20 Minute Loop
Rewriting the Pop-ularity Contest
By Kyle Lemmon
Photos by Peter Ellenby
For an indie rock band, the meaning behind a name is tenuous at best — evoking the brash and feral qualities of an animal or simply being the first thing that popped into the band leader’s head. For San Francisco’s perennially idiosyncratic 20 Minute Loop (20ML), however, the name came after much thought from creator Greg Giles (which involved the fleshing out of contenders like “With God on the Dog Team Trail,” “Pierre Bon Bon,” “Kill Whitey!” and “PSA Flight 182”), and hits the mark frighteningly well. Referencing the amount of time on a digital cockpit voice recorder (CVR) found on private jets, after which the recording begins to eat away at itself, this nom de plume is effective for a pop band that careens from genre to genre but never seems to crash. It’s also a fitting thematic mold since 20ML embraces the dichotomy between dark lyrical stories and bright vocal/instrumental staging.
Looking forward to his band’s fourth release (untitled as of press time), Greg Giles notices the parallel in subject matter. “My knee-jerk reaction to songs where everything is in the same emotional mode is resistance. In some cases, I overcompensate. You’ll have a song like this one I did with Kelly [Atkins, 20ML keyboardist/vocalist] on the original recording called ‘Car Crash.’ It was about this experience I had in Nevada where I saw this guy crash his car on I-80. He flipped over several times and the car burst into flames. The guy survived though. It was a pretty traumatic experience, but I turned it into this really catchy pop song. I just like the balance between morbid subject matter with these alienating catchy songs. For me, that kind of duality is very complimentary.”
The songs on the new album continue this pop high-wire act with the same kind of book-ended themes. “Vanilla March” is a New Orleans funeral march instrumental of the last song on the album, “Winsor McCay” — a lazy summer night country-rock stroll through the life of the American animator/cartoonist. The album also tightens up 20ML’s pop structures, which have been known to be more epic with incorrigible refrains. Guitarist Nils Erickson doesn’t see this as a new development but rather a continuation of the band’s need to stay novel. “That’s how we interact as instrumentalists. We’re interested in breaking up forms and cutting away excess parts to keep choruses and verses interesting.”
20ML’s madcap pop has always shown that unremitting need to stay a little different from everyone, in a city that welcomes that kind of mindset. “San Francisco is a city that attracts independent thinkers and maybe those people don’t want to be put into a box. There are lots of bands that do similar things but none of it can be put into one movement. The second you do that it just dissolves,” says Erickson.
Yet the band has undoubtedly left a mark on the local landscape. After 20ML’s inaugural recording in 1997 (a five-song CD), Giles began collaborating with Atkins. For a long time, the two remained the main songwriters/singers of the project, Erickson joining in 2001 and various drummers and bassists alternately suiting up and leaving until Mike Romano and Adam Cunha assumed their respective positions. 20 ML’s first self-titled album appeared in 1999, followed by Decline of Day in September 2001. But it was 2005’s Yawn + House = Explosion, the band’s auspicious third release, that upped the ante with songs ranging in influence from Henry James’ dark comedy The Ambassadors to arbilexicon drawings from a friend’s young daughter, which serve as the album’s cover artwork.
From those various reference points, 20ML is often called “quirky” by the press, a descriptor the band welcomes at arm’s length. Erickson wrestles with the idea when he hears it: “’Quirky’ is one of those weird descriptions. I wonder if it’s a positive thing. I think that comes about from us as a band trying to keep songs interesting by working hard on the arrangements.” “We tend to be playful and unpredictable with our dueling boy-girl vocals,” Atkins adds, “but I think from a journalistic point of view, it’s an easy moniker to give us.” Erickson, who now assumes the role of producer for the band’s albums, sees this as part and parcel of what 20ML does for each release. “When we’re working on these songs, we almost always get the music done first using melodies with completely nonsensical words. Very often the words are the last things written. Sometimes it’s shocking when, after hearing a song a certain way for several months, all of a sudden those strange words turn into real lyrics.”
It all comes together in the noodly guitar hooks, crunchy theatrics and battling female-male vocals on the new album, recorded at Tiny Telephone. Erickson notes that though the gestation period was quite protracted in actuality, “90 percent of the record was done in four days.” After the initial studio work took place, the band toyed with the songs in ProTools, finalizing the other 10 percent while its members juggled school and day jobs.
Despite its members’ busy lives, 20ML’s loops of pop have blasted out on stages across the U.S., and now the band hopes to take it to Europe for the new album. “Sometimes we wish we lived on the East Coast so we could play more of those places,” says Atkins. In the meantime, 20ML has a release show scheduled for July 11 at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco with Man/ Miracle and Caves. Known for raucous live performances that preserve the composite brilliance of their recorded counterparts, 20ML loves to keep it simple, but feels so complex. Sounds like perfect pop – on repeat ad infinitum.
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