Maps & Atlases frontman Dave Davison gets a long interview in the print and online editions of the Chicago Tribune and Red Eye. A current link is available here but may not last. Here’s the text of the article:
Maps and Atlases chart art rock’s risky terrain
Andy Downing
Published December 29, 2006 (Chicago Tribune & Redeye)
Maps and Atlases is most commonly labeled as an “art rock” band, a designation that doesn’t bother frontman Dave Davison in the slightest. He says, “It’s not a big secret that we don’t have the most mainstream appeal in the world.”
And given the convoluted path he has traveled to arrive at this band’s complex compositions, it might well be that art rock was his only logical destination. Whether drawing on the obsessive drawings of Chicago janitor Henry Darger or the poetry of William Carlos Williams, the band members, who met in art school, are all cultural sponges. And then there’s that whole Civil War business.
“[Dave] throws himself into everything he does,” says his father, Dave Davison Sr. “One time I took him to a Civil War re-enactment and he ended up getting really into it. After that, when other kids were out doing this or that, he wanted to play Civil War. He was only 7 years old, but he was almost an expert. It was the same way when he bought his first guitar.”
Now on the group’s debut EP, “Tree, Swallows, Houses”, the quartet invites listeners into its dizzying world. There’s something almost architectural in the way the band bends, twists and warps layers of guitar and drums to create something wild and unexpected–much the way Frank Gehry did when he dreamt up the burnished, metallic sails of Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
“We’re right on the edge of being too abstract, but we made a conscious decision to hold it together,” says Davison. “I think a lot of people assume we’re using a lot of strange jazz chords and odd time signatures, but in reality all of the songs are in major keys and played in pretty standard time signatures.”
All of Maps and Atlases songs begin as stripped acoustic tunes before being torn asunder in rehearsal. Guitarist Erin Elders might pile on a flurry of technical finger picking while drummer Chris Hainey pounds a beat akin to kitchenware tumbling in a washing machine. The effect can mesmerize: The breathless “The Most Trustworthy Tin Cans” races through tempo shifts; “The Sounds They Make” is droning and haunted, guitars drift like shrieking ghosts.
The exploratory nature of the music is an extension of the band member’s personalities. During their art school years at Columbia College, bassist Shiraz Dada was a sound major, Hainey and Elders both studied film and Davison majored in cultural studies. While in school the four bonded over the work of avant-garde and outsider artists–while Davison, in particular, reveled in the city’s cultural scene. In fact, the frontman, who moved here from suburban Indiana to attend college, has always been one to absorb as much information as possible about any subject that interested him–be it dinosaurs, music, art or yes, the Civil War.
The singer approached the works of Dada and surrealist poets with similar zeal, even adopting the Exquisite Corpse technique (where different artists collaborate on a single work) to create lyrics for the band’s earliest works. Davison and Elders would trade off line by line until a song was completed. The singer enjoyed the fractured results, but says the band has since adopted a slightly more conventional style.
“Sometimes we were pushing songs a bit too far,” says Davison, noting that some unused takes were almost impenetrable. “We’re interested in maintaining a balance between melody and unpredictability. [The music] shouldn’t be this cold, stale thing you enjoy academically. We want to make sure it has a certain amount of soul.”
Maps and Atlases, 10 p.m. Sunday, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont Ave. $12; 773-281-4444.
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