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Arcade
Into the Light
by Mojie Crigler |
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Out amid the corn and soybean fields of Muncie, Indiana, the band
Arcade is making noise. Mixing punk with low-fi indie pop,
Arcade rocks their second album, Into the Light. The
vocals leap from girlie harmonies to deadpan straight talk to raging
onslaught, while sweet melodies jam with jagged rhythms. Arcade
gets down and lets loose.
Eleven solid songs on Into the Light bely the album's quick
makeshift recording session in drummer Joy Gerwe's basement.
"She lives next to this woman who's in her fifties," says lead singer
Carrie Conley, speaking by telephone from Muncie. "We were
afraid she'd be upset by us playing for twelve hours straight."
Completed in two days - "one day all the instruments and one day
all the vocals" - the album was produced and engineered by "local
Muncie kid" Tyler Watkins and distributed on Wooden Man
Records, an independent label that splits CD sales 50-50 with
the band.
Many of the songs concern "pop surrealist moments," as Conley calls
them. Conley, who pens all the lyrics "because no one else wants
to," wrote "Bank of America" after a student from her Florida
alma mater flew a single engine Cessna into the bank's Tampa office
building. "It was strange watching my high school English teacher
on Good Morning America, crying about it," she says.
Court TV and American Justice also inspire this true-crime
buff. To a Prozac-induced melody, the song "Holly" scolds
Unicorn Killer Ira Einhorn "A corpse doesn't make a very
good girlfriend." While Conley drolly reports on grim aspects of
human nature, she's backed by a pumping combo of bass, drums and
guitar that offers up eclectic rhythm work. Journey to the dark
side, or just rock out.
Arcade's song-writing process usually begins with someone bringing
in a riff. "The bass player, Lisa [Fett], has a four-track
and her style of music is she'll layer on three or four guitar parts,"
Conley says. About half of Into the Light's songs were written
by Blacklisted, the band Conley created upon her return from
McLean Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she went to treat
her depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Other residents
at the renowned OCD institute include Girl, Interrupted
author Susanna Kaysen and poet Sylvia Plath.
In addition to tics, "I would start thinking about things and
get stuck," says Conley. "Certain colors would be bad. Blue. Certain
numbers." McLean helped her heal, although Conley admits "in my
mind it's this wonderful experience, but I know that when I was
there, I was miserable in a lot of ways. So it's sort of romanticized
in my head." While "Closer to the Moon" is the album's only
McLean-specific song, all of Into the Light has a raw edge,
sometimes wrapped in sunny tunes, other times pitted against punk
tempos. Now, Conley says, "I'm on a lot of drugs. I'm doing really
well."
Returning to Muncie, where she was enrolled at Ball State University,
and in search of "healthy activity," Conley formed Blacklisted with
girls whose boyfriends had bands. "It seemed the girls never did
anything," she says. Unfortunately, Blacklisted's members kept graduating
and moving away. Finally Conley found herself the only remaining
original member in a committed line-up. To soften their image, the
women changed the band name to Arcade.
"Some people are interested in us because we're girls which works
to our advantage and also can limit us," says Conley. "We've gotten
a lot of good response from people we're surprised would like us.
A lot of the punk kids in Muncie really like us. The skinheads like
us."
Midwest press and radio like them, too. "Gig of the week," said
Cincinnati's City Beat. "This band is what the Go-Go's were
intended to be," raves Mark Lush on Midwestmusic.com. This August,
Arcade toured Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri, playing
venues beyond their usual Cincinnati-Chicago-Indianapolis circuit.
For once September rolls around, the band goes back to school. Three
of the women are in graduate school at Ball State and the fourth,
Joy Gerwe, is a daycare teacher who recently traded in her
job for one that allows more time for the band. "That was actually
a pretty big step for us," Conley says. "Everyone in the band is
willing to ride it out as long as we're having fun and we're not
going into debt. That's kind of the game plan." For now, their winning
streak shows no signs of stopping. Vows Conley, "We'll go until
we can't anymore." |
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_________________________________
To find out more about Arcade visit:
http://www.woodenmanrecords.com/ |
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_________________________________
Mojie Crigler is a freelance writer living in New York City. She
wrote about Erin McKeown for WOMANROCK's
June 2003 issue, club owner's Jennifer
Gilson and Juliana Nash for the July issue, and Oh
Susanna is featured in the August issue.
E-mail her at: mojie@womanrock.com. |
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