“For many years I’ve been trying to quit, and I can’t seem to quit effectively. Something keeps pulling me back,” begins Jon Fine, guitarist, author, magazine writer and editor, and former Bitch Magnet player, currently fronting new instrumental rock three-piece We Contain Multitudes, who didn’t plan to be a rock ‘n’ roll lifer, but somehow, the music keeps pulling him back in.
Having made his name (within a small but devoted international community of noisy-punk-rock appreciators) with Bitch Magnet in the second half of the ’80s, Fine’s 2015 memoir, Your Band Sucks, in which he charts the American independent rock underground he came up in, closes with Fine (then 42) seemingly done with the merry-go-round underground rock existence.
The universe, however, had other plans. Fine set his intentions to do a reading for the book launch. Having put the musician in touch with English comic Stuart Lee (a big Bitch Magnet fan) as a potential interviewer, Damnably label founder George Gargan suggested to Fine that it would make for a more popular event if he played some guitar.
“I got in touch with Simon Kobayashi and Matt Atkins,” remembers Fine, “who were in the band Smallgang and had opened for Bitch Magnet on a reunion tour. I said, ‘Guys, can we do an improv set? We’ll put it together really quickly.’ So we did, and I just really liked it.”
Feeling positive about making music again, Fine got in touch with former-Bitch Magnet compatriot Orestis Morfin about playing drums in a new band—with a plan to have Kobayashi play bass. And so, We Contain Multitudes was born.
Now roughly eight years on from this initial genesis, the band are releasing their debut record Minako (on Expert Work Records). Given the abrasive post-hardcore of Fine’s routes, the tone of Minako is not entirely as bleak as might be expected (despite track titles including “Can We Just Not?” and “We Are All Fucked.”)
“The world’s a heavy place,” notes Fine. “That’s not necessarily what we’re trying to get across with the music. What I really like about an instrumental band is that the palette is really wide. It’s not like the singer is hitting three words that are the emotional center of the song. So there is a lot more room to explore.”
Musically Fine had gone into the project anticipating an emphasis on guitar loops—harking back to another of Fine’s former bands Coptic Light, (“A really weird, extreme band,” as Fine describes them).
In the end though, while based around drawn out, repeating passages, the musical approach of the record evolved in its own way—a potential marker, Fine notes, of We Control Multitudes not being driven by “people with significant control issues,” as Fine puts it.
“Some of those bands are some of my favorite bands. I’m just not super interested in doing that. I also tend to think that if you are not a drummer, and you try to tell a really good drummer what to play, it’s just a bad idea.”
As far back as the Bitch Magnet days, Fine was having his music referred to as “math rock”—a term that never greatly appealed to him, though he’s mellowed on the point. “I try to treat almost all these terms friendly at this point,” the guitarist reflects. “I remember hearing it the first time and then it became a thing, and I was like, “Oh, God, this is terrible. This is the least sexy term.”
Regarding the latest project perhaps “instrumental rock” will suffice? “I’ll take it,” says Fine.
Far more enthusiastic is Fine about the band and playing than on what box to fit them into. Family commitments and long distances between band members contributed to the long process of getting Minako off the ground (not to mention the global pandemic), but as with the music itself Fine maintains a sense of positivity whatever darkness may be swirling.
“We’re grown-ups, we lead complicated lives. But right now, I really love this band, I really like what we’re doing. I want to keep pushing it.”
Minako is out now and you can buy it here. Follow We Contain Multitudes on Instagram for future updates.
Photo courtesy of We Contain Multitudes
