Rock and roll seems to have always come with a heavy impetus for innovation. Now that some half a century of rock has come and gone, innovation has become a more nuanced matter. If you sound too much like something old, well, why bother? But if you only go for innovation, you might end up being the rock and roll Schoenberg, and appealing to only a handful of high-strung fans. Answers seem, of necessity, to lie in between.
Enter Easthampton's Eric Poulin and his new project The National Convention. It's hard to know what exactly to make of it—the group's record is unabashedly, even unironically '70s, yet it's got a robustness, a punchy clarity in its recording that's thoroughly modern. The list of guest players is long, and the many-layered recording must have demanded infinite patience. We recently caught up with Poulin to discuss this imposing monument to '70s radio-pop glory.
Valley Advocate: What inspired you to do this kind of era-specific record?
Eric Poulin: Well, I had somewhat of an awakening as a musician and songwriter during a stretch of time when I actually wasn't playing music at all. After kicking around in a couple of local bands for years, I became somewhat of a musical recluse when I started graduate school in 2001. During the time that I was in school, I really didn't play music at all—and at the same time, came to the realization that Brill Building AM-radio pop was really the style of music that made me happy. Most specifically, the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David were really the ones that stayed with me. I mean—"Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," "I Say a Little Prayer"—how can you hear songs like that and not have a smile in your heart?
So, after years of playing ska, punk, and indie, I decided to follow my heart and try to write the type of songs that truly made me happy. So, shamelessly, we went to work on trying to make an album of '60s and '70s AM-radio pop. So Bacharach and David, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Lieber and Stoller, The Carpenters, The Cowsills—these were the writers and performers that we were using as a blueprint. And we were trying to be as absolutely faithful to these acts as possible, without any sort of sense of hipster irony.
Did it go against your instincts as a musician to dress these songs in '70s radio pop splendor?
Ideally, in a perfect world, we were hoping to make a record that could have realistically been heard on WHYN during one of their live broadcasts from Mountain Park. We were trying to capture what we thought a summer afternoon should sound like in, say, 1973. Which, I realize is a little funny, as we all were born within a couple of years of then. But I think this type of music is what my ears first heard as a young child, and somewhere in my subconscious, it's always been there. I think that everyone who played on this record shares at least a somewhat similar experience. Matt Hebert has actually talked with me in the past about car rides with his parents listening to the radio as being a very early and formative experience for him. Eddie Downey has talked to me about his mom singing "Hey, 98.6, it's good to have you back again!" to him when he had been sick as a little kid.
So making a record that sounds like this was actually the most natural thing that I've ever done as a musician or songwriter. It definitely never felt forced or contrived on anyone's part—and I think that's quite apparent in the end result.
What kinds of music have you played?
I played guitar in a super-fun party band when I was in college called Knuckle Sandwich. We wrote really, really silly songs that were kinda ska- and rock-tinged—definitely nothing too deep or heavy, but we were definitely the type of band that should be on every college campus in the country.
Following Knuckle Sandwich's demise, I played guitar and sang (yeesh!) in an indie-rock band called The Taints, which later became known as The Second Arrangement. That band kicked around for about three years. And, sadly, it could have been a decent band, but I just can't sing to save my life. That band went under in 2001, when my academic-based hibernation from music occurred.
And, strangely, I've heard rumors that one of the guys who fronts The Hot Buttered Elves—"The Chairman"—bears a strong resemblance to me, but I can't confirm for certain.
Do you feel more '70s now? How does that feel?
Hey, I was born in 1973, so I actually spent a good part of that decade in diapers. "Feeling '70s" for me probably means a big afternoon of Sesame Street, followed by knocking back a couple of bottles. Wait, on second thought, that actually doesn't sound so bad…
How was it to get this many people to play and to manage what must have been a complex recording process?
Well, it certainly isn't the most time-efficient way to make an album—everyone who was nice enough to come in to offer their talents is a very successful and busy musician in their own right. But I think that everyone was genuinely pretty excited about working on the project, so it wasn't too tough to pin folks down. Eddie and I (well, really mostly Eddie) did a lot of work on our own on it, so most folks were coming in with a pretty good idea of what they were working with, and what we were expecting. Some folks, however, we intentionally left in the dark, in an attempt to capture as spontaneous a vocal performance as we could.
What do you think of more arch takes on this kind of sound? Was it difficult to avoid that?
A lot of indie bands over the years have tried to sound like AM-radio pop, but it often seems like they can't help but add a little bit of a smug "tee-hee-hee" to it, like they know that they're being clever by sounding retro. And it's many bands that I really do enjoy. I probably shouldn't name names, in the kooky event that one of them wants to take us on tour with them. But we tried really, really hard to be as authentic as we possibly could. And I think that we got it.
How did you write these songs?
If you can believe it, all of these songs started out at one point with just me on an acoustic guitar. Usually, I had a pretty good idea of what feel or sound I was looking for in the end. Other times—and "Olympic Stadium" is the best example of that—Eddie or someone else would put their own individual spin on a track, and take it in a different (and always better) direction. But for the most part, I could hear what the end result would ultimately approximately sound like, even in its most primitive state.
Would you do this kind of project again?
Eddie and I are already starting to get the wheels turning for a follow-up record. And I would absolutely follow the same formula again. We couldn't be happier with how the first record turned out. Obviously the vibe should be just a little bit different, just so we don't get stale. But we can't wait to get going.And hopefully, we can get the second one written and released before Chinese Democracy.
What's next? Will you perform these songs live?
Yes! May 10 at The Brass Cat.
