THREE (2002)
1 Frozen Lake In Unison
2 Burnoff
3 Arrows
4 Well-Thumbed Page
5 Snow on Snow
6 Plastic Pillar
The house in Amherst was sold to a family who might actually take care of it and we moved 15 minutes north to the “country.” We lived next to an idyllic reservoir in a moldy, 1970’s split level ranch house. Our landlords lived next door, and it was hard to escape the feeling that they had once lived a loose and very swinging 70’s lifestyle here. There was a creepy shack in the backyard where their teenage kids had spray painted obscure, Manson-ish phrases. We were far enough from neighbors that noise complaints were a thing of the past.
On Three, we were in the process of whittling down our wide-open aesthetic into something approaching songcraft. Half of the album was still instrumental, but the tunes were tighter. We managed some good reviews along with ramshackle, self-booked tours up and down the east coast -- big thrills for us, even if the first “tour” included five unplanned days off between shows (where we crashed with the friendly timelords of Cinemechanica, a math-rock band in Athens, Georgia).
We were pawing our way through the dark at the basement level of the music business. We sent demos to our favorite labels. We made strange connections with bookers at distant colleges, long gone DIY spaces in Baltimore, and importantly, Johnny Beach at Bowery Presents. We drove to a doomed rave where we were meant to improvise drum and bass for an hour (the rave never happened; no one got paid). We briefly ran a shell game of a record label and went on more uniquely routed tours (and one Real Tour with the lovable Canadians of Do Make Say Think). We slept on so many floors: on a two week run to Chicago and back, we proudly didn’t stay in a single hotel. We were having a lot of fun. (Ben)
