Metro Pulse/Music/Character

Comment
on this story

What:
Character

When:
Thursday, June 13 at 9 p.m.

Where:
Pilot Light

Cost:
$3

Nashville octet Character has evolved into a cohesive unit

by Matthew T. Everett

In just a little over a year, the Nashville band Character has grown from a couple of guys making experimental electronic music into an eight-person collective that builds simple, repetitive riffs into huge, layered wall-of-sound compositions.

The band added members haphazardly. "Scott Martin and Eric Williams had the name Character for a while and were fooling around with some instrumental stuff, just bass and drums and samples, but then they wanted to make it more of a band," says guitarist William Tyler, a Nashville native. "Then about a year ago Dave [Paulson] and I started playing guitar with them. My roommate Ryan [Norris] wasn't playing with anybody, and he started hanging around. We'd get together to play at somebody's house, and whoever lived there who wasn't already in the band figured out some way to get in the band. It was sloppy at first, but it coalesced after four or five shows. We've all known each other and played together in bands before, and one night at a show we just all looked at each other and realized we were a band."

The band's sound and deliberate pace—and the fact that their music is instrumental—draw comparisons to Chicago post-rock ("whatever that means," Tyler says) bands like Tortoise and the Sea and Cake, as well as newer groups like Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor! ("I guess because our songs don't have any words," Tyler says). That it's performed by a group of young Southern kids in a town known more for country songwriters and what Tyler calls "pseudo-music industry power pop bands" has helped them stand out.

"Being in a rock band in Nashville is weird," he explains. "There's a lot of country guys here, and lots of pop bands, and there's also an underground scene of punk and noise rock bands, but there's not much in between. It's not like Athens or Chicago where a lot of people are doing different things. It's getting better, I guess, but the way it is now has helped Character. A lot of people have never seen this type of thing before."

The band released its first CD, A Flashing of Knives and Green Water, in January on Set International Records. It's a six-song, 33-minute EP of droning guitar riffs with other instruments—Theramin, xylophone, keyboards, a few samples and collages of found noise—piled on top, recorded in a home studio last year when the band was still a five-piece. The songs start out quietly and crescendo into waves of noise, then fade away. The energy of the songs doesn't come from the individual intensity of the performances but from the layers of sound.

"All our songs start out as a riff or a very basic idea," Tyler says. "As people add parts it becomes more complicated, but it's never really all that complex. It's straightforward and repetitive, but when all of it's together you get that wall of sound. Somebody called it math rock once, but if it's math rock it's based on very basic math. It's not algebra or anything."

Tyler says Character's live performances are extraordinarily loud. "It's pretty exciting," he says. "There are so many people on stage. A lot of instrumental bands just don't seem to be into it on stage, but we're all very into playing live, not just standing there."

Tyler, who also plays guitar in the Nashville indie-country/chamber pop group Lambchop, says he hasn't considered how he will balance his future with Character with his other obligations. Character has only played a few shows outside of Nashville, but with a record out and plans to record a second one this year, and the general sense of the group coming together as a band, Tyler says they plan to follow up on the momentum they've gotten started. "That's not really a concern," he says of his place in two bands. For one thing, the large ensemble cast of Character allows them to perform without all their members, as they did for a few shows earlier this year when Tyler was on tour with Lambchop. For another, Lambchop isn't a prolific or heavy-touring band.

"Lambchop's not Fugazi," Tyler says. "They're not out on the road 11 months of the year. This year's been the most touring Lambchop's ever done, and they probably won't do much for a while after the end of this year."

In fact, Tyler's more concerned about keeping himself busy after pulling double duty for the last few months.

"It's going to be weird not having a lot to do," he says. "This year's been pretty crazy."