Ten years into its existence, Tuatara has reached a turning point. Historically an all-instrumental outfit based around ex-Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin, REM guitarist Peter Buck, and Minus 5 frontman Scott McCaughey, the band has always focused on the jazzy, world music interests of its members rather than their rock and roll roots. Until now, the band has never completely melded its influences. To wit, Tuatara’s fifth album, East of the Sun, unlike its predecessors, features singers. Ten different ones, to be exact.
“Peter and I had written a bunch of these acoustic guitar-oriented pop tunes, and they were different from the Tuatara instrumental compositions, pretty radically different,” says Martin of the origins of the project that began several years ago, around the time of the band’s third album, Cinemathique. “The intention was to do an album with one or two singers and pick somebody who wanted to work on these songs. And then, of course, it ended up we worked with 10 different singers.”
“We had two or three things that were supposed to come into fruition,” adds Buck. “A soundtrack thing that we kinda worked on and then it didn’t happen, and some songs we were going to write with Mark Lanegan, which we started...but life intervened and he kinda disappeared. So we had all these songs. Barrett suggested that we get a singer. And I said something like, ‘Well you know, I don’t want to audition a singer. Why don’t we just get a bunch of different people,’ being that we have a million friends that we’ve been playing with for years?”
So Martin compiled the demos he recorded with Buck, all 28 or so of them, and he and Buck put together a list of potential vocalists, people they had worked with over the years.
“I think there were twenty names on that list,” says Martin. “Some of those people couldn’t do it because of prior commitments…but everybody wanted to work with us. It was just a matter of who was available.”
Martin sent each vocalist a CD of demos and asked him or her to pick a song and add lyrics and vocals. The ten vocalists who made it onto East of the Sun are a who’s who of respected indie-rock artists: Luna’s Dean Wareham, Gary Louris and Mark Olsen from The Jayhawks, Geradline Fibbers’ Jessy Greene, Victoria Williams, John Wesley Harding, Gina Sala, Sufi poet Coleman Barks, and core Tuatara member McCaughey. As for their song choices, Buck says that the singers picked tracks that fit their personalities.
“Gary Louris went for the Mexican, Western ones,” says Buck. “Victoria and Mark did some of the folky things. Scott did the twisted ones. There’s enough variety of stuff that people could just pick and chose, and find what they wanted.”
Once the vocal tracks were recorded, the songs were sent back to Martin, who finished the compositions, adding multi-instrumental arrangements with the help of horn player Dave Carter, flamenco guitarist Ottmar Liebert, string arranger Luis Guerra, and Arabic oud player Rahim Alhaj. The result is an album that explores the potential of traditional song-based structure within the band’s more esoteric world-music influences. “Bones, Blood and Skin” is all silky smooth textures sung by Greene; “Missionary Death Song” is mariachi horn-flavored rock by McCaughey; and “Trouble Rides In” is depressive banjo folk with Wareham. “Silo Spring Violets” is spoken word poetry by Barks, and “A Spark in the Wind” features Alhaj’s entrancing oud behind Eitzel’s hypnotic croon.
There will be a second installment of this vocal Tuatara project. A companion piece, West of the Moon, has been completed from the same batch of demos as East of the Sun. It will be released later this year, and is meant to complement, not simply add to, the tracks recorded for its sister album.
“I think I’ve been using the yin/yang analogy,” says Martin. “East of the Sun is the more masculine record….West of the Moon is more the yang album, the feminine album, but each has a drop of the opposite. I would describe West of the Moon very differently. Musically, that record has more of an R+B/soul kind of vibe—and I’m talking the old version of R+B, the good stuff. Like Stevie Wonder, Booker T & the MGs, Stax/Volt-kind of quality.”
For now though, the members of Tuatara will go back to their normal lives and other gigs. McCaughey and Buck are finishing up an album with Robyn Hitchcock. Buck is awaiting Michael Stipe’s completion of lyrics for the next REM album. And as for Martin, the world music scholar of the group will be continuing his education, looking to finish up a master’s degree in Anthropology with a focus on Ethnomusicology at the University of New Mexico. While he’s already traveled the world recording and documenting traditional music of West Africa, Brazil, Cuba, Australia, and New Zealand, he currently has his sights set on Barcelona, where he hopes to pick up his next inspiration.
“I have some friends in Barcelona,” says Martin. “They’re from Seattle, but they’re kind of integrated into the scene, and they’ve been raving to me about the music scene there. Because you’ve got the African influence and the Arabic influence…I am planning on going there later this summer, and probably making another trip down into North Africa and just wander a bit. And I’ll have my field recorder with me and I’ll just record what I hear and synthesize that into the next thing.”
--Frank Valish
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Tuatara’s East of the Sun is available now through Fast Horse Recordings.
http://www.tuatara.com
