CUDDLE MAGIC

Symmetric system: the avant chamber-folk stylings of Cuddle Magic

By: MATT ASHARE |
Published: April 11, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/apr/11/symmetric-system-avant-chamber-folk-stylings-cuddl-ar-1834366/

AVANT FOLKS: Cuddle Magic take conservatory training to the clubs

As a general rule, terms like compositional pedagogy and analytical formalism tend not to play a big role in the lexicon of rock and folk, particularly of the "indie" and/or "alternative" varieties. But even general rules are made to be broken. And, at least since the 19th-century, when the Czech composers Antonin Dvorák and Bedrich Smetana openly appropriated folk idioms, it's been more or less inevitable that at some point the methodology of the conservatory would bleed back into what we tend to think of as the more intuitive endeavor of writing a simple folk song, and then on to rock and pop as well. Indeed, as Sir Paul McCartney's latest album, a collection of standards titled Kisses on the Bottom, suggests, the Beatles were just as happy borrowing from the music of their parents' generation as they were subverting it. And, the post-punk era, with its anything goes ethos, created all sorts of openings for guys like Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, two acolytes of experimental composer Glenn Branca, to apply avant-garde compositional techniques to the simple art of guitar rock in Sonic Youth.

       Three decades later, it's becoming more and more common to find a group like the ten-piece ensemble Cuddle Magic, who play the Mockingbird in Staunton on April 13 with adventurous songstress Anaïs Mitchell, flaunting convention, defying genre, and taking conservatory training into the indie underground. Self-described, in their press materials, as "avant chamber popsters," they registered as "rock/pop" when I pulled their new album, Info Nympho, up on my iTunes. Which seemed like a pretty good place to begin my conversation with Alec Spiegelman and Dave Flaherty, two members who helped found the group when they were students at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music in 2007.

       "I like that our music is difficult to categorize," admits Spiegelman, a multi-instrumentalist songwriter who contributes everything from vocals and guitar to clarinet, harmonica, and flute to the group. "Without meaning to sound too pretentious, I'm happy we're making music for which no single label makes a whole lot more sense than another."

       "We're kind of in between categories or genres," affirms Flaherty, a percussionist who adds drums, vibraphone, and glockenspiel to the Cuddle Magic mix. "Some of us went to NEC to study jazz, and some studied improvising in general, and some of us have a background in old-time and folk music. All of that influences us."

       There are avant and even vaguely experimental moments on Info Nympho — the glassy tinkle of chimes that introduce "Baby Girl," the wordless, Phillip Glassian female vocals that pop up fairly regularly, the occasional odd piano chording. But for most of the disc, which was recorded and engineered by Bryce Goggin, an engineer best known for his work with left-of-center indie artists (Pavement, Sean Lennon, and Antony and the Johnsons, to name three), Cuddle Magic come off as a reasonably accessible, culturally literate, underground folk band (think Pavement unplugged) who just happen to have a whole lot more than guitar/bass/drums at their instrumental disposal. In fact, the first line of the opening track, “Disgrace Note," references the late indie-songsmith Vic Chesnutt before moving on to detail other notable deaths and suicides (from Albert Ayler to Spaulding Gray).

       Flaherty explains, "What makes folk music work tends to be these fundamental underlying symmetries that a theorist or an ethnomusicologist might hear. You can create a slightly different folk music by messing with those underlying structures. I think we're just trying to create folk music that has different symmetries, that could underlie folk music in an alternate dimension."

       That said, on the surface there's nothing particularly strange about the winding acoustic guitar arpeggio or the vocal melody that grounds a track like Spiegelman's "Baby Girl." It's just a little quirky, perhaps. "That's totally fair," Spiegelman agrees. "You don't hear the formal complexity, but there is a rigorous formal structure to 'Baby Girl.' There are three seven-note guitar figures that are easy for a mediocre guitarist like me to play and form a 21-note arpeggio. When I was writing it, I was thinking about a technique that has a basis in a lot of folk music, especially in Mississippi John Hurt's solo performances. In a lot of his recordings, the melody he sings has notes that hit at the exact same time that the note comes up in the guitar pattern. So I gave myself the exercise, like you would in a composition class, of taking that 21-note pattern and writing a bunch of melodies within it that were very strictly in the pattern already, so that there would be no breaking of the rules. It’s an approach that’s at its most rigorous and formalistic in that song. But, if you look for it, you’ll find it throughout the album.”

       And, if you can’t find it, don’t worry; we’re not all trained musicologists.

       (Cuddle Magic will be back in Virginia on May 14 to play at Random Row Books in Charlottesville.)