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Green Circles, recently signed to Atlanta-based Luminal
Records, is a Portland band that has been compared to
post-punk and new wave outfits such as Television and Joy
Division, but stress that they are not limited to that
sound. The group is composed of Kell Dockham (vocals),
Jeffery Lobb (guitar, keyboards, bass), James Short (bass,
guitar), Daniel Sparks (guitar, keyboards, bass) and Jason
Olsen (drums). The band has two self-released EPs titled
“Hearts Increase” and “All Hours,” along with an on-air
radio EP. Tablet talked with Green Circles singer Kell
Dockham a few weeks ago to get a little more insight into
the band.
How did the band meet?
Jimmy (James) and Jeff and I went to Linfield College
together and we got Dan from a band named A Man Called Sun
from Idaho. We'd met Jason before and seen him in his other
band the Leeds and thought he was stellar. Jason thought, “I
could play for those guys.” He's very tight and propulsive,
has great ideas and a good ear, and loves great music. These
are all important things.
When you first began playing, how did you sound and how has
it evolved?
We were sort of garage psychedelic at first and covered
songs like "Gloria" by Van Morrison and "2000 Light Years
From Home" by the Stones. We still take some stuff from
that, it just doesn't come out the same. We decided to try
and drop using effects and become more minimal. We used to
have two guitars, a baritone guitar and bass and the music
was getting over done, so we stripped it back and tried to
use restraint. A lot of bands don’t understand that concept,
but it works.
How did you guys get signed to Luminal?
We were wanting to play with the Prids; they were kind of
like a slightly gothic Sonic Youth. We got a show last May
randomly with the Vanishing and the Prids and it was both
their CD release parties—so we kind of made it ours as well.
They (members of the Prids) came and bought stuff from me at
my merch table and they signed up on the email list. Then
later in September we played a big show with the Epoxies at
Berbati's and accidentally sold a few CDs that were
unburned. So on the day after the show, when I realized I'd
made that ridiculous mistake, I emailed the most recent 50
people on our email list and wrote: "Oops. We made a big
mistake. If you got one of the copies of ‘Hearts Increase’
with no music on it, let me know immediately and I'll mail
you a good one right away." But I also mentioned, "But the
'On Air 3.14.03' CDs were fine, so don't worry if you bought
one of those." And Douglas Rivera from Luminal got that
email, too, so he replied a few days later saying, "I never
got one of those 'On Air 3.14.03' CDs. Do you guys think you
could send me one?" And of course we thought, "Ah, hmm...
that's a good sign." And we were going to do exactly
that—just send him that radio EP he requested. But then our
new drummer Jason said it wasn't very representative of what
we could do now with his new added drumming style, as we had
become a lot more propulsive and tighter by then. So we
roped my engineer/mixer friend Jonathan Allen into bringing
some gear over and quickly recording a few of our songs—just
mic-ing everything well and playing the songs live, with few
overdubs save for vocals. Then we slapped three of those
songs together with his "EVOL dub" version of our older song
"Insurrection" and made a new EP and sent that to Douglas,
too. About a week later, the Prids called me from tour and
said, "So we've got a secret we can't tell you. It's that
Douglas wants to sign Green Circles.” Then there was the
inevitable label-band flirting process, and we eventually
signed.
And the name comes from...?
Green Circles comes from the name of a song by a band called
the Small Faces that was this sort of mod band around '65
and '66. It's kind of an aesthetic name, like trees seen
from an airplane or mold growing on sour cream.
Or crop circles?
Yeah, crop circles I guess. (laughs)
How does the band write songs?
Well it is pretty democratic and all of our songs come from
different areas. Some of them come around just bass and
drum, some of them come from just improvising off that.
What inspires you or how do you come up with lyrics?
I write lyrics usually about things I'd like to say, but
that you just can't proclaim. Like if you said them on the
street you might be seen as a crazy person.
Besides the obvious influences like Joy Division and the
Buzzcocks, you say Eric Burden and the Animals is an
influence, how so?
With Eric it is sort of the way James Brown would vamp
things. There is so much dynamic in the soft-loud volume the
way that he'd treat his vocals as a personal way of
addressing people. I think that a lot of the time the
Animals don’t get the credit they deserve.
How is your sound different than the New Wave post-punk
bands of yesteryear and what direction do you see it going?
[We have] a slightly darker edge than a lot of people
because there is so much glossing over things. We aren’t
really angry and we're not that happy either, so we kind of
address what’s in between. In the future we are looking to
get into more weird, slightly funk influenced things like a
certain ratio around Joy Division, if Joy Division had a lot
of funk and cool drum stuff. The song “The Power” (off the
“All Hours” EP) is a good representation of that sound.
Is your sound just nostalgic? What attracts you to the
Post-Punk/New Wave era?
People ask us why we're doing something that so obviously
has one foot planted in a retro genre—i.e. Post-Punk/pre-New
Wave. There's no concise way to really explain it, but I
think that era was so emotionally honest, real and intense,
that we're very drawn to its candor and attracted to how
open and real it is compared to much of what's going on
today. I don't think anything else comes close in expressing
the true feelings at the center of the human mind. Most pop
songs are traditionally about love or something. But most of
the time, your average person on this planet isn't thinking
about love. They're usually worrying, or fearful, or upset,
or in angst, or pensive, or nostalgic, or feeling vertigo,
or feeling any of the unnamable emotions that exist.
What can people expect from the full-length to be released
this winter?
The full-length will be a lot harder to do because there
will be more songs and it should be very unified, but it
won’t be as unified as an EP due to length. There might be
some intermissions like short instrumentals and a lot of
subtlety. Hopefully it won't be easily pigeonholed.
And from here, what do you hope the forecast looks like?
I think our music reflects that wider view of emotions and
humanity. And I think that that older era of music we draw a
lot of inspiration from (1977-1982) was doing the same. I'd
like to say we're trying to imagine a whole alternate
version of history, one where Post-Punk went into pre-New
Wave and then New Wave as we know it never happened. Or it
happened in a different way, instead of becoming all about
style and fashion and pop music fluff. Green Circles says:
“Let's pick up where post-punk left off and imagine it went
somewhere else. Somewhere equally grand, but somewhere with
meaning beyond glamour.” And we'll write our music with that
always in mind. You know it takes a long time to find your
own sound; look how long the Beatles played cover songs. It
takes work to get from what you were to where you’re
supposed to be.
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