The Entertainer
written by: Joe Nickell (09.15.2005)
STILL LIFE TALKING
After long tour, This is a Process returns to release new CD
There may not be a more appropriately and poetically named band in all of America than This Is a Process of a Still Life.
Listening to the band's music, it's easy to hear the Process part: the structured development of musical ideas, the breaking down and building up, the conflict and climax and denouement.
The Still Life part is more subtle: It's an overarching mood, not really something you can see or hear, but something you remember.
And then there's the frame to the name: This Is. Those two words imply, rightly, that the band can't be properly appreciated by its component parts. It is one organic whole, a creature made up of six musicians, but which breathes its own breath, thinks its own thoughts, sorts through its own feelings.
This Is a Process of a Still Life: a creature moving through its own stillness. Yes, that fits.
Then again, as of last week, the members of the band sounded like they were ready to rename their outfit something more along the lines of This Is a Band That Needs a New Van and Warm Beds. Out on tour since last month, the members of the local band have endured breakdowns and bad brakes, sleepless nights on the road, and gas prices that have them scrounging under the floor mats for every last dime.
"We're pretty tired," sighed guitarist/keyboardist Scott Kennedy during a stop in Albuquerque, N.M. "Trying to sleep in the van, you sleep but you don't really sleep. That can get old."
The good news is, the tour is almost over, with the band returning to Missoula this weekend to perform a homecoming show that will also serve as the CD release party for its newest full-length, "Light." That record is the main reason the band has been conspicuously absent from Missoula's stages since the first of this year: Before heading out on tour, they spent six months sequestered in the recording studio, seeing what would emerge when the six members of the all-instrumental band fed the creature between them.
"There were a couple times when I was listening to what we'd done and thinking, `Is that really us?' " said Kennedy. "It really feels like we've come together with this record."
That's probably due in no small part to the fact that the band spent so much time massaging the songs into shape.
"This record, we had a lot more time to breathe while we were recording it, to dissect it and put it together in new ways," said Jason Ward, bassist for the band. "It took a little longer than I was hoping it would take to finish; but I think in the long run it only helped us to get it right."
Get it right they did. Clocking at just over 47 minutes, the album feels much longer than that - but not because it drags on. Rather, in its sprawling structures and swirling instrumental melodies, the record creates a mood that lingers in the mind after the last song is over, a silent but powerful coda. Getting there, there are moments of explosiveness, and of tenderness; there are curious textures and comforting cadences. There are lots of keyboards, and guitars, and even some orchestra bells and trumpets. But it's that end mood that ultimately makes "Light" a keeper of a record. Great records do that to you: They take you someplace, and keep you there.
Fortunately, this one didn't take the rest of us to Albuquerque in a crippled van. Hopefully, it'll bring the band home in time for their gig this weekend.
"I feel like we've really been playing well together on tour," said guitarist/keyboardist Ben Rouner. "We're looking forward to getting back home and playing there."
