ANNUALS

By William Cane

Photos by Melissa O’Hearn

 

While national television beckoned, Adam Baker and his band Annuals waited nervously backstage. The producers of Late Night with Conan O’Brien had not been satisfied with the slow-paced, progressive feel of “Brother,” the song for which the band spent weeks preparing, rehearsing and arranging strings. About 48 hours before the taping, NBC had nixed “Brother” and asked the band to play “Carry Around,” a more structured and to-the-point number from their new full-length CD, Be He Me.

Performing for millions is stressful, but doing so with little preparation is the stuff of nightmares. Having arrived at 8 a.m., the band had hours and hours to sit around and chew on “what if” scenarios.

Finally, show time arrived. Baker stood side-by-side with bandmate Anna Spence, each behind a keyboard. Donzel Radford and Zack Oden each played a separate drum kit behind Spence and Baker, complementing their strange symmetry. “I don’t know what to do for you,” Baker crooned. About two million people listened.

O’Brien was impressed, but Baker needed days to unwind before he could bring himself to watch the footage. “I kinda made a point not to watch it much after it happened ... just to let it cool off in my head,” he says. “It ended up ok; I mean, we would have liked to play ‘Brother,’ cause we had strings players ready ... but we got it done, and that’s the important thing ... It was a real nice cigarette after it was over, I’ll tell you that.”

When Be He Me‘s “Fair” also gained national exposure, it was under circumstances that were much less stressful. Producers for the show Veronica Mars contacted Chrysalis (Annuals’ publisher), integrated “Fair” into episode 3-10 (called “Show Me The Monkey”), and aired it on the CW Network before the band even knew what had happened. “We hadn’t found out about it until it aired,” Baker says, adding, “I still haven’t seen it, either ... It’s our publisher’s deal.”

Signed to indie label Ace Fu Records (most famous for Pinback) for two years now, the six-piece from Raleigh has performed internationally and even (reluctantly) quit their day jobs. “We’d love to have day jobs,” Baker says, “but none of them would keep us. We’re only back [at home] for two weeks at a time. We tried to hold onto those jobs as long as we could,” he says, explaining that being in a band is “not a lavish lifestyle.” Current income aside, however, Baker and company have succeeded by most musicians’ standards. Each move the band makes exponentially increases their exposure and fan base, and their current hot streak began in late 2006 with an opening slot for The Flaming Lips in Dublin, Ireland.

Describing the experience as “fucking incredible,” Baker points out that it was Annuals’ “first time out of America, period.” He adds, “It even sounds weird now. Being able to play with them, first of all, was awesome because we’ve all been such fans for a really long time, and to have the honor of opening for them is a big deal ... And plus, they were the nicest people we’ve ever met in our lives. They hung out in our dressing room just as much as we hung out in theirs.”

Shortly thereafter, Northern Ireland’s Belfast Telegraph asked several established musicians to name their favorite records of 2006. Gary Lightbody, of Snow Patrol, chose Be He Me: “Be He Me is a masterpiece. It is a naked, daylight dash while on fire, ending in a lake somewhere. It churns the willful experimentation of Broken Social Scene in a pop blender; it is, by turns, insane and angry, hilarious, delicate and swooningly majestic. I’ve seldom heard a band wantonly and gleefully rip musical logic to shreds with their bare hands and teeth. Thrilling and vital.”

Every song on Be He Me is a self-contained, gorgeous mess with various sounds and instruments overlapping and complementing one another. Each song then slides into and around each other song, giving the listener vague feelings rather than concrete images to remember. Not until after several plays do the details of the album’s production differentiate themselves from one another; and, by the time that happens, the listener is already hooked, or at least invested. Coherently mixing such musical goulash can be tricky, but Mickey Petralia, part of the team behind Beck’s Midnite Vultures, had a hand in production and helped Baker mix the album. Re-creating the songs in a live setting has been challenging due to how crowded and deliberate the mixes are, but the band always rises to the occasion and still captures the energy that they put on tape.

