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Last Updated:
Apr 29th, 2008 - 11:55:55 |
The New Green
Fresh Perspective
This starts three years ago, when singer/guitarist Steve Clausnitzer chokes up while listening to Timothy Monger’s solo album in the car with (then newly married) wife Joanna. “What’s wrong?” she asks. And, the lifelong musician who taught himself an array of instruments, the lifelong songwriter who had played in various high school bands but had gotten away from music in his mid-20s, tells her that he just knows he has an album in him … and that he may never make it.
So, she asks him, "Why?" Then adds, "Do it."
He set up to record with (then newly acquainted) friend, musician/engineer Jim Roll with the intent of filling in all the instrumentation himself, but, “It grew,” said Clausnitzer, who started with five demos but soon had his compositions develop in number and scope. “I was looking to put together a band as the album was growing — the album grew bigger because I was finding a band.” He tapped drummer Dan Piccolo from Nomo and asked his two cousins, Kate and Samantha Cooper (“crazy Suzuki-learned violinists you could hum a complex melody to and they have it down in two seconds”), and guitarist Brian Goodwin, who offered up his strumming skills.
“There’s a snowball effect,” said Clausnitzer, “when you take a brush to canvas, I imagine you don’t have any idea what’s about to happen.” The album, Easily Made, Easily Broken, with its humble beginnings, blooms as a staggering theatrical pop odyssey, heavily informed by the dramatic (demurely epic) Beatles-esque (and Belle & Sebastian-esque) rousing song structures and the wry and humanistic folk angles of Wilco, Andrew Bird and many in the Ann Arbor folk scene in which the New Green reside.
Much of the album has a smooth, coaxing vibe and sweet, summery grooves.
“I really love it and I’m proud of it. [For] the next album — I’m not consciously going in any direction.” He adds that he hopes to work with Big Sky studios this summer.
Future plans include simply, “[making] a lot of albums.” | RDW
The New Green • 5/10 • Leopold Bros.
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