The Poet Behind a Rising Rock Band's Mystical Hits
PORTRAIT OF WILL ROAN BY SAMUEL WEST HISER.
Through fleeting glimpses and a studio visit, a portrait of a singular songwriter and musician emerges.
by Julia Bozzone
On the song “Supreme Being,” Will Roan, singer and keyboardist of the Brooklyn band Amazing Baby, experiences a transcendental moment. It’s an everything’s-okay, no-one-ever-really-dies moment, in which everyone and everything in creation is revealed as mysteriously connected. Steeped in mysticism, tracks like “Supreme Being” (a trance song composed on the xylophone and a highlight of the group’s self-released 2008 EP, Infinite Fucking Cross) convey a sense of wonder and a longing to return to paradise. Lyrics about “digging up the pearls from years gone by,” returning to “salt of the earth,” and a “big, black phantom love [that] floats over it all” contribute to the impression of a universe governed by some kind of cyclical, eternal return.
The group’s first tracks sound as joyful and cohesive as Led Zeppelin songs, only half the length, and recent songs are awash in a sweeping but pleasingly off-kilter grandeur. Their potency boils down to an inspired pairing of Roan, a literate preacher’s son, and Simon O'Connor, a virtuoso hard rock guitarist. The bands they had been in before Amazing Baby were good, but very true to a genre. But the project the pair formed together was a hybrid of influences (mutual favorites that included T. Rex and Queen), resulting in soaring melodies and full-bodied, boundary-pushing art-rock. In August 2008, a writer for the popular British music magazine NME raved about their first batch of songs, “Truly great rock bands don’t usually just fall out of the sky — they evolve slowly, meticulously and sometimes downright painfully over time. But don’t expect Amazing Baby to be paying any such dues… These Brookynites have been together since Christmas…, but somehow, they already sound like they could take on the world.” With the release of their first album Rewild due in the first half of 2009, Amazing Baby seemed on the precipice of a breakthrough after a near overnight success story.
When I arrive at Electric Lady studios at 4pm on the first Sunday last February, the band is putting the finishing touches on their debut album. It’s the second-to-last day of recording and a 15-piece orchestra is coming in today to record their parts individually. Bassist Don De Vore—pale blond, handsome, silent—sits in the recording booth nearly the whole afternoon, overseeing the recording of the string and brass parts. Matt Abeysekera, the drummer, pops into the booth and excitedly chats about the soundtrack to Polanski’s horror movie The Fearless Vampire Killers. Shy, stringy-haired rhythm guitarist Rob Laasko hangs in the green room for a while, in between long spells in the recording booth. He seems like the mellowest member, but like De Vore, he has the air of a longtime studio musician, who is used to being ignored. Roan and his girlfriend arrive last, after a late night of DJing at a Greenpoint warehouse.
Confused, insulted, and dazzled by Will
With his self-assured manner and clean-cut features, Roan could easily pass for a cultured character in a Wes Anderson movie. Today, after weeks of nonstop recording for the band’s debut album, the idiosyncratic singer-keyboardist seems to be running off of a streak of final-stretch adrenaline. In the green room, he drinks Sparks, a caffeinated alcoholic beverage, which keeps him on an even keel between seeming wiped out and alert, relaxed and lucid. He possesses a precise eye. During our interview, he’s polite but brisk, not finicky but quick to correct me when I’m wrong. When I ask him what the song “Headdress” is about, he tells me it’s about “holding onto somebody really tightly” and then tries to explain the title in visual terms. “It’s supposed to evoke—I wish I could illustrate this better in words—a distraction, a trick of the eye, a false part of your body. A decoration.”
While the teenage O’Connor was into hip-hop, graffiti, and punk music as a teenager, Roan immersed himself in art rock like David Bowie, John Cale, and T. Rex. He was born in Waterbury, Connecticut and his family moved four times before settling in Martha’s Vineyard. Roan, who is also interested in design and visual art (he co-designed Rewild’s cover art with a friend), majored in creative writing at Bard. After graduation, he moved to Brookyn, where he formed Lions & Tigers, a glam-rock/post-punk outfit that recorded arty, avant-garde songs, filled with images of oceans, fire, and blood. On the tracks, his characters are alienated and often remorseless, dwarfed by a surreal and desolate New York City. They’re in precarious and desperate situations. But the songs have the surreal enchantment of a Cocteau movie. Singing about watching the green light die, his girl’s grey eyes, and how she’s “never gonna wake up,” Roan evokes an arresting vision of youth in limbo and casual peril.
