Sunburned Hand of the Man: The Man Comes Around
By Matthew
Photo by Don Harney

"We could play in London and 600 people will show up, for real. Play in Boston on a Friday night and there could be 10 people, tops. We are off the grid for sure," muses John Moloney, drummer and co-founder of Boston underground collective Sunburned Hand of the Man, one late May evening in The Loft in Charlestown, Mass. "It's weird," he says, "but we don't do what we do out of town at the hometown shows. We just don't feel it here in town...don't want to show the public who we really are I guess. I don't know."

What Moloney may not yet know - and what he leaves for others to figure out - hasn't seemed to hurt him a bit. In fits and starts and fiercely supportive pockets of community, the band thrives.

When, in 1996, Sunburned was conceived around the hub of Moloney, Robert Thomas, Chad Cooper, and Rich Thomas, the group immersed itself in what its members called "social music, informal music; unshaped, unstructured." That dynamic spread through the ranks: members stepped into roles as often as old friends left them, and a rush of primitive, lovingly crafted LPs would establish a pattern of exhaustive documentation and live performance that have continued well into the band's current incarnation.

Still, the question on Moloney's mind is that of the musician as "non-musician": beginning at a place of relative naiveté and evolving towards a certain, accumulated finesse. "That's an interesting concept," he says, "and I certainly can identify with it. I don't have any formal training as a musician or an artist, [but] I feel like I've reached a new level with my drumming in the last couple of months. It feels good to know that the more I do something, the better I get at it."

The release of Z in May was a welcome share of what Sunburned has been doing for years, and must, by now, certainly be feeling good about. It is not the sea change it could have been had external influences prevailed; the lo-fi, high-contrast textures embroidered throughout the album are of a familiar fabric that connects much of the band's back catalogue. Although the process was highly inclusive - "Z is just about everybody," Moloney says of the album's participants - it was also a personal endeavor for the drummer, who departed for a six-month sabbatical in England with the raw tracks after recording commenced.

"I put Z together with an idea in mind to focus on major aspects of the Sunburned experience that have been somewhat overlooked when we put together some of our other 'official' releases," he says. "Plus, I never myself put together a whole record before from start to finish solely on my own and I wanted to do something that was a solemn tribute to the unseen force that is SHOTM, serving only that entity itself and none of its individual parts. That's why [the record] is void of information: names, dates, who did what kind of stuff."

That muted disposition - each of the five tracks is represented by a corresponding number of infinity symbols - is ruptured by the dense, striking mass inside. The hallmarks that make a Sunburned recording both exciting and inaccessible to even longtime fans are present in spades: long stretches of mayhem punctured by shotgun silences, extraordinary rhythms that emerge slowly from under the heavy din, occasional vocals and fractured sounds. In some places the record plays like a question, but even when Moloney discusses process, there is never a big disclosure.

"[Our] records are recorded wherever the band happens to be," he says. In the case of Z, that meant shifts in both Kansas City and The Loft. "The album was half recorded on a Panasonic video camera and the other on a Tascam shitbox 4-track that only records two tracks at a time," says Moloney. "We recorded a side, then I flipped the tape over so [that] on playback you'd hear the recording frontward and backwards at the same time. Paul Labrecque mixed it down using two tape decks and the pitch control knobs."

The frankness with which Moloney discusses the personal motives behind the album and process wasn't always the basic instinct it appears to be. "We used to be very stand off-ish and would play it too cool," he says. "It's a bit fucked up to have people start writing about your sacred craft, interpreting it in weird ways, putting labels on it. Sunburned from the beginning was a very introverted group. We still are, but to a much lesser degree."

The band has also struck back at its initial trepidation in other ways. Partnering with Ecstatic Peace Records for the release of Z, and by association, Universal Records, nothing of the band's method was compromised or altered. To some, that might be a defining example of jamming econo; to others, it's a knowing snub of new resources. For the band, it was simply a welcome hand.

"Ecstatic Peace is awesome," Moloney says. "We never had any real 'talks.' Just a mutual agreement and here [Z] is. They have access to the unreal and we feel really humbled that Thurston and Andrew [Kesin] believe that there is a place for us in their grand plan."

Moloney says the follow-up to Z will also be handled by the label, but not before a stint as Andrew MacGregor's (Gown) backing band and a tour of Europe in the fall.

"We never know who's coming until it's time to get in the van," he says. "We have a history of broken bones, missed flights, burnt down houses and lost passports. We roll with it."

While their recorded output has been a strong enough selling point through the years, it's Sunburned's revelatory live performances that are the band's strongest asset.

It is the stage where the process begins, where it fails and thrives.

"That's the true essence of music anyway," Moloney says. "We love to play to people cold, who have no idea what to expect from us. They'll either love it or hate it or, in a few cases, join the band. [Sunburned] is not doing anything brand new. We don't claim to be anything. We are nothing but moments collected together."

www.sunburnedhandoftheman.com