The Douglas Fir: The Less You Know the Better
When This Wears Off looks like a concept album. There are old-city
rooftops and brick walls; a psychophysical Cambridge-London map marking
"Disappointment Alley" next to the Royal Botanical Gardens;
and lyrics where a post-romantic flaneur wanders the streets, trying to
make sense of it all. The Fir is known for its interest in film, and the
songs are as cinematic as the album art. Red-haired women drift through
like a Cocteau fantasia.
But, as frontman Jay Walsh says, "It's just a rock and roll record."
Walsh and bassist/co-songwriter Patrick Cooley are the core of the Douglas Fir, which currently has Francine's Albert Guarneri on guitar and a rotating cast of drummers. Cooley grew up in Utica, Walsh Miami. Both had bands from high school on, but "nothing too huge," as Cooley puts it. Walsh played briefly in the Boston band Porcelain; his major previous project was Florida group Coral Gables. "We would open for, like, the Chili Peppers," he says. "It was kind of like big fish in a little pond." The Fir started performing in 1998 after Cooley responded to a bandmates-wanted flyer Walsh posted at The Middle East.
When This Wears Off had a long incubation period. The band released two colored vinyl singles, then a collected-singles-plus 2002 EP. Still, it's a little surprising that the Boston Phoenix's Best New Band of 2000 (a total surprise, the duo says) played for over six years without a full-length album.
"A lot of it comes down to just money, you know? We're fairly autonomous in what we do and I think we like that, we have pretty much total control over it, but that also means nobody financing it," Walsh explains. The band finished recording in spring 2003, then shopped the project around. A number of labels in the U.S. and the other side of the pond expressed interest and offered encouragement, but eventually nothing panned out. Cooley comments, "We could've easily talked to ten more labels and tried to see if they would put it out but we didn't want to wait much longer." To top it off, the Fir then held onto the finished album from fall to January to allow a better release date and more time to schedule concerts, radio, and distribution.
The schmoozing wasn't for naught, they figure. Labels are more likely to pick up a second album after they see the Fir's effort on the first, Cooley says. "They want to see the efforts up front. It helps in their eyes from the investment perspective." When This Wears Off has national press coming from Magnet and Amplifier, and in late February was added to Seattle station KEXP's playlist. Finally, the Fir avoided the pitfall that generally comes with an independent release—limited availability in stores—when they got a national distributor, Carrot Top.
Taking the life-gives-you-lemons view, Cooley and Walsh think the delay improved the results. As time wore on, they substituted new, better songs for some of the original track list. Much of the album's framing and transitional material made it on only four or so months before completion (the two instrumentals, "An Invitation," and "Lucifer"). "We could've kept tinkering with it for another year and a half with ease, putting new songs into the mix as it went," says Cooley (Walsh interjects, "We're not perfectionists!"). Finally, however, Cooley cut the cord. "This is it, point in time, we're done, we can't do it, we've got to move."
The album's overall theme came together by mistake, they say, not design. In fact there isn't a straight narrative. "It's weird. In a very sort of unconscious way it ties together somehow, yet the songs are kind of all individual," Walsh comments. "You feel a little out of time, out of place, like what's going on, almost nighttime, late-at-night kind of feel. So it was just fun to tie the artwork into that." He's purposely elusive about exactly what might be going on, however: "The less you know the better sometimes."
Critics have long noted the Fir's literary leanings. The songs' wordplay- Amelia Earhart's "aviate tricks," say- could verge on pretentious were it not paired with kicker pop hooks. Some of the best songs depict novelistic scenes, such as "At the Hotel" (the Chelsea?). Mundanities lift off into imagination on "My Favorite Thing," where the list starts at renting a movie and ends with talking to Byron. "Wherever You Go (Hugo)" is a fairytale, the beast in the woods following Beauty. The album's sonic world contributes to this fairytale sense- shimmering cymbals (particularly on the divine "Hotel" intro, the occasional strummy acoustic guitar, an overall submerged feeling.
Though When This Wears Off isn't available on vinyl, it has two sides. "I kind of like how it ebbs and flows throughout the record, and I thought the A and B side was just a good effect. You get midway through the album, you have a song that kind of takes it back up again as if you were flipping the side," Cooley describes.
But for all its dreaminess, When This Wears Off has some bitter little twists. The album is both delicate and aggressive. "Some of it's a little haunting, other [songs] are a little right in your face," Walsh describes. One moment the singer begs, "Come over tonight," the next it's pretty much good riddance. Just when you expect "love" you get "loathe." Comfy old jeans are good, right? In "Your Gorgeous Mess," when they wear thin it's time for a new pair.
Dropping When This Wears Off down the mail slot has whetted Cooley and Walsh's appetite for recording. "It's certainly a process we can speed up now," states Cooley. Walsh says, "We're going to try to be doing at least one [album] a year right now, if not more. I love that. I don't like taking a long time to get stuff out, it drives me crazy." They have a slate of songs but are still thinking about to treat them. The next album might be acoustic, Cooley thinks, "almost like a Mojave 3 where you have the acoustic and the twang but you have the ambience and the other stuff going on as well." Financial concerns have been somewhat laid aside. "You go into debt doing it," Walsh admits, but "twenty years from now… I don't want to go oh, look, we couldn't make any more records then 'cause we didn't have the money."
In that sense, the Fir's future career is a little like its songs. The album has a destination feeling, says Walsh, but no clear destination. "What happened at the end of that song? Was it resolved, was it not? That's for the listener to figure out."
