Features | Interviews
Fulton Lights
By Conrad Amenta | 10 April 2007
Brooklyn's Fulton Lights (a.k.a. Andrew Spencer Goldman) is set to slip quietly into the room and sneak up behind you with his debut, released March 6th courtesy of Goldman's own Android Eats Records, in conjunction with Catbird Records. Goldman took time out from coordinating the album's release to discuss this hushed affair, comprised of equal parts haunted New York streets, desolate beats (courtesy of duo Dälek), cryptic memories and unabashed romance, and to make Conrad guess about what the songs are about. (Hint: think 'society.')
*****
Conrad Amenta (CMG): When I was doing research to review your album, I saw that much has been made of two specific things. First, that it took three years to write and record the album, and second that there's a certain political facet to your lyrics. Do you think it's fair to call your music 'political'? And if so, were you concerned that the amount of time it took to finish the album might date those politics, make them less relevant?
Andrew Spencer Goldman (ASG): Three years sometimes seems like forever. But in other respects I suppose three years is a relatively short amount to commit, especially for something that you love. I took my time with the album because I had the sense that we were onto something special. I thought an album with such a large scale deserved the extra effort, patience, and self-scrutiny. Hopefully we succeeded in making something worthy of people's attention.
As for the political facet that you mention, I think that's in the ear of the beholder. I'm not Ted Leo. I'm not Boots Riley. It's just not in my character, creatively speaking, to come with that kind of approach. I will admit that "Thank God for the Evening News" does have a political element to it, but I don't hear it as cheerleading or rabblerousing. It came from a point of anger and confusion, and while in another life I might deliver the song with intensity and directness, here I think it has a more obtuse quality. It's more "newborn baby with wolves all around it," so to speak. Actually, I had forgotten, but I was listening to a lot of Dylan when I wrote that song. That song ["A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"], incidentally, has no sell-by date. I think that is true of many of the best "political" songs. Their themes are eternal. Freedom, exploitation, discontent, fear, hope. Three hundred years from now those concepts will mean the same thing as they do to us today as they did to people centuries ago.
What other songs on the album do you hear as being political? I'm not sure I know what others would qualify as being political in any strict sense of the word.
CMG: I think you've touched on something interesting here. When I say 'political,' I should be more specific: there's protest music, and then there's music that documents a politically charged period (like Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna-Fall"). I don't hear "Thank God for the Evening News" as a protest song, but I do hear an alienation that seems as if it's from a few years ago. For example, when you sing "You can't believe everything you see / like White House press conferences about freedom / and about democracy," this seems like a sentiment that is now loudly echoed in the mainstream by a number of people catching up with the disaffection of a few years ago. So to follow that with "1,000 Little Eyes," I couldn't help but hear in that song paranoia, fear, suspicion -- perhaps a similar documentation of the same politically charged period.
I know the whole concept of 'post-9/11' gets bandied around a lot (and must drive New Yorkers crazy) but, as a Canadian reviewing a New Yorker's album, it was a frame of reference I couldn't help but impose. Do you think that period influenced your lyrics, or are they intended to be more insular, personal?
ASG: Ok, I see where you're coming from. I'm not feeling any less alienated now than I was then. Ha, good times. The thing is, I was also this alienated when Clinton was in office, and expect that I'll have my share of disappointments if a Democrat takes the White House in '08. All of American politics is alienating. There is so much work to be done, and so few honest-to-god leaders willing to work for what is just, damn the consequences. As for "1,000 Little Eyes," I think it's fair to associate it with paranoia, fear, and suspicion. That song actually came from walking around one night and imagining the illuminated windows of buildings literally as eyes, monitoring every move of the city's inhabitants. It was a terrifying feeling. I had recently read Calvino's wonderful book, Invisible Cities, in which some chapters are called "Cities & Eyes," and that may have spurred the idea in my head. But the idea may also have been equally born out of the era of surveillance that we live in.
