What's the Deal: Romantica

S.J. Barlament | 1/07/2008 12:30 pm | Tea in the Yahara

With an album on Paste Magazine's Top 100 of 2007 and comparisons popping up all over the place between singer/songwriter Ben Kyle and both Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams, it probably won't be too long before you'll no longer be able to catch these guys in such a cozy venue.

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What's the deal with your band, anyway?
We were a group of friends in school. Luke and I first played together nearly 10 years ago, but the band didn't form until 2002. I essentially gave up music for a few years to study painting. I figured I couldn't do both seriously. I sort of told myself that once I finished my degree I could start playing music again... And that's when the band formed. We were signed really early (within a few months) to a local indie label. Our violinist quit during the first recording, so we asked Jessy Greene to come in and play the string parts and she's been with us ever since (although she's not touring with us because she's touring with a slightly bigger band called the Foo Fighters at the moment).

The philosophy of the band is changing, and the more we tour the more it's becoming about the 4 guys on the road (Luke Jacobs, Tony Zacccardi, James Orvis and myself), as we develop new material and arrangements during our live shows. But until now it's really been about a fluid group of musicians collaborating around the songs that I write.

On this last album, in addition to the core band, Eric Heywood contributed in a big way to the sonic landscape with his gorgeous pedal steel, and a few of the tastier guitar parts were played by sometime-member Peter Rasmussen. My sisters lent some harmony vocals and long-time friend and collaborator Erik Brandt (UHQ) pitched in some accordion and keys. Most of these people have played with us live at one time or another too, so there is a core band, but there's been a lot of inspired company along the way.

And the name? What's the deal with that?
There was a Luna album called Romantica. I really liked the sound of the word, I liked the depth of the word, too, and the multiplicity of meanings. It sounds foreign and familiar. It has a gravity and seriousness about it (like the passion and sincerity of the Romantic movement), but it also feels light and there's maybe a hint of jest.

We were trying not to take ourselves too seriously. I think it's somewhat descriptive of the music we make, with the nostalgic and romantic themes, but I also liked that, on first hearing, one might assume we were some sort of new-wave band. The word seemed alive, I guess. It's poetic and dynamic. And when it comes down to it, we are all romantics.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press says that you specialize in "delicate acoustic pop that's far more substantial than an initial listen might suggest." Fairly accurate assessment, or journalistic mumbo-jumbo?
I'm not sure what that means, exactly. It's not as if there's anything different there on your second listen. Maybe what the writer is getting at is the tension between the lushness and prettiness of the album sonically and the heavier issues engaged in the lyrical content. There are definitely a few pretty songs about death.

It's really hard to be objective about your own sound, particularly when you're trying to sound subjective, but if if I had to label what we do... I'd probably call it "Irish Americana Pop." Some of the artists I've listened to a lot on the American side are Gram Parsons, Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown, The Jayhawks, Wilco, Springsteen, and Dylan. And on the Irish/Brit side, Van Morrison, The Waterboys, Nick Drake, Belle and Sebastian and a lot of Irish folk. I think you can definitely hear some of these footprints, and we definitely take more of traditionalist approach.

Not that we don't value newness, but we don't think it should be sought for its own sake. I think we value newness in the form of Particularity. I think the ideal is to deliver a particular lyric and melody in the most appropriate, beautiful and particular way (by "particular," I mean "the way in which only you would do it").

So we do draw from influence, inspiration, heroes and history, but then we seek to coalesce that input and make the song and delivery as personal as possible. Even though it may be wrapped in historical patterns and tried and true forms. I believe if you can be true enough to the particular, it can transcend itself and become universal.

What's the deal with your latest album, America?
Again, I really like the sound of the word "America," especially paired with "Romantica." When I burned a really early copy of demos for the album I titled the playlist "America" on a whim. It was the first word that came into my head to collectively describe some common subjects and sounds in what we'd recorded so far. When it came time to find a name for the album, I'd forgotten about that and came up with some other really crap ideas.

At some point I re-discovered the early title and at first I thought, "There's no way you could use that"... And then it just started really feeling right. So I thought, "Why not?" It really fit and, like the band name, felt really dynamic, and pertained so well to the album musically and thematically. A lot of the content was about my move to America; coming to grips with the new continent and looking back at my home through this new lens.

The name for the continent was originally taken from the explorer Amerigo Vespucci, and for me this was definitely a voyage of discovery. It's a huge word, but I thought it was worth the risk, and I hoped that people's better judgment would expect the personal experience versus some sort of over-arching manifesto (which I suppose could have been construed.) And ultimately, I had a chance to call our album "America," and I thought, "Why the hell not!"

I wrote a lot of the songs while we were recording, so it was a fairly immediate process. There was no concept at the beginning, only a vague idea of the direction I wanted the sound to take. The method for the album's production was precisely informed by how I learned to approach my visual work in art school. Firstly, there were no rules, and secondly, you try something and then ask yourself, "Does it work?" If it does, you keep it; if not, you throw it. The dexterity of recording technology these days made this method of working really easy.

The whole process was very different from the first recording, where we worked with a producer (Alex Oana), and I'm not sure we really new what we wanted in terms of production (our first time in the studio). This time we decided to record and produce ourselves, so that we would only do exactly what we wanted, and thereby discover what it was we wanted, more clearly. We built our own studio and bought our own equipment. We recorded most of the album through one mic and one pre-amp, and I learned how to engineer as we went along (with much valuable guidance from Alex Oana). Needless to say, we learned a ton and we were really happy with the results.

