– Ellen Lupton, excerpt from Design Culture Now exhibition catalog for the First 
National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2000

Hi Electric’s self-titled debut is scheduled for a very limited release and will be available online from Evangeline Recording Co. and in stores May ( ). It will also (unless completely sold out) be available at the merch table this Summer during their tour with MGMT. It is not simply “limited” but, quite literally, each copy is a work of art unto itself.

Letterpress guru and designer Bruce Licher of Independent Project Press created packaging for the album that surpasses the gimmickry of today’s “odd-and-ironic” packaging (you know: discs in plastic molds, gratuitous fold-outs, etc.). What Bruce did, however, isn’t simple letterpress work. He created the packaging, all the dies and cuts and presses are his – as are the colors, and in it you can clearly see why Bruce is the absolute king of letterpress design and production in rock and roll today: his own pedigree as a musician is lengthy and phenomenal. He took his obsession with great cover art and letterpress work and early on began creating artwork for his own bands. Immediately others wanted Bruce to do the same for them, and by “others” I mean other seminal bands and great indie labels such as Merge at the height of their powers. Still the greatest bands he has created artwork for, however, are his own. I’m certain that, given his modesty, Bruce would disagree, but I imagine no one reading this will.

Bruce was a member of Savage Republic, Scenic, and innumerable other bands and projects. He has shared the stage with PiL, The Gun Club, X, The Clash, and far, far too many others to list. His is a marriage of art and product and is one that denies neither art nor functionality and aspires to amplify only the music itself. He has done work for R.E.M., Stereolab, Harold Budd, Malvo, Bardo Pond, and on and on.

When I last worked with Bruce on a project I loved what was created. This packaging, however, is something that Bruce himself is proud enough of to have wanted to put his name on (he did, of course). Knowing Bruce means knowing he is not a particularly proud person and rarely takes credit for anything. But this packaging is simply brilliant and intense. We all knew it the moment it came to us and are more than pleased that Bruce feels as attached to it as we do.

Each copy is numbered and each varies slightly due to the nature of letterpress work and the intensity and number of colors used in the creation of this packaging. They are all, by default, one-of-a-kind pieces. They’ve been created and will never be reproduced. Evangeline Recording Co. is proud to present Hi Electric’s debut to listeners in this manner. To read more about Bruce Licher and his work, check out his site here:    www.independentprojectpress.com

Andy Grooms’ record Grateful To Burn begins with the words “unsung songs” and ends with “that’s where I’ll find the unspoken truth“. This wasn’t a conscious decision on his part; no “hidden message” to decipher. But it does, in a sense, sum up what Grateful To Burn gives the listener or rather what it indelibly marks on them. There are innumerable brilliant lyrics to quote but the collective meaning (if such a thing even exists) is, by brilliant mistake, captured between and within those first and last words within a broad palette of sounds.

It is impossible to listen to Grateful To Burn without feeling as if, in some “unsung” place, you’ve both been shown some of that “unspoken truth” and left searching for it at the same time. Andy speaks that truth when he sings to us, “decadent eyes you don’t have to worry because now in time your world will turn blue”, and continues on in the same song to shred to pieces the false happiness we seek in materialism but not without destroying those who would deny it, too. He pronounces in that same song, Decadent Eyes, “And we become what we’re expected and when we should scream we don’t make a sound. We don’t make a sound.”. He calls us all out. He reminds us that we are all acting out parts pre-arranged for us; shoved down our throats and thrust into our hearts since birth. But he includes himself in this judgment, and the song’s righteous indignancy cannot be ignored or argued against. He nails us to the wall he’s already nailed himself to.

In another song, “Itch To Scratch”, he tells us of a girl “who takes off her clothes just to put something right up her nose, she’d rather go down than go nine to five” and of his sister who “has two fine kids, has a nice house, some scars on her wrists, I asked why she did it she said she was bored, tired of being grown up, tired of being ignored”. It’d all sound like judgment if it weren’t clearly Andy’s headfirst high-dive into his own psyche that forces him to ponder the unconscious and conscious actions of others. He ends it with, “then there’s myself I’ve got my thick-tongued ways, spent a few hours in a narcotic haze…”. Boy In The Bubble uses the metaphor of a boy medically confined to a bubble who can’t feel or be or exist as others do to perhaps show Andys’ own realization that the world is an insane place inaccessible to anyone truly paying attention to it; to anyone who allows themselves to see it for what it is: a farce. This farcical world, however, isn’t filled only with disgust but with confusing love and heartache and with humanity as it is: ambiguous and messy. Andy shows us the horrors and delights of it all as he explores them himself.

