#plumerai

Plumerai – Come & Go

Boston’s Plumerai effortlessly bridges indie-postpunk- dreampop-darkwave -triphop and shoegaze styles into a cohesive and original sound held together by Parisian expat Eliza Brown’s sultry and oftentimes jazzy vocal melodies and poetic lyrics. 

https://www.facebook.com/PlumeraiBand

https://soundcloud.com/martin-12

http://plumerai.bandcamp.com/album/mondegreen

In order to craft music out of dissonance, you have to make space for contrasting visions and, at times, take the long route toward breaking ground. Plumerai’s is the kind of evolution that takes its time on the low-down: advancing conceptually, but with reticent self-promotion. Textured, subdued – the photograph on their band page is a lot like that. Like soft wax dolls, the quartet is staggered to create a unique depth of field, each layer adding something that can’t be compromised. Almost beyond immediate perception, what looks like a cardboard cut-out of former drummer Todd Richards is waving around on a punching doll. Bassist James Newman’s angular profile is caught in mid-sentence, one arm lost in a blur that cheated the exposure. His younger brother, guitarist Martin Newman, gazes past the picture as though in the middle of some especially austere winter doldrums. Ezell, her romantic curls in pigtails, has the look of maternal satisfaction – a turtledove, gray as dust on snow, is cradled loosely in her hands.

“Elizabeth wanted one so she acquired it and one day it flew out the window.  I forget which type of dove it is but I think this breed can be traced back to the time Jesus was around, based on the stripe on its neck,” says Martin, 35, in an email sent from a Greyhound bus headed to Albany. The name “Plumerai” actually comes from the French children’s song “Alouette, gentille alouette,” and it means to pluck, or de-feather a bird.

In a way, Plumerai is undergoing the very process. Ben Dicke, “who is more of a jazz drummer,” replaced Richards last month, says James, 38. Dicke’s done two shows and one recording session with the group, so they’re still adjusting to his style, which is probably going to matter – a lot. There are those cases where the drummer is a faceless commodity, but rather than striving to achieve a characteristic sound, Plumerai’s musical identity is rooted in making sense out of the dynamics layered on by each individual. 

Lots of bands get by with a click track, but they opt to record live, promising their own raw energy instead. In fits of curious hunger, they’ve run the gamut of surprising instruments: violin, xylophone, guzheng, accordion, taiko drum. They’re the representation of what’s been unpopular until, perhaps, more recently, but they’re stuck out on the plateau that’s an eventuality for most indie bands. Boston, like so many a music Mecca, comes with steep rents and fees, and that final break from the underground requires both building the sufficient capital to tour and an aggressive public persona, which isn’t much their style – which, then again, is soon to change.

Plumerai hatched, so to speak, in 2004, and was signed by Get Nice Records almost immediately. This was the label, says Martin, that brought you The Music Gym in Allston (and now Austin). “We used to practice there when we first started and they just liked what they heard coming out from under the door,”  he says. After releasing their self-titled debut, they’re now with Silber Records, which oversaw the production of “Res Cogitans” (2006) and “Without Number” (2007). With the latter record, Plumerai took flight over varied soundscapes, including such styles as shoegaze, gypsy/European folk, and post-punk. Soon violinist Clara Kebabian was making her appearances and Plumerai was touring as far as Greece, where their most memorable performances took place at the 49th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, as well as Patra and Athens. 

Robert Elliott, 50, is the booking agent at Precinct Bar in Somerville, where Plumerai played their most recent show in August. From what he remembers, they’d played there before, but this time they had a bigger crowd and had probably put a little more effort into promoting. “We had a good night with them,” he recalls. “They’re a little more edgy than other bands, [in terms of] taking more risks. The [lead singer] had a fight with her boyfriend, or something like that, and stormed offstage. She kind of reminded me of Björk.” Having left an impression, Plumerai’s since been out of contact with Elliott, who says he’d love to have them back again.

“Plumerai is at the same place most indie artists are. To get to the next level they really need to tour, but they need to make more money off of shows than they do,” says Brian Mitchell, 34, head honcho at Silber Records. “They are better off than a lot of artists in that they know how to record themselves. They are worse off than some because they don’t have a good vehicle for touring and [renting one] is very expensive,” he says. According to Martin, Mitchell’s a bit all over the place: he started a zine, a series of mini-comic productions, the label, “which was sort of experimental,” and has been performing solo around the U.S. and Europe. Very much DIY-oriented, “he releases [what] suits his tastes as opposed to releasing music that he feels will make a buck, which is refreshing,” says Martin.

All of the bands on the label are unique, but Plumerai is perhaps “the most pop-oriented band on Silber,” says Mitchell. “They generally get a good response, but pop hooks kinda need to be exposed a lot of times for people to really soak stuff in.”

According to James, this is more or less their situation. “We’re still scraping by in regards to our level of success and recognition. It has us rethinking our strategy. We plan to take a more professional approach with the next album. We’re a fairly laid-back group of people, and it probably hurts us from time to time. We basically need to get our shit together since it really isn’t just about the music,” he says.

When it does get noticed, though, the music is often poorly characterized. “On one hand we’re pop, on the other we’re avantgardey and experimental,” says Martin. “It’s been tough because people like to label you and they like familiar sounds. Bookers tend to think we’re a mellow chick singer band, so we get lumped on bills we don’t go with. But I sort of like that aspect of our music. It’s more a culmination of our influences as opposed to a copy of one of them.” 

To be sure, Plumerai is less a melting pot of worldly influences than it is an interior space layered with husks of sound. Collectively, says Martin, they’ve got a grasp on “English, French, poor Russian and even worse German,” and cite influences as varied as The Cure, Radiohead, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Iron Maiden, Gogol Bordello, Slayer, Cranes, and The Misfits. 

But whether or not they ever want to owe their success to any sort of trend, Plumerai’s ability to merge wherever their frequencies clash is still their most distinguishing feat. With Dicke in place, Plumerai can expect a sort of variation. He’s sort of hard to place – James mentions that the first time he showed up to practice, Ezell thought he was 12. “Where Todd was laid-back and preferred the Beatles’ approach to beats – simple and musical – Ben’s playing is all over the place with dynamics and fills. It was a bit of work trying to lock into his beats on stage,” he says. “[But] unlike Todd, Ben would contribute ideas to the arrangements of the songs. It’s nice having another person taking an active role in the songwriting process.”

Their last EP, “Electrical Mess,” was almost entirely improvised in the studio, actually. James says that recording live captures a certain flow and energy, getting them a more organic feel. According to Mitchell, it’s a bit of a breach in convention: “A lot of folks want people to record a track at a time to a click track because that’s what they say to do in school. Personally I think if you take any decent live band with good chemistry between them and ask them to play one at a time you are going to end up with crap,” he says. Martin likes songs to have the kind of density where this same clashing of sounds creates a melody. Lately, he says, they’ve been playing with “space, and letting everything breathe.”

...and new music night continues, as i listen my way through the milling gowns CD release show that i missed earlier this month (and now also chop my way through a really absurd quantity of mustard greens, YAY COOKING).