So America isn't your first album, then, right?
No, our first was called It's Your Weakness that I Want, and I'll spare you the story of how we came up with that title!

Among other things, America made Paste Magazine's "100 Best of 2007" list. What's the deal with that?
That was a really great feeling. It's one thing to end up on a series of local music "Best of" lists, but to be stacked in with the 100 best albums worldwide, by a reputable national publication such as Paste felt like a real affirmation.

And there were a lot of really great records this year.... Which makes it even more crazy. It's so difficult for relatively obscure bands to even get their music listened to by some of the national publications, so to be not only heard but loved and critically acclaimed by Paste was a real lift for us this year, and it sort of legitimized the band and opened up some new opportunities.

The Paste review makes comparisons between Romantica -- and you, in particular -- and both Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams. How does it feel to be put up against a couple of the biggest names in popular music?
Well honestly, that feels really good, considering they are definitely two of my guiding lights in music today. (I actually had the chance to open for Ryan recently at the State Theater in Minneapolis and he joined me on one of my songs) But maybe more than the compliment, it was one of the first reviews I read where I felt like somebody got it.

You can't read about Romantica without coming across the phrase "Belfast by way of Minneapolis." Care to explain?
I was born in Belfast, and I was 13 when my family (of 9) moved to Minneapolis to escape the temperate Irish climate for the more extreme seasons of the Midwest. I think some of the smells and spirits of my homeland are still in my bones and often make their way into my writing.

And you have a show coming up here in Madison on the 10th. What's the deal with that?
We're supporting Poi Dog Pondering on January 10 at the High Noon Saloon. It should be fun. We've never played the High Noon before. The promoter, Tag Evers (True Endeavors), has been a big-hearted supporter of the band and is bringing us in. We've been at Cafe Montmarte a few times before, and that's always been a great and very intimate spot.

And what's next for Romantica? Where do you go from here? What's the deal?
Well, we'd like to keep making better music. We've a fair bit of touring the first half of this year in support of America, but we hope to have a new recording finished by the end of the year.

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And the official bio....

At first glance the irony is thick on Romantica’s new release America.  Penned by an immigrant Irishman who writes a fair bit about his homeland, and delivers his nostalgia in a lilting Belfastian inflection, the only thing ‘America’ about it seems to be the new soil on which he’s singing. But listen to all this Irishness couched in the musical landscape of historically American country and folk music painted by the swirling pedal steel guitar of Eric Heywood (Ray LaMontagne, Son Volt, Richard Buckner) and the emotive fiddling of Jessy Greene (Wilco, Jayhawks, Minus 5) and it comes clear why Rolling Stone's Melissa Maerz called it “Americana, (that’s) something more than the sound of the states”  You’ll hear fingerprints of true American artists, Gram Parsons, Ryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen, and Iron and Wine, as well as a few from across the pond such as, Damien Rice, Nick Drake and Van Morrison.

Mariachi horns on a tex-mex train, The National Side chronicles the transplanting of singer Ben Kyle’s family from the green shores of Ireland to the Northern Americas. Kyle’s mother was a hockey player on the Irish national side, and his father a medical doctor before they moved to the United States in 1994. Ixcatan describes an outlaw shooting in the mountains of mid-Mexico in haunting and brooding but sublimely beautiful colors. The gravity of Kyle’s voice hovering upon the weightlessness of Mr Heywood’s soaring steel guitar creates a holy tension that paints death in the most transcendent of lights.

Recorded entirely at home, in a studio built by the band, and almost entirely through one microphone and one pre-amp, Ben Kyle’s lush and effortless, airy vocals set the tone for this oft-times breezy and sometimes haunting, atmospheric record. Guitars, keys and essential harmonies come courtesy of Luke Jacobs.  Steady, subtle and often poignant percussion is contributed by touring veteran James Orvis. And as mentioned above, string duties are performed by Romantica’s latest addition, Jessy Greene. who brings a wealth of experience and depth from her history of pop and americana endeavors. 

This is the follow-up to Romantica’s debut It’s Your Weakness That I Want which sat comfortably in the CMJ top 200 for over 2 months and received sustained airplay on Twin Cities FM megastations KQRS and Cities 97, as well as MPR’s influential indie station, 89.3 The Current. It also won numerous awards including Best Americana Album at the 2004 Minnesota Music Awards and two International Songwriting Competition awards: On My Mind took 2nd place in the AAA category in 2004 and Mexico took 1st place in the Performance category in 2005. An early release of America’s lead track Queen of Hearts won 2nd Place in the Americana category of the same competition this year!

The early critical response has been promising:

Paste Magazine gave the album 4 Stars**** and said, "Romantica is here to save the day. Most albums with such ambitious titles fall flat in the attempt; Kyle, in songs and voice that sit comfortably between Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams,  dwells comfortably in the long shadows cast by his forefathers while leaving his own undeniable stamp on the proceedings.  Top notch."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has called it one of the "10 best Local albums of 2007" Chris Riemenschnieder writes, "In a perfect world, the soccer, er, football ditty "The National Side" would score on local FM stations."

Romantica just returned from 3 weeks on the east coast. They'll be touring extensively in the US and the UK this year in continued support of their new disc.