I was writing these songs in New York during the years following 9/11, but there have been lots of records made in the city during the same period of time. I guess that what would identify this particular one as a post-9/11 album, if you want to call it that, is just the focus on the many dimensions of actual city life. I think that "Old Photographs" may have been written while I was thinking specifically about the time following 9/11 and the attack, but that can't be said for the others. Did you see Spike Lee's 25th Hour? Aside from a couple of shots of the hole at Ground Zero, there isn't much that you could point to that overtly connects it to the tragedy. But you get that sense in the sadness, the loss, the leaving behind, the resilience. It captures the larger period by focusing very closely in something more intimate. If you then want to call it a post-9/11 movie, fine, but there's also a story there and an intimacy that makes it more special and irreducible.
CMG: But the shot of the hole in the ground then lends much of the rest of the movie its context. That terrific scene where Norton is railing into the mirror wouldn't mean what it does without Lee's correlative shots of the undoctored skyline and the notion that he was one of the first mainstream moviemakers to do it. I sort of thought of "Thank God for the Evening News" and "1,000 Little Eyes" in the same way; they painted my experience of the album, gave it context.
ASG: That's a fair way to experience the album. I think it'd be equally fair for someone to experience it without even thinking for a second about 9/11, though someone who acknowledges the specific time and place when these songs were written will probably get a little more out of it.
CMG: I love that description of the city's illuminated windows as "1,000 Little Eyes." How much of this album would you say is about New York?
ASG: Specifically? Only a couple songs. More broadly? Probably all of it.
CMG: I noticed that there's a lot of guest musicians on the album. How did you coordinate such a collaborative process? Did you direct each musician to write and play in a certain way, or let them contribute whatever and however they felt was appropriate?
ASG: Almost everyone on the album is an old friend, so it wasn't too hard. Just lured 'em with orange juice, pretzels, and my eternal gratitude. As for how they contributed, it varied. For some things I had a very specific idea or part in mind, like the string arrangements, and for other things, like TJ [Lipple's] vibraphone and Steve [Silverstein's] noise-guitar/processing, I just told the musician(s) to go to town and offered only the vaguest of instructions about a feeling or tone that I wanted to convey. The bottom line is that they all contributed in ways that I definitely could not on my own. They're all brilliant, immensely talented people who helped make the album what it is.
CMG: That's a pretty experienced group of musicians. The list of bands to which they've contributed reads in places like the Staff Picks section of an indie record store. [Aloha, Dälek, Beauty Pill, Wilco, the Walkmen, Tony Conrad...]
Would you agree with the statement "Fulton Lights is an Andrew Goldman solo project"?
ASG: Not really, but maybe sort of? I'd say it's somewhere in between a solo project and a "band" as most people understand bands. There are people other than me who were intimately involved with creating the sound of Fulton Lights, first and foremost Rob Christiansen and Steve Silverstein. I could not do this alone. Live, we're rolling as a nine-piece. I'd say that's anything but solo.
CMG: Is it possible to describe the songwriting process for Fulton Lights and how it's different from that of John Guilt or other bands you've played in?
ASG: I think the primary difference is that I'm no longer worrying about writing things that people can play, which is to say that I'm writing for myself now. With John Guilt I think it was always in the back of my mind that I had to be coming up with things that would triangulate easily with the creative preferences of the other bandmembers, which was probably the result of my own neuroses (I prefer to call them "complexities", ahem) as much as anything. Right now I don't want to worry about that. I want to express myself as best I can, which means finding ways to build the song without having to consider if it will perplex someone else. I'm lucky to be working with a group of people who have a lot of faith in me, which makes it a little easier. Does that make sense? Did I even answer the question?
CMG: Yeah! After a quick look around, it seems like the first single, "Fire In the Palm of My Hand," is receiving a pretty warm response (no terrible pun intended). I tried to do some on-the-spot interpretation of the lyrics, which I think are quite beautiful by the way, and though I like the progression from holding the fire to losing it and finally remembering what it was like to hold it, after a few listens I decided it just sounded too personal for me to impose any kind of critical assumption on it. Can you talk a little bit about what the song is about?
