Modern Skirts

R.E.M., Autonomy and the Labeling of the Next Great Athens Pop Band

Written by Julia Reidy

Photos by Mike White

A band from Athens, Ga. took the stage July 2 in Amsterdam in front of 15,000 fans. It wasn’t R.E.M. - they wouldn’t ascend the stairs until later in the evening. First, a very different band, begotten in the same Georgia town but formed decades later, played to one of the largest audiences they’d encountered. The crowd, surprisingly, seemed to be able to sing some of Modern Skirts’ lyrics with them and more than made up for what they didn’t know by clapping along. During the set, R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills joined them in performing a song he produced for them, telling listeners, “I love this band!” The show landed in the center of Modern Skirts’ schedule of summer European festival stops, where they met other rapt audiences and rode the interest created by R.E.M.’s favor, often the only unsigned act at a given event.

Though that summer in Europe doubtless earned the attention of scores of overseas fans, Modern Skirts turned Mills’ head years ago. R.E.M. has attended several Skirts shows, drawn in by the signature command of complex vocal harmonies, piano-driven layering and mastery of melody. In March, Q Magazine featured an R.E.M. Jukebox CD with tracks hand-picked by the group. Modern Skirts’ music stood alongside contributions from the likes of Gang of Four, Battles and Vic Chesnutt. Mills produced their track “Motorcade,” the one he performed with them in Amsterdam, and also lent his vocals to the project. The song will appear on the band’s forthcoming sophomore album, slated for local release in October and national release early next year.

“It’s definitely boosted our confidence having someone with such clout have faith in us to open up for them on the first leg of their European tour,” says frontman Jay Gulley. “For them to even invite us to do that was crazy, but for Mike Mills to even like us and come to our shows, that’s a sign that we’re doing something right.”

Many would agree that Modern Skirts generally do things right. Without a label and riding the success of their well-produced and well-received 2005 debut LP, acclaim has spread well beyond the Athens city limits. On the cusp of its second release, the band hopes the same fans who regularly fill The 40 Watt Club - the ones who stood in the rain when they headlined AthFest in 2006 - will follow them as they evolve. The band’s members all say the record feels like a pretty significant departure from Catalogue of Generous Men.

“I think the writing overall, musically and lyrically, is more abstract,” says bassist/guitarist Phillip Brantley. “In a way, I feel like it’s kind of a natural maturity in the songwriting.”

The band felt the need to turn away from the shinier sound that dominates their debut, and try rougher, less polished effects.

“We have learned to embrace nuances and not try to get everything perfect,” Gulley explains. “We try to add character by mistake, by mishap.”

The musical magnetism that attracted such high profile collaborators and a rabid hometown fan following hasn’t always come at a fair price. Sweeping success, even when it’s primarily at a local level and very hard earned, inevitably leads to a discussion of backlash and the merits of accessible music versus songs that make the listener work for it. The Skirts, at least earlier in their career, had to brook touches of resentment from a few other musicians, perhaps incurred because of the demographical makeup of their primary listenership. Modern Skirts’ crowd, while necessarily composed mostly of college kids, also includes families, professionals and a more mainstream group of music fans in a town whose residents sometimes prize obscurity as a badge of honor. Many of those inclined to listen to Athens’ dozens of experimental groups wouldn’t overlap with those who love the Skirts. “A lot of people that don’t go out to shows, when they go out to see a show they go out to see us, and that’s cool too,” says pianist JoJo Glidewell. We’re bringing more people into the music scene in Athens that otherwise wouldn’t be involved in it.”

Of course, negative reception has been much more the exception than the rule, and diverse artists have supported the Skirts from their beginning. Members of Cinemechanica even helped them record some of their first demos, illustrating the city’s dominant spirit of open artistic communication. “It’s kind of funny that such a tight, fierce math rock group would be interested in helping out some poppy indie kids,” Brantley laughs. “In some circles people sort of dismissed us as too easy or too accessible, and I can kind of see that opinion, but I didn’t then and don’t now agree with it. The new record will go a long way towards converting some of the people who thought the first record was a little easy to digest.”

The band made the decision together to depart from its previous sound on this new album, based on the members’ natural tastes, the music they’ve digested in the interim and the autonomy they now have with recording.

“We all felt like we were more involved in this process,” drummer John Swint relates. He recalls hearing playback during tracking and saying things to the engineers like, “Yeah, that’s cool, but could you make it sound really terrible?” The band even self-produced part of the record; the rest was recorded with David Lowery at Sound of Music Studios in Richmond, Va. and in New Orleans at Listen Up! Studios with Michael Seaman.

“We’re proud of the first album, of course, but I think we were able this time around to really do it more our way,” Swint says. “Since the last album, we’ve been in the studio a good bit, mostly recording things that we’ll never use again, but just through the process of us knowing the studio dynamic it was a lot easier for us to create something that sounds a lot more like us.”

