About twenty minutes into my interview with Michael Pace of Oxford Collapse - the Brooklyn trio that just released Bits, their second record on the legendary Sup Pop label - I find out that Pace and I grew up not far from one another on Long Island, and that we had mutual friends that played in bands way back when; hardcore enthusiasts that enjoyed local notoriety. Talking to Pace, much like listening to Oxford Collapse’s records, reminds me that the era in which we were raised stands in stark contrast to this place in time. “Everyone in the band kind of came of age in the early to mid nineties,” says Pace. “We were listening to a lot of punk music and hardcore; you start with a touchstone band like Nirvana, and from there, you read about all these other bands that those guys loved, and you start getting into them, as well.”
Very seldom do bands today like to talk about their influences in specifics without being pressed. Quite possibly it’s because they’re afraid of getting hung by them in the press. But Pace’s knowledge of music over the last four decades is practically encyclopedic. “From my own experiences, I started getting into the SST bands - Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Black Flag, and more bands like that. I was fortunate enough to have a radio station at my high school that I was involved with, and there was a lot of new stuff coming out at the time like Superchunk and Archers of Loaf, so that stuff also had a big impact on me, also – it was like ‘Oh, this is what I like.’ It’s all about kind of refining what you’re listening to, and if you’re really into it, you do your research, and you discover bands all the time.”
Anyone who’s ever really cared about music in the last fifteen years or so loves a band exactly like Oxford Collpase. A band like Oxford Collapse commits only to making music that they themselves would want to hear, resulting in an album as rewarding as Bits - drawing their inspiration from the poetry, the performance, or just the power of will. “We don’t like to rest on our laurels, we like to challenge ourselves and try new things.” New things include songs based solely around string arrangements, like the tender track “A Wedding,” or the acoustic refuge of “Featherbeds.” “The sound has matured over time as we’ve gotten more comfortable with the way that we write, the way that we play, and the way that we think about music,” says Pace.
“With this record,” he continues, “we wanted to record with friends over an extended period of time. So, we recorded the record between September and December of 2007. The first session was with our friend C.R. Matheny, and we did 15 songs straight to cassette - like hi-bias, regular cassette tape – and we did all the basic tracks like that. The second session was with our friend Eric Emm who has a studio in Greenpoint, and that was more traditional in terms of the ways bands record these days with Pro-tools. So, we had these two sessions worth of material, and we mixed them together with both producers, so everyone had their hand in each other’s work, and so that there was cohesion between the cassette tape stuff and the computer stuff. The main point is that we took our time, and we collaborated a lot more with other people.”
At one point, Bits almost became a double-album. Says Pace, “We wanted to challenge ourselves and write 30 songs that we could release, and for awhile we thought, ‘yeah, let’s do a double record.” He then starts to rattle off one double-album classic after another. Double Nickels on the Dime. London Calling. Exile on Main Street. Physical Graffiti. The River. Tusk, even! “There’s something so satisfying about a double album if you can pull it off. But in the end, more prudent heads prevailed and we kind of realized that maybe the world wasn’t ready for an Oxford Collapse double album – or maybe the world doesn’t want an Oxford Collapse double album (laughs)!” Still in all, many additional tracks from the Bits sessions will be released on a series of 7” vinyl.
Signed to Sub Pop? Releasing b-sides on vinyl? Just what time machine have we stepped into exactly? Oxford Collapse is no retro trip, but something about them is making me nostalgic “We are all huge proponents of the album concept – where the record has a beginning, middle, and an end – and the emphasis on that has sort of been lost.” Yes, it certainly has. I ask why this has happened to a lot of artists, but truth be told, the answers seem more genuine when I’m not the one to broach the subject. “Maybe it’s because it got so easy to put out a record now,” Pace says. “I feel like there’s been an emphasis on singles, where you want to put only the best songs from a session on your record, instead of looking at the big picture.”
But this is not to suggest that Michael Pace thinks some of the songs on his new album are lesser than others. “The whole idea behind an album is that you have peaks and valleys sonically, and there’s an ebb and flow to the album. So, with all of these songs at our disposal, sitting down and making a track listing was really fun, because we put a lot of care into it, and it wasn’t like we said ‘These are the best songs’ and then just threw them all together. We had one song that, at first, we were dead-set about putting on the album. But, ultimately, we found that it worked better as a b-side one of the seven-inches.”
Thank the Christmas Baby for pawnshop record players, and the good sense in not always show your hand. Oxford Collapse will be heading to Europe in the beginning of 2009, but before that, they make two very special stops in NYC – first a CMJ showcase on October 24th at Pianos, and then a headlining set at Webster Hall on November 15th.