ASG: I can't tell you what it's about, that's for you to decide! But I can tell you about where it was coming from. I tend to write in bursts, and then I'll have very long dry spells. I wish that I were more disciplined and worked on honing my craft every day, but alas that just ain't how it's unfolded so far. Anyway, the long dry spells are always completely paralyzing, mortifying experiences where I fear I'll never write again. I try to remind myself that of course I'll write again, and that everyone needs time to reflect and refill, but it never works. "Fire in the Palm of My Hand" came out of one of those dry spells.
CMG: Fair enough. That gives me something promethean to work with while interpreting, but you know if you leave it totally up to me I'm just gonna go back to the post-9/11 thing. It's easier to write about.
Are there any touring plans? When and where do you plan on flexing that nine-piece lineup?
ASG: Anywhere that will have us! We look good when we flex, like Greek demigods. Still, who used to be the DJ with Dälek, is going to be playing with us from now on, and I'm really psyched to see how he integrates himself. Anyone who has seen him knows he's a beast. Our CD release show is happening at Tonic in NYC on March 15th, and we're also playing in Princeton New Jersey on April 6th at a house called the Terrace Club. Still will be doing his own set of experimental turntablism at both shows, and Frances will be opening the Tonic show. I'm trying to work on setting up more shows around the east coast, and hopefully we'll be able to set up a tour soon. If anyone out there wants us to come play their school or whatnot, I'm not hard to find.
CMG: One last question: with the record set to come out soon, do you plan on monitoring the critical response? How important is it to you that the album get positive reviews, aside from a business-related, 'good reviews will drive sales' perspective?
ASG: Aside from the practical element, not at all. I am releasing this on my own label (Android Eats Records), so I do monitor this stuff but it's not because I'm ego trippin'. It's a good feeling to know that people are enjoying the album and the songs, but ultimately it has little bearing on my perspective on songwriting. Good reviews help me get people interested in what I'm investing myself in. The only difference is maybe if someone took the time to write something extremely insightful and/or creative about the music. That's always nice.
*****
Conrad Amenta (CMG): When I was doing research to review your album, I saw that much has been made of two specific things. First, that it took three years to write and record the album, and second that there's a certain political facet to your lyrics. Do you think it's fair to call your music 'political'? And if so, were you concerned that the amount of time it took to finish the album might date those politics, make them less relevant?
Andrew Spencer Goldman (ASG): Three years sometimes seems like forever. But in other respects I suppose three years is a relatively short amount to commit, especially for something that you love. I took my time with the album because I had the sense that we were onto something special. I thought an album with such a large scale deserved the extra effort, patience, and self-scrutiny. Hopefully we succeeded in making something worthy of people's attention.
As for the political facet that you mention, I think that's in the ear of the beholder. I'm not Ted Leo. I'm not Boots Riley. It's just not in my character, creatively speaking, to come with that kind of approach. I will admit that "Thank God for the Evening News" does have a political element to it, but I don't hear it as cheerleading or rabblerousing. It came from a point of anger and confusion, and while in another life I might deliver the song with intensity and directness, here I think it has a more obtuse quality. It's more "newborn baby with wolves all around it," so to speak. Actually, I had forgotten, but I was listening to a lot of Dylan when I wrote that song. That song ["A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"], incidentally, has no sell-by date. I think that is true of many of the best "political" songs. Their themes are eternal. Freedom, exploitation, discontent, fear, hope. Three hundred years from now those concepts will mean the same thing as they do to us today as they did to people centuries ago.
What other songs on the album do you hear as being political? I'm not sure I know what others would qualify as being political in any strict sense of the word.
