Songs from the Vanished Frontier, the second album from Brooklyn’s Yellowbirds, is one of the most arresting rock LPs you are bound to hear in 2013. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of his former band, 00s psych-pop mavericks Apollo Sunshine, chief Bird Sam Cohen turns out some of the best songs of his career on this nine-track follow-up to their beguiling 2011 debut The Color with a more focused sense of lyrical and melodic intimacy seemingly influenced by Miracle Legion, Harry Nilsson and solo Eddie Hazel with equal aplomb and buoyed by his strongest Yellowbirds lineup to date, rounded out by drummer Brian Kantor, singer/bassist Annie Nero and her husband, multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman.
Jambands.com caught up with Mr. Cohen via e-mail to discuss the ins and outs of Songs from the Vanished Frontier, his ventures into film scoring and the growth he’s experienced as a songwriter and performer since the Apollo Sunshine days.
Please tell me how you came into providing the soundtrack to the film Across the Whipplewash and the inspirations behind the tone of your score.
I met Josh and Caitlin Drake, who made Whipplewash, at a show we played in Harrisburg, PA at this little gallery called Moviate. It’s a cool community of film enthusiasts, and the booker there had first heard about Yellowbirds through the animated videos that I make. We started talking that night about the film they were working on. A few months later they sent it to me, and I offered to score it.
The film is created in a style reminiscent of the 1920’s but set in the late 1800’s, and then there’s some pretty psychedelic editing that invokes a 1960’s modern feel. I sort of ran with all the possibilities, throwing in some laid back pedal steel country, butted up against noisy grooves, butted up against Mariachi-spaghetti-western type melodies. It was kind of a free for all to do everything I love and anything I could imagine.
Did working on Whipplewash inspire you to remain open to future scoring projects?
Absolutely. I really look forward to the next chance I get to do that kind of work!
Who are some of your favorite film composers?
Ennio Morricone. His arranging is pure genius. The chords and melody are unforgettable. His pallet of sounds is the best, and he even drops a funky groove in once in awhile. He’s just the best. Also, Curtis Mayfield. Superfly the album exists because of Superfly the movie. He took the gig and just ran with it. He held himself to his own high standards rather than just matching the bar set by the film.
You mentioned in the press that you had a clearer idea of what you wanted for Songs from the Vanished Frontier than you did on 2011’s The Color. Can you expound on that?
The Color was the culmination of a long evolution. I was establishing the Yellowbirds vernacular. The process began before Yellowbirds was even an idea. It was just songs without a home. What should it sound like? What do I want to sing about? Starting out on Songs from The Vanished Frontier, I was building on a foundation. It wasn’t really a conscious thing. I just went about my business, but Yellowbirds had more of a language that I’d learned to speak.
Were there any particular acts or albums you have been digging lately that had an affect on the outcome of Songs from the Vanished Frontier ?
I can’t remember specifically what I was listening to while making the record. There was a definite shift at one point where I’d originally thought I’d be doing a lot of strings and horns and making a very orchestral album. Sometimes I get really sick of the guitar. Then suddenly I start loving guitar again. If that ought to be attributed to any certain artist or band (which very well may be the case), I forgot to take note of who it was. I guess obscuring your influences is the goal anyway, right?
What is the story behind the title of the album? What do you consider to be the Vanished Frontier ?
I got the title from Kurt Vonnegut in a passage from Cat’s Cradle that I love. It struck me as poetic and perfect. My songs mostly touch on problems or issues of the modern world, which is cluttered with noise of all types. I try to find mantras within all that or maybe beyond it. The Vanished Frontier relates to physical space or crowding, but also room within our culture to progress, or room in our heads for thoughts and feelings to develop; time away from technology, billboards and their many equivalents. Before the West was settled, there was an innocence and sense of promise about what could be achieved. It’s that way at the beginning of every process. Now that the physical frontier is long gone with a dark history to show for it, we move into other frontiers and hopefully progress in a positive direction.
I love the album art. Please tell me how that concept came to be.
It shows the cliff house literally hanging over the edge. It’s the furthest possible Western settlement; so it’s a good symbol for all that stuff I was just talking about. The sky is abstract. It represents a fourth dimension, maybe another consciousness, where our mistakes as people and a civilization can be improved upon. There are kids and musicians on the beach. Kids can, and musicians try, to access that place of wonder where good ideas come from. It’s just a collage I put together, though. It came together aesthetically, and all those representations were pretty much subconscious.
What did you learn from your days in Apollo Sunshine that impacted the direction you are taking with Yellowbirds?
That’s hard to pinpoint. I learned everything in Apollo Sunshine: how to do things…how not to do things. I was a kid when we started and nearly thirty when it went into hibernation. It’s synonymous with my twenties.
Some have found an R&B element in your music. Do you see it and if so, where do you feel it comes from?
I’m glad people hear that. I listen to a lot of soul and R&B. Funkadelic is a pretty common reference for me. I play with some people coming more from that world here in Brooklyn. I’ve learned a lot from them. More and more, that’s where I feel like going with the groove. There’s a space in the music that lets you hear all the instruments from top to bottom. You can really hear the tones of everything there. That’s the part I can incorporate into Yellowbirds. My voice is my voice – I’m not gonna be making heavy funk records as Yellowbirds any time soon.
How do you feel the current lineup of Yellowbirds is taking its sound to the next level?
We’ve really had time to gel as people and players. That’s the most important part of going from sounding good to really hitting your cosmic stride, and I think we recently hit a new level in our chemistry. I’m really into Brian, Josh and Annie individually and as a team. I can imagine playing together years from now.