Praise has come from all angles for Be He Me, including a four-star review by Spin and a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork Media. Pitchfork‘s blog has become the golden scepter of independent music, often used as a measuring stick for musical credibility. In his review for Pitchfork, William Bowers writes “listeners will be lured by the world [Be He Me] creates, a place of freakishly sustainable energy fluctuations where surprises would be routine, naps would raise heart rates, and sighs would result from exhilaration rather than exhaustion. Diehard residents of actuality might even find the Annuals’ abstract plane inaccessible, or preferable at a distance.” Ace Fu has wisely chosen to adhere a sticker quoting Bowers’ review to the cellophane around each copy of Be He Me.

Post-Superchunk, North Carolina’s independent rock scene had cooled off for a while. Chapel Hill’s Merge Records (now in Durham) held the torch and lit the independent music scene ablaze (Neutral Milk Hotel, Spoon, Yo La Tengo, Arcade Fire and so on), but most of its artists did not come from its home state. The well-received arrival of Be He Me may be the start of a new era. In a self-interview for America Online’s internet program, The DL, Annuals’ Zack Oden stated that he believes North Carolina’s music scene is on its way back to the spotlight. Baker adds, “Going through the country and listening to a lot of bands that we play with and that we talk to ... a lot them really don’t hold a candle to some of the bands in North Carolina, in my opinion. But I do have a bit of a bias.”

Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody agrees, punctuating his glowing Belfast Telegraph review of Be He Me by saying “Something is happening in North Carolina. Bands are springing out of nowhere as disparate as they are marvelous: House of Fools, Sedona, The Never and, the best of the lot, Annuals.”

In this short list of bands, though, the members of Annuals are actually listed twice. Adam Baker, Kenny Florence, Zack Oden, Nick Radford, Mike Robinson and Anna Spence are also known as Sedona, a band with a line-up identical to that of Annuals, but with Annuals’ lead guitarist Kenny Florence writing the songs. Since every member is a multi-instrumentalist, they vary their roles in the making of each song. “All of our members are in Sedona; it’s just a different form of music we play,” Baker says. Though much more than an afterthought, Sedona has definitely been pushed to the backburner for the time being. They rarely play live, but a full-length CD is currently in the works.

Instead of Ace Fu, Sedona belongs to the Terpsikhore Collective. Baker describes Terpsikhore as “a label/work group/collective thing that you could say we’re all still a part of. It’s how Annuals got started putting out independent releases, and they’ve just been really great friends with us for the longest time. We hope to eventually be under Terpsikhore’s reign ... We still have a lot of work to do with that label.”

Despite its U.S. success, Be He Me has not yet been released internationally; instead, several key tracks were compiled for a European-only Annuals EP, entitled Big Zeus. Big Zeus closes with the otherwise-unavailable song “Misty Coy,” giving die-hard U.S. fans a reason to buy the import. Capitalizing on any excuse to release new material, Baker says: “I just do what the label says is best. If they say, ‘Hey, we need new songs,’ then we’re like, ‘Here you go. Do what you will with it.’ We just like getting songs out there.”

Public appreciation for their art is what keeps the band going. “Knowing that we actually have managed to connect to people,” Mike Robinson gushes in the band’s MySpace blog, “...changes everything for us, and it’s only going to help us do what we do with that much more tenacity.”

Considering their workaholic approach, the members of Annuals must like crafting songs. They have already completed the bulk of recording for their next full-length album, and only the demands of promoting the still-fresh Be He Me have forced them to pace themselves. Most recently, Annuals have played opening slots for The Walkmen and Blonde Redhead, among a host of other respected artists. Several grueling, exhilarating months of travel and performances still await. Baker describes the band’s plan for the immediate future in three words: “Touring, touring, touring.” “Then,” he adds, “we’re going to relax, go back into our little cocoon and finish [the next album] up. There’s a whole bunch of songs that we already know we want [to use], and there are newer songs that we haven’t even started with, but the bulk of it is done.” In the meantime, Be He Me will keep showing listeners new things as long as they keep coming back.

www.annualsmusic.com

Annuals have some high-profile appearances this summer, including Bonnaroo (June 14-17) and Lollapalooza (August 3-5).