“I gotta say, there’s life before kids and after kids,” Eugene S. Robinson, vocalist of the genre-defying band Oxbow says. “But after kids you’re just sensitized to the world in a totally different way. It’s really transformative. It’s beyond being explained, and I’m surprised. It sensitizes you in a really compelling way.”
It is but just a single piece of the puzzle to Oxbow’s new album, Love’s Holiday, out July 21 via Ipecac Recordings. The record is built around a theme of love, and speaking to members of the band, it becomes apparent that family is the basis for it all. Marriage and children, and even their relationship with the emotion itself forged the tone of not only the lyrics, but the music as well.
“The last two songs for Thin Black Duke I wrote in Paris with my then girlfriend, now wife, just totally in love; new love. The songs don’t sound like love songs, but that’s where that came from,” the band’s guitarist and composer Niko Wenner says. “Continuing that on, what was new in my life was our kids, and I said goodbye to my dad, and this importance of family. That was the love for me, and obviously the love in our house.”
“[Oxbow] talked about that, and it’s funny that we do have a lot of synchronicity between the four of us, and that really made sense, the idea of love. So everything in the end was really about love and it really makes sense for the record.”
Love’s Holiday formed during a period of abundant songwriting and inspiration. In total, eighteen songs were recorded for the album with nine making their way onto the record (the other nine are planned to see the light of day as the next Oxbow album). Some of the songs—“All Gone” and “Million Dollar Weekend”—musically date back nearly twenty years, with Wenner feeling now was the appropriate time and album with which to release them.
“I like to hold onto songs. There’s something beautiful that happens to a piece of music,” Wenner says. “There’s a familiarity and a curing and an aging process that is really nice. Having something around for that long strips away artifice and pretense.” The guitarist laughs before adding, “I mean, we’re still incredibly pretentious, don’t get me wrong.”
But the songs that came in the post-Thin Black Duke flood of material found Oxbow taking a new approach to composition. Whereas in the past Robinson would provide lyrics to Wenner who would then write music to accompany them, the music came first this time with the vocalist reacting to what he heard.
“In this instance we were creating and writing so quickly that I was often at practice writing words to the songs,” says Robinson. “So the music, for the first time, at least how I’m processing it, was determining the words that I was writing insofar as I was sitting there writing words to the music that was being played as I was hearing it.”
That music is perhaps a more approachable, maybe even more conventional (albeit still extremely complex and experimental) Oxbow sound than ever before. Love’s Holiday continues a trajectory from their noisy, dissonant beginnings towards a particularly reeled-in, even melodic approach to song.
“I think it’s important to do something different, it’s important even if the emotions are always the same,” Wenner says of their movement towards more tightly designed songs. “I think that there’s value in a different way of communicating, and because we did it one way, I think it’s interesting to do it another way, and perhaps important to try the other way; to be less chaotic.”
“It’s a change, but it’s also interesting telling the same message in a different way,” he adds.
The juxtaposition between approaches couldn’t be clearer than when comparing the group’s two most recent releases, Love’s Holiday with An Eternal Reminder of Not Today, their live collaboration with free jazz colossus Peter Brötzmann. On the latter, Oxbow performed songs from throughout their entire existence while accompanied by the improvisational saxophone of Brötzmann, exploring the world of musical spontaneity and uncertainty even while they themselves were moving more towards stability.
Improvisation was certainly not new to Oxbow, though, as it’s often times a characteristic of their live performances. And even if they view the song as an ever-moving, never-quite-finished entity, they do yield to the written basis, something that is even more evident now than ever.
“I believe in song structure, especially with a vocalist who writes lyrics,” Wenner says. “A song is a really age old way of sharing and delivering emotion and feeling and connecting. I believe in that in a song, so I don’t think our forte will ever be improvising and having that same kind of connection.”
“We have this durable machine and, man, we’ve done a lot of crazy shit,” the guitarist adds in regards to their past. “We’ve done some stuff that I find beautiful—ugly beautiful, emotionally beautiful, just simply beautiful. There’s a lot we can do with this machine, this entity that we’ve created. I don’t know where it’s gonna go. That’s part of my job.”
