{"id":40310,"date":"2024-04-20T17:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-20T21:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=40310"},"modified":"2024-04-14T19:58:09","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T23:58:09","slug":"greg-saunier-announces-debut-solo-lp-we-sang-therefore-we-were","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cultureaddicts.com\/?p=40310","title":{"rendered":"Greg Saunier\u00a0announces debut\u00a0solo LP\u00a0\u2018We Sang, Therefore We Were\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Drummer, composer and founding member of\u00a0Deerhoof Greg Saunier\u00a0has announced his debut solo LP\u00a0\u2018We Sang, Therefore We Were,\u2019 out\u00a0April 26th, 2024\u00a0via\u00a0Joyful Noise Recordings. Out now is the lead single and video\u00a0Grow Like a Plant<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That founding took place 30 years ago today. \u201cIt was 1994 and I was playing in a grunge band in San Francisco,\u201d<\/em> says Greg. \u201cThe two guitarists were literally living with members of the\u00a0Melvins. Rob Fisk, the bass player, and I had been listening to an\u00a0AMM\u00a0CD at home and decided we wanted to give free improv a try. So we came to practice an hour early. That was Deerhoof\u2019s first rehearsal. An hour later our two bandmates walked through the door with the bad news:\u00a0Kurt Cobain\u00a0had just been found dead.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the ominous start their band, Deerhoof has gradually gone on to achieve legendary status in the ears of many, releasing 19 strange and wonderful albums in the process. And during those 30 years, Greg has produced, mixed, composed, or played on hundreds of others (Discogs has him credited on over 300 albums). So it is remarkable that this is, in fact, his very first solo record. He sings and plays all the instruments, save for a few birds who join in now and again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen Satomi, Ed, John and I were chatting between shows in Austin in early December, they encouraged me to make a record on my own, as a way to cope with the restlessness I\u2019ve been feeling,\u201d<\/em> says Greg. \u201cIt came together quick. Intrigued by the announcement that the new\u00a0Rolling Stones\u00a0record was going to sound \u2018angry,\u2019 I thought, \u2018Good, I\u2019m angry too.\u2019 But when\u00a0Hackney Diamonds\u00a0turned out more like cotton candy than punk rock, I ironically went back to\u00a0Nirvana: not just the clever melodies over massive distortion, but also that dark Cobain sarcasm which still resonates in this age of phony blue-check-washing of fascism.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lyrics, \u201con the familiar topic of interspecies absurdist operatic anti-Cartesian revolution<\/em>,\u201d are drawn from the text that spreads itself across front and back of the album cover. In this long poem Greg recasts White House spokespersons as \u201cThe Queen of the Night\u201d from The Magic Flute<\/em>, recasts The Queen of the Night as a mockingbird singing\u00a0Mozart\u2019s famous aria in an all-night battle for survival, and ultimately recasts the mockingbird as a campy drag artist taking pleasure in her own relentless, aggressive musicianship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just how relentless is Greg\u2019s musicianship is something that even fans of his celebrated drumming may not have realized. It turns out Greg is an excellent guitarist and bassist, if a bit more rudimentary and slicing compared to his Deerhoof bandmates. He does play more angry guitar solos. The self-production on\u00a0\u2018We Sang, Therefore We Were\u2019 is shambling and anti-slick, the arrangements in a constant state of impatient agitation. Big-hit earwigs abound but are delivered in a delicate, whispery falsetto, tending towards three-part harmony, sometimes sounding almost like Deerhoof fronted by\u00a0The Andrews Sisters. The hints of Mozartian\u00a0<\/strong>euphony that insinuate themselves here and there finally take over in an unexpected climax at the end, the drums breaking off into a laugh-or-cry orchestral outpouring that may be the rawest part of the album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More about Grow Like a Plant<\/em><\/strong>
The album\u2019s first single is indebted to\u00a0Captain Beefheart\u2019s Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish<\/em>, and written in the octatonic scale made famous by\u00a0Igor Stravinsky\u00a0in\u00a0Le Sacre de Printemps<\/em>. Like all of\u00a0\u2018We Sang, Therefore We Were,\u2019 it is grief and anger delivered in code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGrow Like a Plant addresses that annoying quirk of the\u00a0homosapien\u00a0mind where it thinks it\u2019s made of higher quality molecules than the rest of the universe,\u201d<\/em> according to Greg. \u201cFor millennia civilizations managed to temper this suicidal arrogance with ritual. Until 500 years ago, when a handful of self-appointed experts invented The Enlightenment, proposing that men can solve any problem given enough brooding and\/or physical violence; that the cosmos is actually nothing but an inert blob of matter for us to buy and sell. What if this is all wrong? What if it\u2019s humans who are really the mindless instinct-machines, competing for territory, food, and mates, and it\u2019s the plant and animal kingdoms that secretly know how to think and have fun?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greg\u2019s partner, poet\u00a0Sophie Daws, is the creative director and performer of the \u201coner\u201d video that accompanies Grow Like a Plant<\/em>. \u201cJust as the song doesn\u2019t stay fixed (in one rhythm, one emotional register), I wanted the dance and my relationship to the camera\/audience to shift constantly,\u201d<\/em> Sophie explains. \u201cIn our improvised noise project,\u00a0New Mom, Greg and I often talk about shifting before any musical part has time to settle \u2014 before it registers as a \u2018musical part.\u2019 We aren\u2019t trying to find a \u2018groove\u2019 in the sense of trying to hit one emotion or tone. Doing so would feel false. As soon as I felt myself trying to seduce the camera, a future audience, a hierarchy, I shifted focus. Sometimes the focus was inward (eyes closed). Sometimes it was outward (eye contact). Maybe\u00a0sometimes\u00a0it was on the joy and fun of Greg\u2019s danceable song.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch the video clip for Grow Like A Plant<\/em> via YouTube below <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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