On “America & Afterwards,” The North Country Ask Us to Imagine What Comes Next
Last week, Spotify did something right, which was ironic in a very particular way.
Like many of us, I have begun running more regularly since lockdown. I used to bike to work; now I slouch from the bed to the kitchen table to the recliner and sometimes even make it all the way to my desk. So even though it is only every other day that my muscles want to run, by 4:30 or so every day my brain is ready for something, anything, other than the inside of my apartment.
Unlike many of us, I haven’t always run to music, or at least not with headphones in. There’s a certain version of the runner’s high that is associated with finding a rhythm that puts you in a pocket as solid as any drummer’s. A repetitive melody, imagined or remembered, cycles through your mind.
Also, I have a phone with no memory, an atrocious battery, and a limited data plan.
But there I was, rounding into the final stretch of my four miles, Discover Weekly still going, when an anthemic new song propelled me forward. I should have been tired, but I wanted to sprint. And I knew this voice, this sound. It had a hint of U2 or INXS, a hint of Angels & Airwaves, a hint of latter-day Death Cab. As I opened the front door to my building (with my shirt, of course), I thumbed in my phone code to see who it was.
The song was “Chains of Love (Prisoners of War)” by DC’s own The North Country, which brings us to the ironic part: the last time I’d spoken with Andrew Grossman, the band’s singer, we had dwelled at length on the possibility that Spotify was killing everything good about music.
By what algorithmic magic Spotify knew to deliver me that song at that time, I don’t know. But it was the right song for me then. “Chains of Love (Prisoners of War)” heralded the coming release of The North Country’s new album, America & Afterwards. It’s a record that does its best to live up to an ambitious name, that borrows from the best of the American musical tradition while looking anxiously but hopefully towards a future where we might find better ways to live together.
Stream the album on Spotify, then buy it on Bandcamp.
America and Afterwards continues the sonic evolution begun on 2017’s In Defense of Cosmic Altruism. It is somehow both funkier and proggier; it’s only now, writing this, that I think of the Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. This sense comes through especially strong on tracks “The Flood” and “Open for Business.” “All of these dark forces have been manipulating our minds,” which opens the latter, is a very Wayne Coyne kind of thing to put at the beginning of a song.
“Don’t Quit Your Day Job,” which was released with a music video more than two years before appearing on this album, is a wry, snaky earworm that burrows its way forward in psychedelic fits and starts.
Stepping into these sounds may be easier given the variety of experiences the band’s current lineup can bring. Vocalists Margot MacDonald and Laurel Halsey both perform separately from the band, MacDonald under her own name and Halsey with Bal Boheme. Bassist Austin Blanton is a member of Near Northeast. That gives the band different directions they can explore. When I first saw some of this material live at a house show in Columbia Heights a couple years ago it made me think, as I stomped with the extended, syncopated jams, of U.S. Girls. (It was not, alas, at Bathtub Republic 1.0.) On this album, I hear the striking bass intro to Chaka & Rufus Khan’s “Tell Me Something Good” echoed in the first seconds of “Freaks.” That’s just a lift, a sample; in an eerier, less straightforward way, the end of the chorus in “Freaks” makes me think of the same section of Blondie’s classic “Heart of Glass.” There’s a Kraftwerk-esque robo-funk to “Future Humans.”
Earnestness, scope, futurity — these are not new themes for The North Country. On the opener of Cosmic Altruism, Grossman (intentionally or not) quotes not just from Paul Simon (“holes in the knees of my jeans”) but from proto-saint of the New Sincerity Jeff Mangum (“how strange it is to be anything at all”). Yet these are also qualities we need in this moment now. The musical invention is, in micro, a model of the kind of reinvention our society, economy, country so badly need today. I’m not saying these songs can or will solve our problems; I’m saying they hold out the space for us to find it in ourselves to do so.
Grossman could not have known when these songs began percolating into production two years ago that “Chains of Love,” with its line that “it’s an interesting time to be alive,” would be released a half-year into a global pandemic, the likes of which had not been seen for a century; he could not have known that “we’ve all gone fucking mad” would seem so apropos amidst the nation’s biggest reckoning with racial injustice in a decades.
Like Spotify sending me this song in the first place, The North Country couldn’t have known. Except they did. To learn more, I emailed with bandleader Andrew Grossman and a few of his bandmates ahead of today’s release.
So what’s it like to release an album during a pandemic? Did the lockdown affect any aspects of production, or just the release cycle?
Andrew Grossman, vocals/guitar: It’s not great, but what are you going to do? The album was done by the time the lockdowns happened. The main thing is that we can’t tour, play any shows, or have in-person rehearsals. which can be quite isolating. We had a tour down to SXSW all booked that we had to cancel two days before we were set to leave, which was a huge bummer.
All that being said, I don’t know that it really makes much sense to complain about it. Literally everyone in the music industry is going through the exact same thing. The pandemic is just way bigger than all of us. Being mad at it is like being mad at rain. It’s just nature. In the grand scheme of things maybe it’s good for all of us to be reminded that we’re actually all very small and have no real control of anything.
Can you tell me a little bit about the sonic palette you drew from for this album (is it any different from past/why)?
AG: In making this album I wanted to deliberately shift our focus to four things: making everything groove more, making the vocal performances more expressive and energetic, making tone and timbre an expressive element as important as melody or harmony, and simplifying things harmonically by not getting excessively complicated with chords. I was definitely inspired by a lot of really great music: Kraftwerk, Funkadelic, Rufus & Chaka Khan, David Bowie, Boards of Canada, LCD Soundsystem, Prince, U.S. Girls, to name a few. This was definitely a departure from the last album.