That job, of course, is being the main force steering the vehicle of Oxbow. Wenner is conventionally educated in classical music, and perhaps not so conventionally educated in metal and hardcore. It’s these two backgrounds that provide both the complexity and the feral, intense nature of the band’s music. The guitarist mentions concepts that have shaped their material based upon music theory—the circle of fifths, major/minor resolutions, leitmotifs—but even as intricate as an Oxbow song can be, it’s always about the feeling. It’s a fine line they walk between intellect and emotion.
“I think everything has to have both; we try to have both,” Wenner says. “But for me when I’m writing, most often I do have an impetus, a feeling, a reason for beginning a piece of music, but I think it’s possible to shape that.”
Wenner’s education, as well as personal interests has led the band down some interesting avenues over the course of their career. While existing as a four piece for their entirety, they have often included additional instrumental accompaniment on record. The Narcotic Story was rich with strings and piano while Thin Black Duke employed the use of a brass section. Love’s Holiday utilizes backing vocals, including Lingua Ignota’s Kristin Hayter, Jellyfish’s Roger Manning, and even a choir.
“I was at work one day, sitting at my computer at my cubicle, and I was thinking about music for “All Gone” and what to do with that.” Wenner says. “I’ve sang in choirs and it’s a wonderful thing to get together with twenty, thirty people and just sing in parts and use that instrument inside you. It’s not an external device. Singing is a really beautiful thing, and to do with other people, it’s super emotional. I wanted that to be a part of the record, and that made sense for “All Gone,” and that pushed into the other songs.”
“All Gone” represents that push-and-pull of scholarly writing with raw feeling as well as any for Wenner. Within the intricacies of the vocal accompaniment is injected a tribute to his daughter, something that impacts him on that deeper level, tying into the theme of love.
“I realized afterwards when we were starting to mix it, every time I would work on the recording I would just cry. I would break down weeping,” he says. “Tears were streaming down my face because of putting my beautiful daughter into this song.”
All the additional voices complement Robinson’s own unique vocal style, one that is hard to exactly pin down. His screams and moans and teetering ramblings have begun to incorporate more melody over time, mirroring the music’s trajectory. It’s been described as crooning, though one might be hard pressed to compare him to Sinatra.
“As Oxbow got further and further away from identifiable genre, what I also wanted to do was have my voice get further and further away from identifiable genre, to my taste and to the musical dictates as set out by us,” Robinson says of the development of his singing. “It took seven or eight records for people to trust us enough, or be comfortable enough, or to abandon any pretense of genre as connected to this to not be surprised or shocked that that’s what they were hearing.”
The method of his delivery may have changed, but the message has not. Robinson insists that Oxbow has always been about love, no matter how difficult it may be to see in their older material. Love’s Holiday just marks the moment that it is apparent. So in that regard, the new album starts a new book in the Oxbow oeuvre, at least from the lyrical standpoint.
“From Fuckfest to Thin Black Duke, in my mind it helps me lyrically to think about those lyrics as a singular product, as a singular outing, and that if you were to take those lyric sheets and tape them in a book, they might make a story that makes sense,” Robinson says. “Certainly in my mind it makes sense.”
“I think when you telescope out, you can see that the lyrics have a theme that probably closely mirrors what I was obsessed with post-Thin Black Duke,” he says about Love’s Holiday. “What that always was, and still is, remains a meditation on love that just happens to be that my take on it right now is healthier than it has ever been, versus the dysfunctional. So what you’re hearing when you hear me on Love’s Holiday is me at my healthiest.”
It wouldn’t be right to say that Love’s Holiday is Oxbow’s most personal album, but it’s certainly as personal as any. Robinson mentions the lyric of “I love you too much” from “1000 Hours” and the imagery of the sea captain in “Gunwale” as being moments that tear at him.
“If you understand nothing else about the record, if you can’t figure out the record, and if you were to meditate on those two, you might do yourself well,” he says.
When pressed further on the lyrical content, particularly the symbolism of the boat that starts and ends the album, Robinson mentions philosopher Carl Jung’s metaphor of water before choking up. He lets out one of his deep laughs and says, “You’re going to have to figure it out and read the lyrics. I can’t spend ten minutes sobbing.”
You can order Love’s Holiday off Oxbow’s Bandcamp. Follow Oxbow on Facebook and Twitter for future updates.