Grateful To Burn was produced and engineered by Kevin Ray Cubbins in a small studio in Memphis, TN. It must be noted that the sonic landscapes and aural imagery – at times stark and foreboding and at others lush and ethereal – are a product of not only Kevin’s brilliance as a producer but of his own friendship with Andy. The two had played in a band together for years before and when it came time to create Grateful To Burn, Kevin brought with him not only his innate genius as a producer and engineer but also a plan. A simple one. Andy Grooms is difficult. No one would reasonably argue otherwise. Were he to have made this record any other way it wouldn’t be close to the work it is. Why? Because Kevin only allowed incredibly talented musicians (not “session guys” – though they all have done session work – but true instrumental artists) that Andy didn’t know well or at all to play on it. He did this to force Andy to push himself and in doing so created an odd symbiosis – dysfunctional and absurd, but symbiotically brilliant regardless. John Argroves (Jack Oblivion, Alvin Youngblood Hart), arguably the finest drummer in Memphis today was brought in. Jazz upright bassist Jonathan Wires (Southern Excursion Jazz Quartet) was another addition. Perhaps the musician most notably involved, aside from Andy, is Clint Wagner (Banyan, Lucero, Mark Lemhouse, and many others), whose nylon string guitar solos haunt the record and whose echoing and feedback laden electric guitar work provides beautifully textured backdrops for the songs.

The record is deceptive. Almost no electric instruments were used. But the walls of sound, the violence of noise, the lush and pleasing arrangements, and the ever-shifting production provide something quite literally indescribable. It sounds like nothing else.

In totality the record – the “experiment”- was a “success”: we are left with a journal of sorts. Andy was both deeply in love with an unattainable woman and was being divorced by another whose cruelty resounds in the recordings right alongside the heartbreaking love for the other. It’s a truly cathartic record. It’s a bowl of tears and a floor covered in bile. It was a success, in the sense, for becoming what it did. But it is a chronicle of failures and loss. So from the deepest of hurts and the greatest of loves we are left with a record that can ultimately only be explained – hell, it can only be made sense of – by experiencing it, not hearing it. It is so painful, so hopeful, so loving, so spiteful, and ultimately so human that we aren’t allowed to simply be listeners. We must sit in the car with Andy while he drives. And he has no idea where he is going. But his observations and emotions become mirrors of our own. We find ourselves in Grateful To Burn because Andy so painfully and honestly searches for himself.

Andy Grooms has no biography. He isn’t definable. Nor is he separate from those who know him or his work. He isn’t definable because Andy Grooms writes much as the great Werner Herzog directs and narrates: he takes the outward landscapes of life and proves that they are, in truth, our own personal monologues and interior landscapes. Like Herzog, any subject Andy touches becomes a part of Andy. Andy is the warzone journalist incapable of not crying or of joining up when the fighting becomes intense: he doesn’t attempt to be “objective” and in not doing so shows us the true horrors and, in equal parts, the beauties of our world through his music. He is too human to stand back and watch but too idiosyncratically thoughtful to blindly leap into the flames, even as he is doing just that. What we are left with is something bigger than what he witnesses yet much smaller, as well. We are faced with ourselves and our own world. We see Andy and, in the brutality of his honesty and observations and the severity of his love and disdain, we see our own faces. In it all, he shows us, there is good and bad and then there is all that’s locked up in between. His laughter is ours. His pain is ours. His confusion is ours. He is a conscientious objector with a gun and no bullets.

Andy has lamented, “There is no punk rock piano playing”, noting at the same time that “maybe that’s why all my friends play guitar”. Thankfully Andy never gave much time to the memorization of rock and roll history like a good little indie rock boy should… He was too busy pining over the “genius of John Prine” (as he says) and playing gospel music to do it. Even given the time to he would’ve ignored it all anyway. Strangely, though, it’s easy to imagine placing Andy Grooms; replete with a beat up Acrosonic piano and a Southern drawl (slow and mesmerizing enough to allow for, even demand, the two hours it takes for him to fully tell his detailed and uniquely observant stories) in New York City circa 1977. Not up on stage at CBGB’s or in the crowd at a Ramones show. That was never punk rock, anyway. Andy would’ve done as he does now. But he would’ve been tracked by those who understood what the punk rock ethos really was and made the music they made without regard for the standardized sounds associated with it; those like Tom Verlaine and Jonathan Richman. That ethos was upheld well before anyone donned a leather jacket and shredded jeans. Andy came by it naturally. Honestly. Just as he does his other roots.

Grateful To Burn was recorded over a decade ago.  Left by his wife and in love with an unattainable woman, these desperate songs, borne of immediacy and pain, were spilling out of Andy at the time. The songs and the production of the record went hand in hand: Andy was writing material and bringing it into the studio almost in desperation. Kevin Cubbins, who produced the record, picked musicians that would challenge Andy musically and personally; people he didn’t know well enough to resort to debate with. It was this brilliant plan that laid the foundation. It worked.