CMG: I think you've touched on something interesting here. When I say 'political,' I should be more specific: there's protest music, and then there's music that documents a politically charged period (like Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna-Fall"). I don't hear "Thank God for the Evening News" as a protest song, but I do hear an alienation that seems as if it's from a few years ago. For example, when you sing "You can't believe everything you see / like White House press conferences about freedom / and about democracy," this seems like a sentiment that is now loudly echoed in the mainstream by a number of people catching up with the disaffection of a few years ago. So to follow that with "1,000 Little Eyes," I couldn't help but hear in that song paranoia, fear, suspicion -- perhaps a similar documentation of the same politically charged period.
I know the whole concept of 'post-9/11' gets bandied around a lot (and must drive New Yorkers crazy) but, as a Canadian reviewing a New Yorker's album, it was a frame of reference I couldn't help but impose. Do you think that period influenced your lyrics, or are they intended to be more insular, personal?
ASG: Ok, I see where you're coming from. I'm not feeling any less alienated now than I was then. Ha, good times. The thing is, I was also this alienated when Clinton was in office, and expect that I'll have my share of disappointments if a Democrat takes the White House in '08. All of American politics is alienating. There is so much work to be done, and so few honest-to-god leaders willing to work for what is just, damn the consequences. As for "1,000 Little Eyes," I think it's fair to associate it with paranoia, fear, and suspicion. That song actually came from walking around one night and imagining the illuminated windows of buildings literally as eyes, monitoring every move of the city's inhabitants. It was a terrifying feeling. I had recently read Calvino's wonderful book, Invisible Cities, in which some chapters are called "Cities & Eyes," and that may have spurred the idea in my head. But the idea may also have been equally born out of the era of surveillance that we live in.
I was writing these songs in New York during the years following 9/11, but there have been lots of records made in the city during the same period of time. I guess that what would identify this particular one as a post-9/11 album, if you want to call it that, is just the focus on the many dimensions of actual city life. I think that "Old Photographs" may have been written while I was thinking specifically about the time following 9/11 and the attack, but that can't be said for the others. Did you see Spike Lee's 25th Hour? Aside from a couple of shots of the hole at Ground Zero, there isn't much that you could point to that overtly connects it to the tragedy. But you get that sense in the sadness, the loss, the leaving behind, the resilience. It captures the larger period by focusing very closely in something more intimate. If you then want to call it a post-9/11 movie, fine, but there's also a story there and an intimacy that makes it more special and irreducible.
CMG: But the shot of the hole in the ground then lends much of the rest of the movie its context. That terrific scene where Norton is railing into the mirror wouldn't mean what it does without Lee's correlative shots of the undoctored skyline and the notion that he was one of the first mainstream moviemakers to do it. I sort of thought of "Thank God for the Evening News" and "1,000 Little Eyes" in the same way; they painted my experience of the album, gave it context.
ASG: That's a fair way to experience the album. I think it'd be equally fair for someone to experience it without even thinking for a second about 9/11, though someone who acknowledges the specific time and place when these songs were written will probably get a little more out of it.
CMG: I love that description of the city's illuminated windows as "1,000 Little Eyes." How much of this album would you say is about New York?
ASG: Specifically? Only a couple songs. More broadly? Probably all of it.
CMG: I noticed that there's a lot of guest musicians on the album. How did you coordinate such a collaborative process? Did you direct each musician to write and play in a certain way, or let them contribute whatever and however they felt was appropriate?
ASG: Almost everyone on the album is an old friend, so it wasn't too hard. Just lured 'em with orange juice, pretzels, and my eternal gratitude. As for how they contributed, it varied. For some things I had a very specific idea or part in mind, like the string arrangements, and for other things, like TJ [Lipple's] vibraphone and Steve [Silverstein's] noise-guitar/processing, I just told the musician(s) to go to town and offered only the vaguest of instructions about a feeling or tone that I wanted to convey. The bottom line is that they all contributed in ways that I definitely could not on my own. They're all brilliant, immensely talented people who helped make the album what it is.
