the instrumental side and rehearsed a lot, we never rehearsed the vocals," says Brian. "We never paid them much mind in terms of recording, they were a last minute thing. I didn't really know what to expect, and my vocals always seemed really strange."

That problem is certainly remedied on The For Carnation's second and latest release, Marshmallows, which begins with "On The Swing," a pretty and hypnotic song in which the vocals are the loudest part of the mix. The song would've fit well on the EP, as it's bright and beautiful, sort of like Slint in Bizarro World. "Imyr, Marshmallow" is similar in its beauty, as Brian sings quietly over a simple acoustic guitar and vibes.

The remaining four songs on Marshmallows are more sinister, but it's a human sort of sinister quite unlike Slint's more mechanically-inclined emotion. Some of it is vaguely scary, especially "Salo," which slowly builds a narrative with xylophone, slowly building guitar and drums, and a sound not unlike a submarine sonar. It gets louder and louder and Brian sings, "She kicks but they hold her legs." Brian describes this record as "a little darker." The record's closer is the nine minute "Preparing to Receive You," which is essentially the same instrumental guitar and drum parts over and over. In a way, it represents their live show well, because it will either draw you completely into the music or spit you right out. They've already done one big tour and are just beginning a second, and the audiences seem divided between those that are completely enrapt and those that are bored shitless. In a way, though, that's better than damnation with faint praise by a roomful of people who say, "That was pretty cool."

"We've only had a couple of shows where we get the whole house quiet, where there's sort of an enlightening thing going on," says Brian. "I think that when you do music that's not loud, in your face, you always have... If you do any kind of music, some people are going to show up just because it's Friday night and they're having a beer. I don't take it personally. I think live we try to make things as simple and concise as possible. I wouldn't say that I try to make things difficult."

So this soft-spoken, almost shy 27-year-old newlywed with a lifetime's worth of records already under his belt is prepared to try again. After another tour that will take the current For Carnation lineup (Brian, his brother Michael, John Weiss, and Tim Ruth) to "every major city in the US...but not Milwaukee." they'll record a full-length. Why? The impetus is not money or fame, not with this sort of intense, non-commercial, quiet, lovely music.

"I was actually thinking about this the other day," says Brian. "I really like playing music. I think more than that, I like getting together with a group of people and realizing ideas, starting from scratch and getting something together, making something that's enjoyable for at least the people involved, if not an audience. Music is one thing, but just the sort of realization is probably the real thing behind why I can't get away from doing this."