He’s a gracious host, happy to show me around, introduce me to his friends, and to answer questions. But as polite and friendly as he is, Roan remains inaccessible, even mysterious. Alone, he answers every question I ask. But if other bandmates are around, he lets them handle questions. He seems relieved when he’s surrounded by his friends, as if it’s only when he’s in their company that he can really be himself.
Most people can’t be creative on command, but so far that hasn’t been a problem for the scattershot singer or his songwriting partner. One reason the band has been so prolific is that they can be productive, and even thrive, in the midst of chaos. (One episode of the Village Voice’s Indie Cribz features a neatly dressed Roan giving viewers a tour of his horrifyingly messy apartment. In the video, he glances around his forsaken-looking bedroom. “I don’t spend a lot of time here,” he says mildly. “This is more like a storage space.”) If anything, he seems more comfortable in a hectic environment. As I interview Roan at Electric Lady studios, string players practice warm-up scales in the room next door. It nearly drives me out of my mind, but it doesn’t seem to distract Roan at all.
While O'Connor rallies me with his raucous energy, Roan is matter-of-fact, precise, guarded. He doesn’t like to talk about his band, but he calls MGMT drummer Will Berman who helped write and produce Amazing Baby’s first songs “one of the most talented people I’ve ever met” and predicts he’ll put out “a brilliant solo album one day.” He encourages me to check out his girlfriend’s band (the spooky, shambolic Golden Triangle). And his face lights up with a quirky, genuine smile when he tells me that bassist Don De Vore was in Ink & Dagger “a really incredible, influential vampire-themed band from Philadelphia in the ‘90s.” (“Don could do so much better,” one diehard Ink & Dagger fan complained on Amazing Baby’s Last.fm page.) I learn more about Roan when I’m not asking questions.
For one thing, he’s a good friend. A month earlier, when I run io him at Glasslands, a Brooklyn bar and performance space, I mention that I was surprised by the dizzying heights that MGMT-mania had reached. “Good for them, though,” Roan says pointedly. “Great for them,” I answer. Once he sees that I genuinely mean it, he lets down his guard. I’d seen Amazing Baby at the Mercury Lounge in November 2008 and had asked Roan if he could make me a CD of Lions & Tigers tracks, but he hadn’t had his phone on him. “I wanted to make you a CD, but I didn’t have your phone number,” he explains. He tells me Amazing Baby is recording the next week and that his old band, Lions & Tigers, is mixing an album. “Can I invite you to the studio? Can I invite you to a mixing session? How about if I e-mail you tomorrow?” he says, as he punches my contact info into his iPhone. I tell him that I thought the Lions & Tigers songs I’d heard were great. I love the post-punk sound, I say, and I love post-punk in general; Wire is my favorite band. He brightens. “I love Wire!“ And then, in regard to Lions & Tigers, he laughs. "I thought we were good, but no one liked us!” he says.
The first time I saw Roan, he was wearing a shirt that declared “THIS SHIRT SAVES LIVES.” It was November 2008 and I was at the Mercury Lounge for my first Amazing Baby show. Onstage, an impish Roan pranced around the stage with the pomp and exuberance of Jarvis Cocker. After the show, I introduced myself and asked if he could make me a CD of his former band, Lions & Tigers. He cycled rapidly through an array of thoughts like only an overeducated man can. "Sure, I’d be happy to,” he answered with a typically cheerful smile, but then he grilled me: “What do you want it for? You just want it? What’s the angle?” He asked me what I thought of the show, knowing it was imperfect. And before I left, he inquired whether this was my first time seeing Amazing Baby live. I told him it was. “You should have come last night!” he admonished me.
Needless to say, I left confused. I was taken aback, even offended, that he was dismissive of his older songs, which I adored. At the same time, I realized that if he didn’t want me to hear his old tracks, then that must mean his new songs sounded a lot different than Lions & Tigers—and that he thought they were really good. Later I realized that he wasn’t being combative because he was a control freak. He simply didn’t want Amazing Baby to be judged by his old band’s tracks. “That was more like a project than a band,” he told me, gesticulating. “I was proud of it at the time, but I don’t want that to represent me. I don’t want to make that kind of music anymore. That’s why—“ he smiled—“I’m not making it.”
