Tans Are Okay and Love Is The Best: Q & A with Castanets

Popshifter: Sounds like it! I wouldn’t feel too bad about having so much to talk about—it’s good to be productive, right?

A desolate Nevada town certainly sounds like an evocative place to record. . . one of the things I was going to ask you about was working with Rafter Roberts on the previous Castanets records; I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that Rafter didn’t set up shop in said Nevada town. I know he regards you highly and as a musical “risk-taker,” up for experimenting and trying different approaches. Did you do the engineering there in Nevada yourself, and if so, did it seem that you may have found some fruitful “risks” to take working there? Mirages, dust, and distortions sound pretty intriguing. . .

This is May ’08.

Ray: Rafter was involved in City of Refuge in the sense that he chose the gear that I would bring up there. A pretty basic tool set with a few wild cards. During the tracking I was sending files out to a few friends across the country so there’s still a good input from others. Awesome others. Not too different from the way parts of Vines and First Light’s Freeze were tracked in my various houses and then fleshed out a bit with Rafter in SD.

Vines also to me feels increasingly like a closure to a few ways I’d been going about things. There’s no very clear way to put it.

Refuge is a very spare record. It was a spare season. It’s a dry heat haggard thing.

Popshifter: All of this stuff brings me to another general question. Castanets seems to take on a lot of shapes as far as context is concerned; you often perform solo, with an amazing variety of incredibly talented people in extremely divergent “band” contexts, as well as performing here and there as a supporting player, often for people who themselves serve a similar function in your band. Wow, that was wordy.

I guess what I’m getting at is, do you find any particular context works better or is more rewarding than another, or is any a pain in the ass comparatively?

Ray: It is a completely rewarding pain in the ass. Yes. Mostly a joy to start from square one each time out. Keeps everyone honest ideally. New jams and new feels for new times or something like that. Likely a disastrous business model, though.

And I love to death being able to play further back in friends’ line-ups. Lucky enough to have folks around whose work I would shrine and do anything for. Good excuse to get out and outside of myself.

Popshifter: Back to mirages and distortions. . . I see a lot of portrayal of Castanets in the media as morose or dark. It seems to me that there certainly is a recurring element, thematically, of wanting or needing something that you can’t quite keep, but that somehow in a sense always remains. At least that’s a lot of what I get out of it.

Do you feel that when Castanets are written about, the sweetness that’s a part of that is often overlooked?

At Primavera Sound, Barcelona

Ray: I’m not sure how dark that want or need really is. Younger, Buddhism-dabbling me would probably scoff at the idea, but it might be okay to have some desires, to keep the emotional wheel moving along. To flail and grab at whatever transient beauties you can sense. As for morose or gothic tendencies, I’ve gone on record several times as being a good time guy. Good times in the bad even. Sweetness (yes) in the shit. Honey in the pit. But man, if people want to get down, and want their singers down there with ’em, there are many hours of the week in which I will be happy (in a way) to oblige, I guess. No sense denying that one anymore.

Popshifter: Well put. In the couple of times I’ve been around you, you’ve certainly never struck me as a “morose” kind of guy at all, but it seems like almost every Castanets review I’ve read makes some mention of “dark.” I guess it’s always seemed to me that you can’t have dark without light as well, and I’ve felt that a lot of that was present in the music, if you’re paying attention.

I was just re-reading some comments on Daytrotter you made about “Three Days, Four Nights,” [from 2004’s Cathedral] and you said one of the songs from Vines was a sequel. . . ?

Ray: “Rain Will Come.”

Popshifter: Before I forget to ask, when are City of Refuge and all the other things due out?

Ray: Refuge is coming out in August or September; its sister record maybe a month behind. DVD is some time in the spring; not sure what the date is on that. There’s an EP that comes with it, too, with some covers (Deer Tick, Jana), remixes, outtakes, and live stuff. The Secret Record’s release is still being negotiated and the Powers mixes’ll be done with Tara Jane when I get back up to Portland in the summer. With mojitos in hand.

Thanks to Ray for taking the time to do this interview. . .

Additional Resources:

Castanets’ DVD Tendrils is out now, is awesome, and includes a bonus download of an accompanying EP. Also available are the albums Cathedral, First Light’s Freeze, and In The Vines, all on Asthmatic Kitty.

Ray and company are currently touring the EU and UK. Dates and more info are at the band’s MySpace page.

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