Why? That’s hard to say. The music calls and it’s your job to follow. I suppose I just heard the call and that’s where it led me.
What’s been the relationship between live performance and recorded material for The North Country as a project?
AG: For this album specifically we took all these songs on the road and really got to know them playing them live before we recorded them. I really like that process. It’s very similar to how stand up comedians work. The audience will tell you if what you’re doing is working or not. Even if they don’t say it explicitly, you can just feel it. You can play a song in rehearsal a million times and be confident in it, and then get on stage and instantly feel, “oh, this is not working.” So, that kind of feedback is really helpful.
Jon Harmon, guitar/electronics: One of my favorite things about playing in The North Country is we never hold ourselves to the restriction of performing any song exactly how it sounds in the recorded version. There are many tracks that have been reimagined for the live show, whether due to lineup changes, or just because we want to try something different. I think we are all on the same page that our best performances happen when we are excited about playing and sometimes that means totally flipping a song on its head and playing it as a space-cowboy, spaghetti-western rock ballad.
What is it like not to have performances on the calendar for the time being?
Austin Blanton, bassist: when the pandemic struck we were preparing to go on a few week tour down to SXSW. it would have been my first time there, so i was super excited. it’s unclear what the future of big festivals like that will be, at least for the next few years. so i feel pretty bummed that i’m missing out on that for the indefinite future, possibly forever. overall i’m fine — but what about the artists that rely on those festivals for most of their income? oof.
in general, my entire social experience was defined by band practices, playing shows, going to shows. and that’s been replaced by sending audio files back and forth and video chats. it’s hard to feel that human connection at 44,100 samples per second.
AG: Not being able to do shows is deeply heartbreaking. But we’ve started working on some new stuff over email, recording tracks and passing them back and forth. It’s been interesting. I’m curious to see where it all goes. Could be good.
What is that pivot between “American & Afterwards” for you?
AG: There’s a line in Chains of Love (On Prisoners of War) that sums up the whole album for me: “Gotta give up on the past and the ghosts that haunt this place / to make good on the future you gotta look the present in the face” (The second half of which is a line I totally lifted from a line I read in the Mandarins by Simone De Beauvoir). That’s the pivot for me. Do we cling to the old ways of doing things because they’re familiar and comforting even though they clearly don’t make sense anymore? i.e. the patriarchy, racism, unfettered capitalism, consuming fossil fuels, etc. Or do we engage with the future courageously and with imagination and empathy and understanding. This album is my appeal for us to take the latter approach.
There’s a line that opens that song, “Chains of Love,” “I live in a town where ambition is currency,” I think. And yeah, DC is a weird place to live, and you become aware very quickly ambition is a value-neutral thing, sometimes it gets very tiring to be around. And yet making an album — that takes a lot of ambition, too. What’s it like to be an artist in Washington, DC?
AG: You are correct about the line in “Chains.” “I live in a town where ambition is currency, everyone is an advertisement for themselves” is definitely directly addressing DC. I kind of like being around driven people like that. It’s certainly motivating, which vibes well with me because I like working — on music that is. But on the other hand there are also some serious squares in this city. Condos and condos and condos full of squares. I worry it’s getting worse, too. It’s kind of horrifying. Hopefully I-81 passes and they decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. That could be good. I could see mushrooms helping.
AB: i think because DC is an expensive city (and because it’s hard to make money from art and there’s fewer art-industry-machinations here than say NYC), many people in the art scene have day jobs unrelated to artmaking. so those people have this strange compulsion to create after the day is done, to make the unheard noises. this is the positive side of living in a city with ambitious folk — there are some uniquely kind, intelligent, driven people trying to do good in the world who also happen to like crowding in a room and making loud noises for the thrill of it.
What fuels band practice?
AG: We typically only have rehearsals right before shows. Margot lives in NYC and Kirk lives in Philly, so when we do have rehearsals they’re usually several hours and hyper focused. Which I kind of like.
AB: during one recording session in Philly, after Kirk and i finished our tracks, i made a simple shiitake linguine with butter and parm for everyone. that was good. but only enough fuel for one night… when on the road: tasty bite packets + ricemaker.
JH: Homemade baked goods from Liz (Andrew’s wife) or Laurel (keys/vocals), Bun DC; notable for serving a dish that is similar to one Barack Obama once ate with Anthony Bourdain, but not at that restaurant. Halal when practicing in Philly. Kirk or Austin’s coffee.
Where do you go for inspiration in the area?
AG: Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Arboretum with my dog.
JH: The programming at Rhizome DC. Whether it is learning how to make guitar pedals and synths or seeing some experimental performances, I always leave knowing something I didn’t know before. During COVID, I have been finding most of my inspiration in nature, whether Rock Creek Park, Glover Archibold, or Kingman Island.
What’s your hidden, nonmusical talent?
AG: I’ve gotten really good at making rice. I do the whole rigmarole. I rinse it, soak it, steam it in a rice cooker, let it set after it’s done. Brown rice, jasmine, basmati, Korean japgokbap. I do it all. I’ve also started getting into cooking some really good rice based foods. Maki rolls, onigirazu, onigiri. Quarantine has definitely made me step up my game.
