Chris Robley’s Drunken Dances and Blue Haikus

by j. poet • March 23, 2009

A few years back, a critic with a hyperactive imagination called Portland, Oregon’s Chris Robley “the Stephen King of indie pop.” It’s a great sound bite, but doesn’t really do Robley or his music justice. “I liked [that blurb] and used it,” Robley confesses. “I thought it might give people who had never heard my music something to grab onto. Hopefully it won’t follow me around forever.”

The comparison isn’t really apt. Robley’s music does have a dark thread running through it, but there isn’t any blood or gore in his lyrics and his music. While it can be melancholy, it’s just as likely to be achingly lyrical and brightly melodic. That being said, the disturbing cover art of his latest opus Movie Theatre Haiku (a Masque of Backwards Ballads, a Picturesque Burlesque) may keep the King comparison in circulation for the foreseeable future. The sepia-hued painting done by his friend, artist Tammy Paladeni, features the distorted features of a smoking man who seems to be getting a do-it-yourself lobotomy from a dark figure wielding a manually operated hole-drilling tool. “I have to take responsibility for that,” Robley says. “I thought the art she came up with for my last album (The Drunken Dance of Modern Man in Love) was too serene. I told her I wanted something disturbing, but beautiful. She went into her studio for the weekend and that’s what she painted.”

Like Drunken Dance, Movie Theatre Haiku deals with the more problematic side of human nature, love relationships in particular. Lyrically, it walks through the same fog of self-delusion, recrimination, anxiety, drama, and hopelessness as Drunken Dance, but musically it’s lighter, brighter, and more sprawling. Its expansive orchestrations approach Phil Spector’s wall of sound, but without the excessive overdubs that often reduce a Spector production to throbbing noise. “There are parts of this album that are obnoxiously loud,” Robley admits. “Dance had a more folky, sedate sheen; this is more pop and less meditative. Jeff Saltzman [Stephen Malkmus, Sleater-Kinney, Death Cab for Cutie], one of the producers I worked with, helped me figure out what wasn’t working and strip off some of the tracks I’d layered up to make it sound cohesive.”

The moody pop of Drunken Dance had an intimate feel. “The Love I Fake” came across like a classic barroom ballad from the ’40s, despite veering between a bit of ’60s spy movie electric guitar twang and drunken French café jazz, while the instrumental “Gaslight Girl” was forlorn and folky despite a few spacey theremin effects. Haiku, on the other hand, is over the top, but in a good way, with Robley playing bass, drums, piano, autoharp, kazoo, banjo, marimba, vibes, and theremin, with friends contributing violins, horns, and woodwinds. It sounds like an evolutionary leap from the simplicity of Drunken Dance, but Robley started working on Haiku before and during the recording of Drunken Dance.

“I started working on it in 2006, left it in 2007, and reworked it again in 2008. Some of it I recorded on 16-track analog tape and some of it was done using Pro Tools. When I tried to make the music into an album, the Pro Tools stuff sounded too produced and the analog stuff was too soupy, so I went and made Drunken Dance. When I worked on it again, I had to retrack half of it with Jeff Saltzman, who was able to mix it into a cohesive project.”

Robley also worked with Mike Coykendall (M. Ward, Beth Orton, Old Joe Clarks)—who helped him achieve “that demented, psychedelic folk sound”—and Rob Stroup, who knows the digital side of recording and helped build the rhythm loops that run through some of the songs. “He’s intuitive, works fast, and helps keep things on the responsible side of pop music,” Robley quips.

With his three-years-in-the-making album finally done, Robley is ready to take his show on the road, backed by his stalwart band, the Fear of Heights. “When I play in town, I can have as many as 14 people on stage, including a flute quartet, which is a soundman’s nightmare. On the road, it’s just guitar, bass, drums, and keys. The first few tours I had to put on my credit card and pay off afterward. We’ve broken even on the last few tours, but in this economy, who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

Robley never set out to be a pop musician. He was born in Rhode Island, an only child who started writing music and stories to stay amused. After hearing a live Paul Simon CD, he begged his parents to buy him a guitar. They rented him a guitar, since he’d recently quit piano lessons. “I tried to find a left-handed guitar,” Robley says. “I couldn’t, so I learned right-handed, although I still air-guitar lefty. I could have ended up with fast fingers and no taste if I’d learned lefty, so I guess it was a gift to have to play slower and concentrate on melody.”

He played jazz in high school and in college at the University of Richmond, where he had a music scholarship. When they dropped their composition major, he switched to English. He played in jazz-fusion bands during college, but was secretly writing folky pop tunes at home. “The first time I ever sang one of my pop songs for someone, I was shaking uncontrollably with exposed nerves. I played it for John Stewart, who is still my drummer in the Fear of Heights and my bandmate in the Sort Ofs, our anti-Bush political band. We started a proper rock/pop band our last year of college.”

After graduation, Robley, Stewart, and another friend started looking for a place to settle down. “We all grew up east of the Mississippi, and no one wanted to live near home which ruled out New York, Boston, Atlanta, and New Orleans. We took a two-month road trip and liked Portland and Austin best, but summer in Austin was 114 degrees. July in Portland was pleasantly sunny. We didn’t know it was about to become an indie-pop Mecca.”

In Portland, Robley married and got a day job at CD Baby where he currently hosts their DIY Musician Podcast. In 2005, he made his first album, This Is The, which he recorded in four days on 16-track analog tape at Type Foundry with Adam Selzer producing.

Robley is active in several Portland bands. He plays guitar, bass, and keys with Selzer’s Norfolk & Western when they perform live. “It’s an antiquated-sounding, nostalgic folk band with melodic songs and a noise-rock approach, like Yo La Tengo or Pavement,” Robley says. He also plays toy instruments with Rachel Taylor Brown’s band and her stripped-down trio with Brown on Keys, Robley on toy piano, and a viola player. Additionally, he fronts the Sort Ofs, but they’re currently on hiatus. “I got sick of playing the same songs, all written as a reaction to Bush. I don’t want to make a record until I have something constructive to say about the new situation we’re in.”

For now, Robley is concentrating on his own songwriting and solo career, determined to stay true to his desire to twist familiar pop forms into something new. “I’m easily bored by derivative pop music, but devoted to the basic elements of the form. Because the average person is accustomed to the drooling, wallpaper drone of adult contemporary tones, anything that smacks of realism is discomforting. I want to make music that isn’t afraid to be adult. The question is how to find an original voice while still using language most people can understand.”

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Watch:Â “Faulkner’s South” [at youtube.com]