When the record was completed Andy did nothing. Literally. He drank. He slept a lot. He played shows sporadically but showed little interest in the promotion of Grateful To Burn. It sat. Those who played on it knew it was brilliant. Andy didn’t care. Finally, Memphis’ Makeshift Records and Brad Postlewaite attempted to rescue it from him. They released Grateful To Burn locally. With no money, publicist, distribution, and no help from Andy. They saw the beauty and tilted at windmills anyway. It was a failure. Everyone gave their all. Except Andy. He allowed it to fail. And fail it did: when something this good exists and then disappears, it takes a lot of doing nothing to destroy it.

Grateful to Burn will be released by Evangeline Recording Co in January of 2012 and finally see the true “light of day”. Because if it doesn’t reach out to folks and isn’t seen for the masterpiece it is, something is wrong. Something is bad wrong with the world.  So Andy’s Quixotic adventure can began anew with Evangeline Recording Co. as his Sancho Panza. Here’s to hoping the world isn’t so fucked it can’t find the brilliance. – JM

Hi Electric..

Enigmas are easy to come by these days. Pseudo-sensitive art-as-rock bands dripping irony from their records like blood from their teeth. So I suppose that, in reality, the enigmatic is found in the band that refuses to be an enigma.

Memphis, Tennessee has been repeatedly stabbing itself in the back and refusing to pay the hospital bill since Chris Bell wrapped himself and his car around a light pole. Arguably, the greatest drummer in rock and roll history was murdered there and no one remembers his name. It’s Al Jackson, Sr.,  if you yourself need reminding. Here’s to hoping you didn’t. But you did. So pay attention:

When a kid with a ragged heart on his sleeve, not a silver one or one for the girls to swoon over and chase after; when a kid with every card on the table decides to make a record, refuses to stop until it’s done (really fucking done), brings in Kevin Cubbins – an equally obsessive producer – and demands more guitar repetitiously, you inevitably end up with something. Maybe anything. But not with Neil Bartlett. It’s more than something.

Neil’s a bit too smart for it, a bit too full of self-doubt and equal parts self-will, and likes rock and roll. Do you remember when people still did that? When they wrote songs about actual things and people and shit that mattered to somebody? Before “indie rock” became a global circle jerk? When a solitary 15 year old might throw on a record and get goosebumps? Fucking turn it up so loudly he destroys the 50 dollar boombox his brother handed down to him?

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN PEOPLE PLAYED GUITAR? DO YOU???

Neil does.

Actually, he doesn’t. He didn’t pay close enough attention to the handjobs and the backpatting and the “local Memphis music scene” to give a good Goddamn. He kept listening to records. Good ones. Rock and roll records. They all had guitar splattered everywhere. How would he have known it “died in 1997”, some random Pitchfork writer’s “opinion” about music in time and it’s “relevance” as an artistic statement. No more!  Art??? Go buy a painting of a square fucking a red triangle giving head to a streak of mauve. THIS is “real art”.  Not canned hipster spam. Hurt. Love. Beauty. Disgust. Hope. Angst. All of it! And God bless Neil Bartlett for refusing to give in, or rather, thank God he didn’t know to pay attention.

See, Memphis created rock and roll. Sort of. Drove it up from Mississippi, anyway. Then it butchered its’ greats; took their lives. Alex Chilton was a relative failure there. Ardent Studios found him to be intolerable. Until (of course) his recent acclaim, death, and Big Star’s notoriety. But then? Back when Sister Lovers was being recorded, Chilton was banned from the same studio that lives off of his name today. For Chrissakes, the city tore down Stax then rebuilt it after realizing they’d acted not just in haste but in utter ignorance and sin. The idiocy never ends. Elvis lived there, sure. But he died there, too….

When you don’t give a shit about “the legacy”, well, that’s when you become a Neil Bartlett. Or a Kevin Shields. Or Mark Linkous. Fuck cities. Fuck scenes. Where are the amplifiers?!?!?!

So when Neil Bartlett says Hi Electric is a few guys who “have bad teeth, smoke cigarettes, play really fucking loud, and still believe rock and roll exists and can still be dangerous” it’s like watching a five year old with an uzi. He doesn’t really know what he’s done. He’s created a truly brilliant record. And it IS dangerous. Because it’s so good the hipsters will buy it. So will the 15 year olds. It’ll enmesh all kinds of good and bad and wicked and saintly. It does. Neil does. And he doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s doing and certainly not what he’s done.

There are guitars. Lots. And rightfully so. Because it sounds like there should be. The drums are weighted and dynamic. Because it feels right. The bass is a stuttering heartbeat. Because it’s supposed to be that way.

Why? Because it just fucking is.

Rock and roll can’t be killed by academics posing as critics and hipsters parading as tastemakers. Neil Young was right. It can’t die. It may “only” be rock and roll. But some people, those who can still feel, dig rock and roll. And Hi Electric doesn’t make it, they are it.

An incredibly smart man who left Memphis as soon as he came up from The Mississippi Delta for Chicago once said, “ It may be simple but it ain’t easy.”.

Goddamn right it ain’t. Goddamn right.