Crack

San Francisco two-piece The Dodos have been on the folk radar for some time now. Relentlessly touring and releasing four studio albums since 2005, they’ve earned something of a cult reputation for their frantic and organic folk-rock fusion.

This year will be no different for the band. No different except for the small fact they’ve just released No Colour, a decidedly honest and original folk-rock album crammed full of eclectic stomp-along anthems.

As if a tantalising new album wasn’t enough for folk fans across the UK, The Dodos will be heading over to play three shows later this month. This select string of just three dates (London, Manchester and Glasgow) promises to make for fulfilling viewing. Originally a duo, but now with an extra touring member, The Dodos are renowned for unconventional instrumentation and interesting live variations of their songs.

Crack speaks to percussionist Logan Kroeber the day before Prince William and Kate Middleton are due to wed. He tells us the hype is everywhere across Europe, even in his current location ‘somewhere in the Spanish mountains’ he says it’s the zeitgeist of the moment. “You can’t escape it,” he laughs. Something else imminent and inescapable is the success of No Colour so we change the subject to the hottest folk-rock record in the world right now.

How does No Color compare to Dodos’ previous albums? Is it different?

Oh yeah, it’s definitely different. On Time To Die we pretty much tried to make it as similar to how the songs would be played live even though we didn’t really play them out a lot before we recorded them. We just wanted it to be vocals, drums, guitar and vibraphone. But this time around we kept adding more things that we could recreate live so there’s tubular bells and whistles. We didn’t know if we were going to be able to recreate a lot of the guitar work that was there but luckily we got that one figured out with our third member.

So when you play live now is it a challenge to put things across as you did on the record?

It’s a challenge to put everything in there but I think we’ve got the most important parts. Y’know; the electric guitar is a very versatile instrument, there’s a lot of things that it can recreate – piano or vibraphone or whatever, even vocals – it can stand in for them.
You returned to working with Portland producer John Askew who worked on your first two albums.

How was that? How did it affect the process?

It affected it very positively, I believe. John has an ungodly amount of enthusiasm and we did too. We had all gone on to do other projects since we’d all last worked together and I think we were all very anxious to work with each other again. It was nice after we got things started, after we put down the basic tracks, we got very tight knit and experimented every day. And then when we got to mixing everybody was really focused and having a lot of fun with it. So yeah, there was a lot of enthusiasm.

So The Dodos are four albums deep now. Would you say your experience with the music industry has been a good one so far?

I mean yeah, I suppose so. I think about that sometimes too, I sort of wonder what it would have been like to be in a band like us ten years ago or fifteen or twenty years ago and how it might all be different. But for the climate the music industry is in right now, we’ve been hooked up with some pretty good people and labels that treat us really well and we’ve got to do a lot of stuff so I’m really thankful for that. In retrospect I think it’s been a really good ride.

What about any lows? Any breakdowns or fallouts?

Thankfully nothing too bad. But last summer when we were touring with The New Pornographers our van was having some problems with its cooling system, it was constantly leaking and it was very hard for us to go up hills and we couldn’t figure out what to do with it because it was a very new sprinter van in America and there wasn’t a lot of places that could service them. We needed a specialist. But our sound guy and us, we pulled over in some town and figured it out and we were able to buy the piece that we needed in the auto parts store. It wasn’t spec’d for the van but we made it work, we put it together and it was totally fine for the rest of the trip after that.

Good to hear!

Yeah, very good to hear, especially on that day because we didn’t have to cancel the show.

Who are you listening to right now?

I went to the record store in San Francisco before I left for tour and I bought a few things. I got the last album by Woods and the first record from Lower Dens as well as the newest record by True Widow... what else did I get? Oh, and the new Sonny and the Sunsets record. That’s all pretty disparate stuff but that’s what I’m listening to on the iPod mostly these days.

Do you guys feel things have changed with regards to how things work as a band now compared to back in 2005?

You know, I think about that sometimes. For the most part the change has happened gradually. We did a lot of touring before most people knew about us and then when Visitor came out and we got a lot of attention it just sort of grew another step and grew another step and it just kind of evolved. I find myself waking up out of a dream sometimes and thinking; what am I doing in this tour van? How did I get here, in the mountains of Spain or whatever? Sometimes I just feel like I’m waking up to it. 2005 to 2011, it’s been a long time coming.

You’re coming over to the UK next month for a three-date spell of shows. What can UK crowds expect from your live show?

Probably something a lot tighter than what we’re doing right now because we’ll have been playing shows pretty much every day up until then, I expect them to be really good. In the last American tour we did, our home town show was at the end of the tour and I was very thankful for that because by the time we got to San Francisco we’d been playing for a few weeks and we were really tight and so hopefully we’ll bring that same energy to the UK.

Beyond a summer of touring what lies ahead for The Dodos?

Well we’ve got a new video for the song Companions on the new record that’s about to come out and I’m excited for people to see that. It was something that we just did as a band with friends and a director and a camera person that we’d met before in LA. So we did it ourselves kind of on a shoestring budget all in one day and it took a while to edit it all and put it all together but I just watched the final cut and I’m really pleased with it. It should be really funny. We also put out a 7” for Record Store Day of some previously unreleased stuff and we’ve got one more unreleased track that might come out some time later in the year. That’s about it for the rest of the year with all the touring.


No Colour is out now on Wichita Recordings


- - - - - - - - - - - -

Words: Ed Collings-Wells

Photo: Amanda Marsalis

http://www.myspace.com/thedodos

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Tweet