Fresh Baked: Emmett and Mary

FRESH BAKED
Emmett and Mary
Emmett and Mary
2008 | My Idea of Fun
A

Johnstown, PA is mostly unremarkable in the exact same way as nearly every other small American city. There’s local representation of every major fast food and grocery chain, and a handful of local businesses doing their best to stay afloat. The percentage of cool, progressive artists in Johnstown is staggering. Miles off the interstate, you could cross Pennsylvania on road trips between Philly and Pittsburgh a hundred times without even driving through Johnstown. You would probably think you had seen everything you needed to in a random suburb town like this one. You’d be making a big mistake.

Johnstown, PA is home of one of the most vibrant, dedicated artist collectives in the United States. Quite a bit like the Elephant Six group in structure, the My Idea of Fun collective is united not so much by sound as by common interests: to make art and music together, without the pressure of record labels and management waiting in the wings to swing down and commodify the fun out of it. The most prominent of the My Idea of Fun groups is Endless Mike and the Beagle Club, a pop group with anywhere between one and fifteen members, depending on the day you see them. The Beagle Club tours often, and while one might think that a fifteen-piece pop group is surely as adventurous and grand as independent music can get, lifelong Johnstownians Christopher Bell and Brandon Locher’s new band, Emmett and Mary, have trumped the Beagle Club in terms of size and scope with their debut long player. Arguably, My Idea Of Fun #64 is the logical extension of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Jeff Mangum’s 1997 homemade psychedelic pop masterpiece that has yet to be challenged, even by the man who wrote it.

Rooted in stories written by the non-musician Bell, and the sonic collages of the audiophiliac Locher, Emmett and Mary is a musical more than it is an album. Locher and Bell, credited parenthetically as Emmett Karson and Linus Mansfield, respectively, are joined by a cast of a couple dozen additional singers, all given characters to play, no matter how small the role (New Hampshire transplant Kathleen Boyle, aka Boy, for example, sings exactly one line on the record, yet is credited as Casey Whipkey). The story is one of people caught under the rule of Big Brother-esque organization called the Church of Surveillance, from under which the central cast struggles to escape. A new organization forms, called the Civilized Union Liberal Tract (hint: it’s an acronym). An apocalypse happens, everyone but the Union’s core members dies, and they begin anew. Lyrically, Emmett and Mary is rife with punk rock propaganda (“Fuck all cops that fuck with you-” ‘Trilogy:Feature’), autobiographical lines like “It was like the time my Mom told her sister I was a bad kid, like the time I re-met you,” in ‘Fanatical Hunting Club,’ and the Union’s ideals: “I just wanna be free, and alive” (“There Are No Groupies in Heaven”). Things jump around so much that it’s easy to lose the story on the first or even fifth listen. It’s a good thing, then, that the lyrics, in script form, are available for following along on www.myideaoffun.org.

Musically, Locher employed upwards of fifty local musicians to sing and play instruments across the whole record, then cut and paste the pieces of each instrument that he wanted. Enlisting the talents of local high school kids as well as those of non-academic musician types gives the proceedings a homemade feel. The fact that many of the players herein are found grinding not their typical axes, but rather less familiar instruments (guitarists on accordion, drummers on piano, etc.) extends the homespun feeling without dipping into amateurish antics that would sound like some guys dicking around. Although there’s plenty of contrasting melodies and rhythms here (including a very well-placed Modest Mouse sample in ‘The Book of Idols’), the conviction of everyone involved keeps Emmett and Mary from stooping to self-indulgence.

Emmett and Mary is a goddamn rock opera that was recorded in one guy’s bedroom. It is an unabashed psychedelic masterpiece, and it gets in and out in under forty minutes (the most crucial pratfall that ruins many a rock opera is length). Emmett and Mary is a lot better than that trash you’re probably listening to right now. You owe it to your ears (which will thank you) and your mind (which will be blown) to check this record out.  Download/purchase hard copies from www.myideaoffun.org.

http://www.myspace.com/emmettandmary

by Brook Pridemore