The group, Glidewell relates, made this record in about four months, a fairly short period of time, especially when compared to the much slower way they recorded Catalogue. “I was really happy with us because we’d always written at our leisure and for fun, so it was cool that when the pressure was on, we were able to write songs that we were happy with, kind of on command,” he says. Glidewell credits the time spent touring and saving up new material for the speed at which the group was able to lay down new tracks. Like looking in the mirror every day, you don’t recognize change until you see still frames, the “before” and “after” photographs. “When we actually sat down to write, what came out showed us how much more mature we were than the last time we sat down to write music as a band,” he says. “You know you grow, and you don’t really have anything to show for it, and all of a sudden you’re just like, ‘Wow, this is completely different.’”

As quickly as the recording went, however, other aspects of releasing a sophomore record have been proceeding at a very different pace. As of press time, Modern Skirts’ new LP remains untitled - though they’re all pleased with it, though it even has a release date and has been completely mixed and mastered, the guys can’t seem to agree on what to call it.

“Honestly, I kind of feel like we’ve put too much pressure on ourselves as far as a title, and now it’s like we’ve shot ourselves in the foot,” Swint muses. “We want something catchy, something that sticks with you, something that’s hopefully meaningful to us. Right now I kind of feel like we need to wipe the slate clean.” The stalemate surrounding naming the record seems to echo the band’s struggle with labeling in general. From their inception, the Skirts have been called a pop band, a name they own with pride, but one that raises fears of pigeonholing. Certainly with this forthcoming release, a question arises: how far can you push creatively from within a signature sound?

30 September 2008 Southeast Performer

“There are lots of compromises and lots of arguing and lots of tears and blood, and then a nice poppy song comes out of it.”

– John Swint

“We got labeled as pop early on, but we’re definitely not at all about labels,” Swint reflects. “That’s a cliché answer, but honestly this new record, there’s some pop stuff on it, but a lot of it’s just kind of weird and messed up. We can’t get away from the catchy melodies or whatever, but it’s a good deal weirder than the first one.” Instead, all the Skirts agree that what unites them under the pop banner is more of a melodic sensibility than a specific type of finished sound.

“That’s what pop is,” Glidewell asserts, citing previous Athens acts with pop song structures that usually get classified in other ways, like Neutral Milk Hotel and other members of the famous Elephant 6 Collective. “You take the simplest pieces and make it really effective. So for us to get labeled as a pop band, pushing us in people’s perception, pushes us so far away from Olivia Tremor Control and all these underground bands. But we have the same sensibilities in how we write songs, in a lot of ways.”

There’s always a danger found in describing verbally something that exists in another medium, and the Skirts, perhaps, have fallen victim to this. “Most of the descriptions people give of our band would make me not want to hear us,” Glidewell quips. “It’s frustrating. I think being in Athens has definitely tempered the pop side of things and encouraged the stranger side of things.”

The most powerful label Modern Skirts sport, then, is a geographical one. Athens currently provides both community and employment for the four when they’re not out on the road. They all have jobs good enough not to fire them for extended periods of absence. “Athens is so laid back,” says Swint, “and on top of the really awesome music that’s here, everybody just seems to be so cool about everything and understanding when you’re chasing your pipe dream.” It’s an affiliation they’re proud to boast, and a legacy to which they hope to be valuable. “People definitely identify us through the town that we come from,” Gulley says. “Especially wherever we go nationally, before we even say ‘Modern Skirts,’ we say ‘Hey, we’re from Athens, Georgia.’ I think that’s why we even owe a larger amount of gratitude to R.E.M., because they’re kind of responsible for that in many ways, for putting Athens on the map.”

Though they’ve recently experienced an unprecedented level of success in their careers, the Skirts agree that there’s hard work ahead. “Going to a foreign country, seeing R.E.M., seeing the scale of what they do and their kind of professionalism and just how great they are as performers, it definitely shows us how much farther we have to go,” Glidewell reflects. “So it’s hard to take that experience and say ‘We’re ready for this tomorrow,’ because it’s obvious that it’s a completely a new level for us. You hope that you’re going to get there.”

Whatever goals the Skirts reach, they proceed through group discussion and personal respect. All the members were encouraged to see R.E.M. succeed with the same type of behavior.

“You just get the feeling that they’re like a big family, and it’s less about success and more about the people that you’re involved with,” he says. “To see a band use that type of ethic and become massively successful - one of the biggest bands in the world – just makes you feel good because you don’t have to be a terrible person to get to the top of what you’re doing.”

The Skirts’ autonomy and steadfast belief in teamwork comes with a price. They agonize over every decision so that once they settle they’ll all stand behind it, from writing to recording to touring. It’s not quick, but it’s democratic.

“We just draw everything out because we like to please everybody in the band,” Swint explains, “And so there are lots of compromises and lots of arguing and lots of tears and blood, and then a nice poppy song comes out of it.”

www.modernskirts.com