His fear of pretension, stutter, and religious connection
Roan cuts an imposing figure. I think twice before crossing a crowded room to talk to the singer—and even after being acquainted with him for months, I find it hard to know how to interpret his sunny, aristocratic charm. It’s disconcerting to try to reconcile Roan’s bold aura with what he actually says. He is rigorously style-oriented with keen, intelligent eyes that appraise everything. He cannot help but move with a flourish. But in conversation he never says anything remotely audacious or flamboyant. His speech is peppered with prefixes (They’re “mega busy,” Electric Lady is “super cool”) and friendly surfer-stoner affirmations (“totally,” “definitely,” “rad”).
But despite the swashbuckling aura, Roan also has a vulnerable quality. For one thing, his expressive face broadcasts his emotions. And for another thing, he stutters. Though his stutter seems mild (it doesn’t surface til the third time I talk to him), one can imagine it’s a source of anxiety for the frontman, especially when he’s expected to participate in video and radio interviews, which may catch him when he’s tired or ill at ease. (Both states seem to exacerbate the speech disorder.) In one video interview, there’s a moment when Roan realizes he’s not going be able to get through his sentence without stuttering unless he skips some prepositions, so he starts stringing key words together. It’s a heart-rending moment. His bandmates are silent, but it’s clear they’re in solidarity with the singer.
I would normally think it inappropriate or even disgraceful to ask a stranger personal questions, but Roan is so restrained that I am even less inclined to pry. When I mention that I’ve noticed a lot of images of eternity in his lyrics, the tone of his voice shifts slightly and there’s a flicker in his eye like I’m on to something. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Or infinity,” I venture. “Yeah,” he repeats, in the same tone. “There’s a lot of stony-baloney in there, too,” he remarks. Then he lowers his voice and adds evenly, “They’re very personal, but they’re not super specific.” I wonder if he means he’d rather not get super specific. (I’d speculate that he wrote “Supreme Being” for his first (or true) love—because on that song he sings “I would die for you,” but in other songs, it’s "pump your brakes and leave me alone.”) When I ask if Berman will be writing songs with Andrew and Ben in MGMT, he politely answers the question. Suddenly he looks weary. He sighs and shakes his head as if to rouse himself out of a daze. “What else is up?“ he asks quickly. Then he corrects himself, as if that way of putting it sounded rude. "Anything else I can tell you?”
In conversation, Roan seems so afraid of coming off as pretentious, that, if anything, he overcompensates for his dandyish hauteur. The boldest statement I ever see him make is in a video interview from their tour of Japan, which took place shortly after Rewild’s release. He says he’s proud of the album (though he looks disappointed)—it’s been a learning experience (he looks very unhappy)—but it’s definitely the best thing he’s ever been involved in.
(In fact, I think his newer lyrics also reflect this desire not to seem pretentious. Rewild’s new songs don’t have big words, and in avoiding them, his lyrics turn absurd and playful. Roan’s word play comes off like an inside joke with himself. The title of the album, for example, seems to be a composite of a line on "Kankra”: “Turn off your mind/Relax a while.” (Get it? Re-wild.))
Once you learn that Roan’s father was a preacher, suddenly everything about Amazing Baby makes sense: the singer’s giddy stage persona (shades of a raving evangelical preacher), the Garden of Eden allusion, and the infinite cross imagery. But it also lends pathos to his story. Roan told FAQ Magazine that the first time he got high he had an internal dialogue with himself about how there was no going back, adding that he “continually thinks … about things I told myself I’d never do.” The debut album by San Francisco band Girls is touching because of its sincerity; when former Children of God member Christopher Owens sings that he doesn’t want to cry for his whole life, it sounds genuine. There’s a similar wistfulness about Roan’s longing to return to innocence. Roan has characterized himself as “super emotional” and “messed up.” But he seems like a conscientious guy who wants to believe in a higher power and tries to be a good person.
That’s the thing: He has a conscience. More than six months after sitting in with them at Electric Lady, I see Roan at a show at Webster Hall (his friend Max McDonald’s band, Psychic, is playing) and I tell him I’m sorry my story hasn’t been published; I’m still going to do a story about the band. “It’s okay, it’s cool,” he says, but he’s a person who values honor, and as long as you try to do the right thing, he will be as personable as possible. Suddenly, he’s smiling.
February 21, 2010
editor: Maura Whang
This piece was previously unpublished.
