Chris Robley is a multi-instrumentalist. By which I don’t mean he plays guitars and keyboards. Don’t get me wrong. He does play guitar, keyboards (organs, synths, pianos, etc.) But he also plays bass, vibraphones, marimbas, banjo, mandolin, and so on. That is pretty impressive, especially to me. I have a hard time mastering one instrument.One thing I can say for Chris Robley (aside from the fact that he has created the longest album title I can recall since Fiona Apple‘s When the yada yada yada) is that you won’t hear too many albums like his. Movie Theater Haiku begins with a track that is reminiscent of Murder By Death. It features a healthy dose of strings and a rich, sort of literary feel to it.

In fact, the entire album has a literary feel to it. Just look at the song titles such as “The Late, Great Age of paper (haiku #2)” and “Baltimore Fugitives Buried in Brownsville, TX.” They kind of sound like story titles, don’t they. Robley is not interested in making 3-minute verse-chorus-verse songs. Each one of his songs feels more like a short story put to a fairly complex arrangement. That being said, Robley is not above using a kazoo (“Solipsist in Love”), which is probably the least literary-sounding instrument available.

Robley not only shows skill as a multi-instrumentalist. He has created an album in which the style of music varies from one song to the next. There is a definite darkness in some of the tunes (“A Memory Lost at Sea” and “Glass Reich”) while “The User-Friendly Guide to Change” is an upbeat song with a cool horn part.

I’m not sure I could classify Chris Robley other than to call his music arty and complex. I can’t really say he sounds like anyone, but if you are a fan of The Decemberists, you might want to check out Chris Robley and the Fear of Heights.

Chris Robley & The Fear of Heights – Movie Theatre Haiku

Movie Theatre Haiku marks Chris Robley & The Fear of Heights’ third album, another book in their series of heartbreak and mystery. These new chapters follow characters through journeys into darkness with the optimism shrinking and the anxiety level rising, as their lense on the world becomes narrower as time progresses.Â

Like a mime slowly making it’s way onto the stage, hands up and feeling around the edges of some sort of imaginary room to get their bearings, “A Memory Lost at Sea” starts up with seemingly random sounds of percussion that begin to fall into a rhythm just as a saxaphone starts belting out notes. Almost immediately the rest of the band follows and it sounds like the fumbling mime was joined by a line of burlesque dancers and they’ve got him surrounded. Interestingly enough, the subtitle to the album is aptly named “A Masque of Backwards Ballads, a Picturesque Burlesque”.  Â

Just as one might not imagine a mime put on the same stage with burlesque dancers, but would imagine it interesting, Movie Theater Haiku mixes styles and interesting instruments in ways to keep the listener engaged all the way to the final track. Key and tempo changes also keep the listener on their toes, wondering what will happen next. Yet, given all range from epic choruses to an expressive singular voice and moments of minimal layers versus orchestral grandeur and instrumental diversity, the album maintains a cohesiveness throughout that keep them all laced up in the same story. Each song follows a similar theme within the lyrics like in “Sollipsist in Love” were Robley’s voice proclaims that “it’s hard to believe things outside of my head”, a continuing trend heard throughout.

Chris Robley describes the characters moving through the album as being “lost in this kind of confined space. They fumble in the darkness to feel the four walls closing in on them. They must measure distances in a shrinking world to find their way out.”  In “Glass Reich”, an instrumental track nearing the end, the angular sounds make me think of what it be like to be lost in a room full of cracked mirrors with no indication of a doorway and just feeling washed over with sheer panic as the stress level rises. This is a stark constrast from the instrumental track earlier on which packs a more determined attitude.

Despite the intense emotions provoked by the artist, Robley manages to keep everything centered around quality music and intelligently written lyrics that are enjoyable and worth listening to. In tracks like “Baltimore Fugitives Buried in Brownsville, TX” guitar finger picking and an intense tone are instantly catchy as the tale unfolds with Robley’s vocals taking on a more breathy style. In “Sollipsist in Love” an intense electronic beat fused with piano always sticks with me long after I’ve finished listening to the album. The somewhat strange and interesting instruments and tones fused in this song work really well and go perfectly with the harmonized vocals.

The penultimate track, “Permanent Fixtures of Regret” features dreamlike washes of flutes over acoustic guitar which could be viewed as either the listener giving up and accepting their fate or having found the way out. But then the album closer “Waltz for Angelika Dittrich” closes the curtain with a huried waltz beat with jittery piano and instead of feeling like a goal has been reached, the listener is left more with a high level of anxiety after completing the journey but not at all accomplished.Â

Robley and the Fear of Heights doesn’t want to wrap it up all nice and pretty. Instead they create that emotional response that makes you crave the resolve, like a great movie that ends dramatically but still leaves you with questions floating around in your head. Â

Cutthroat Pop Records

There’s a point during “A Memory Lost at Sea,” which opens Chris Robley’s third effort, Movie Theatre Haiku, when you realize Robley is more than just an indie rocker with a singer/songwriter knack. It is not the judicious use of sax or the slightly askew arrangement. The moment comes when you grasp that the main character is suffering with no closure from his boy’s death. That’s when it is clear Robley is one of the best short-story musicians to come along in quite some time. Robley, who hails from Portland, Oregon, has an Elliott Smithian aspect, including a dramatic viewpoint with a poetic perceptiveness, which gives his songs a well-grounded, literate depth. Movie Theatre Haiku is full of eclectic notions that support Robley’s direct, often misanthropic commentary. “My Life in Film Festivals,” which is quickened by power guitar and kazoo, and folktronica “Solipsist in Love” are both scraped by lyrical pain. Unsparing “User- Friendly Guide to Change” melds Beatles-esque pop with electronica elements, where guitars and synth are balanced by punchy horns. One prominent piece is “Permanent Fixture of Regret,” a smartly written picture of amplified self-loathing which connects the dots between Loudon Wainwright-esque romantic dissolution and Belle and Sebastian-ish melodic indie-pop textures. Movie Theatre Haiku is an album of tension and ambition best experienced with detailed
and repeated inspection. (Doug Simpson)

by Dan on Mar.24, 2009, under Alternative, Other

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]

(Cutthroat Pop)
By Doug Simpson

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Portland, Ore.’s Chris Robley is a well-grounded indie rocker with a singer-songwriter mind. Robley’s third effort, Movie Theatre Haiku, has an Elliott Smith likeness, including a heart-suffering perspective with a poetic perceptiveness, which gives Robley’s songs an understanding and literate musical depth.

Movie Theatre Haiku is chock full of eclectic arrangements that support Robley’s unguarded, alienated contemplations. Power guitar-quickened “My Life in Film Festivals” and folktronica “Solipsist in Love” are both driven by lyrical regret. The anti-romantic “User-Friendly Guide to Change” melds Beatles-esque pop with electronica elements, where guitars and beat-happy drums are balanced by perforated horns.

The highlight is “Permanent Fixture of Regret,” a smartly written picture of downturned self-loathing that links Loudon Wainwright’s lyrical insights with Belle and Sebastian’s melodic indie pop textures.Movie Theatre Haiku is an album of tension and ambition that, like a William Faulkner short story, is best experienced with detailed and repeated inspection.