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Caspian
By Miriam Lamey
Photo By: Patrick Piasecki
Three major tours in the last year. Gigs in Seattle, L.A., Austin and, most recently, Montreal and Toronto. The members of instrumental post-rock band Caspian have certainly been busy spreading their music to every corner of North America, and it seems that their hard work is paying off. Drummer Joe Vickers remembers one highlight of a recent tour: “Greenville, North Carolina was awesome — we started playing and there were about five people there,” he says. “But then I looked up halfway through our first song and the place was really packed ... there were these drunk North Carolina people screaming ‘Caspian!’” While Caspian has been lucky to have amassed a seemingly die-hard fan base, fame hasn’t slapped them in the face just yet. Or at least, notoriety hasn’t altered Caspian’s remarkable down-to-earth demeanor and passion for creating exquisite, introspective music.
The band recently released their first full-length album, entitled The Four Trees — an ambient, instrumental effort that conveys a wash of moods with explorative songwriting and sonic structuring. “I feel like there was a lot more aggression on this album,” explains Vickers. Sure enough, the songs on The Four Trees rise to soaring heights, but it’s the band’s devotion to dynamics and storytelling that keeps things interesting. The impressive range of moods on the record varies considerably, often climaxing in aggressive roars of distortion and rhythmic pounding. “When you’re doing your first full-length, you have that inspiration, that energy like you’re going to take over the world,” says guitarist Phil Jamieson. “In our music, I think that comes out with the more aggressive sounding stuff.” Caspian is quick to point out that this distinct brand of aggression is one of the main differences between The Four Trees and their first EP, You Are The Conductor. Guitarist Cal Joss muses that with the new record, Caspian has “intensified the sound and opened it up for different instrumentation and sounds” by experimenting with different compositional foundations.
The Four Trees guides the listener along an evocative musical journey. While Caspian is purely an instrumental band, its members realize that sometimes the most visceral and complex emotions can be conveyed without lyrics. “Crawlspace” begins with light guitar riffs and softer drums, conjuring up feelings of hope found while navigating life’s constant and difficult changes. “We want the record to accommodate the thoughts in our heads, but we know we’re not writing it just for ourselves,” Jamieson explains. “We have to make the music as open ended and subjective as possible, so that people can actually attribute their own story as well.
“The Four Trees is very overarching, very “big picture.” It’s like a film — it has a resolution, it has a climax, it has an intro, it has these characters that pop up in forms of certain guitar tones or drum beats and those are enough to convey the story to the listener.”
Based on the overwhelmingly positive reactions to the record, it’s pretty clear that Caspian has been successful at reaching its audience on profound levels. With a devoted label behind them and the support of countless fans across the country, Caspian has already achieved what most bands only dream about. But the band seems to have a pretty good idea of what success means to them. “Sometimes we can write a song for just the five of us or we can play a show for 10 people and we do have that common sense that we’ve done something good,” muses Jamieson. “When you take a step back from everything, what we’re really going to remember is feeling good about writing a song or having a good show if it’s for tons of people at the Paradise or six people in Tuscon. That’s the kind of stuff that lasts.”