CMG: That's a pretty experienced group of musicians. The list of bands to which they've contributed reads in places like the Staff Picks section of an indie record store. [Aloha, Dälek, Beauty Pill, Wilco, the Walkmen, Tony Conrad...]
Would you agree with the statement "Fulton Lights is an Andrew Goldman solo project"?
ASG: Not really, but maybe sort of? I'd say it's somewhere in between a solo project and a "band" as most people understand bands. There are people other than me who were intimately involved with creating the sound of Fulton Lights, first and foremost Rob Christiansen and Steve Silverstein. I could not do this alone. Live, we're rolling as a nine-piece. I'd say that's anything but solo.
CMG: Is it possible to describe the songwriting process for Fulton Lights and how it's different from that of John Guilt or other bands you've played in?
ASG: I think the primary difference is that I'm no longer worrying about writing things that people can play, which is to say that I'm writing for myself now. With John Guilt I think it was always in the back of my mind that I had to be coming up with things that would triangulate easily with the creative preferences of the other bandmembers, which was probably the result of my own neuroses (I prefer to call them "complexities", ahem) as much as anything. Right now I don't want to worry about that. I want to express myself as best I can, which means finding ways to build the song without having to consider if it will perplex someone else. I'm lucky to be working with a group of people who have a lot of faith in me, which makes it a little easier. Does that make sense? Did I even answer the question?
CMG: Yeah! After a quick look around, it seems like the first single, "Fire In the Palm of My Hand," is receiving a pretty warm response (no terrible pun intended). I tried to do some on-the-spot interpretation of the lyrics, which I think are quite beautiful by the way, and though I like the progression from holding the fire to losing it and finally remembering what it was like to hold it, after a few listens I decided it just sounded too personal for me to impose any kind of critical assumption on it. Can you talk a little bit about what the song is about?
ASG: I can't tell you what it's about, that's for you to decide! But I can tell you about where it was coming from. I tend to write in bursts, and then I'll have very long dry spells. I wish that I were more disciplined and worked on honing my craft every day, but alas that just ain't how it's unfolded so far. Anyway, the long dry spells are always completely paralyzing, mortifying experiences where I fear I'll never write again. I try to remind myself that of course I'll write again, and that everyone needs time to reflect and refill, but it never works. "Fire in the Palm of My Hand" came out of one of those dry spells.
CMG: Fair enough. That gives me something promethean to work with while interpreting, but you know if you leave it totally up to me I'm just gonna go back to the post-9/11 thing. It's easier to write about.
Are there any touring plans? When and where do you plan on flexing that nine-piece lineup?
ASG: Anywhere that will have us! We look good when we flex, like Greek demigods. Still, who used to be the DJ with Dälek, is going to be playing with us from now on, and I'm really psyched to see how he integrates himself. Anyone who has seen him knows he's a beast. Our CD release show is happening at Tonic in NYC on March 15th, and we're also playing in Princeton New Jersey on April 6th at a house called the Terrace Club. Still will be doing his own set of experimental turntablism at both shows, and Frances will be opening the Tonic show. I'm trying to work on setting up more shows around the east coast, and hopefully we'll be able to set up a tour soon. If anyone out there wants us to come play their school or whatnot, I'm not hard to find.
CMG: One last question: with the record set to come out soon, do you plan on monitoring the critical response? How important is it to you that the album get positive reviews, aside from a business-related, 'good reviews will drive sales' perspective?
ASG: Aside from the practical element, not at all. I am releasing this on my own label (Android Eats Records), so I do monitor this stuff but it's not because I'm ego trippin'. It's a good feeling to know that people are enjoying the album and the songs, but ultimately it has little bearing on my perspective on songwriting. Good reviews help me get people interested in what I'm investing myself in. The only difference is maybe if someone took the time to write something extremely insightful and/or creative about the music. That's always nice.