Talkdemonic

A Study in Contrasts

By Bob Ham Photos by Anthony Georgis

On a particularly warm Saturday evening in Portland, Kevin O’Connor and Lisa Molinaro, the two musicians that make up the all-instrumental band Talkdemonic, are drinking in the sunshine — along with a few beers — and discussing the music they’ve been listening to of late.

O’Connor: “The new Horse Feathers album ... I went through a really big Cure phase recently, all those warm synth sounds ... I was really into Bob Dylan’s Desire ... Thee More Shallows.”

Molinaro: “I’m listening to two very different veins of music. I love country music, so listening to old Willie [Nelson]. Mostly I listen to string music. Really whacked-out, super dissonant stuff. I’m really into the interplay between dissonance and harmony, like John Coragliano and The Cleveland String Quartet and [Gyorgy] Ligeti. I have a hard time getting into modern pop and indie stuff.”

Exchanges such as these have been going on between bandmates for decades, but within this conversation lies the essence of what makes Talkdemonic such a thrilling young band: the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate approaches and ideas about music.

True, there are plenty of adventurous music fans that would be just as keen to put a copy of The Head on the Door on their record player as they would a recording of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna. But combining those two concepts — pure pop with decidedly gloomy undertones, modern classical that revels in atonal chords and thick washes of sound — without the results sounding like an unholy mess, is something for far more advanced musical minds.

That is precisely what Talkdemonic has two of: extremely intelligent players and songwriters that enjoy working in contrasts. Or as O’Connor puts it when discussing his songwriting process, “developing ideas and trying them out with other songs and other ideas to see how they work — even ones that weren’t necessarily meant for each other.”

When all the pieces fit perfectly, they make for a brilliant mélange of sound, one that is in full bloom on Eyes at Half Mast, the duo’s forthcoming third album (their second for Arena Rock Recording). The mashing together of their influences is evident throughout the new recording (i.e. soulful melodies, surges of dissonant noise, the gentle tug of quiet folk music). It is matched by a cinematic expansiveness and some of the most expressive playing that Talkdemonic has done.

“Sonically, I think it sounds a lot better [than the band’s previous two albums],” says Molinaro. “The sound is a lot closer to you. Whether you’re playing it loud or soft, I feel like it’s more immediate and there’s an urgency to it.” Molinaro attributes that immediacy to both “the evolution of my playing and my more serious attention to intonation, articulation and expression” and O’Connor’s growth as a producer and engineer. “Kevin has come a long way in developing a great sound while recording,” Molinaro says. “He’s advanced so much, and the record just sounds really good. Really warm and strong.”

Talkdemonic’s juxtaposition of approaches is palpable on Eyes, but the seamless blending is a testament to each member’s strengths and their insight into what the other wants to achieve musically. “The music happens so naturally,” says O’Connor. “I’ll play Lisa a song and say, ‘Oh, I’m working on this’ and we’ll be practicing and she’ll bust out this killer part, and I’ll be like, ‘Dude, that’s totally it and it’s totally awesome.’”

Typical of the band’s recording process, Eyes was pieced together with O’Connor laying the foundations of the songs in his home studio space. The basic tracks took the better part of a year to get completely squared away, and only later were Molinaro’s string parts added in a final recording push. “The bulk of it was done over eight days,” she remembers. “Every day, all day, 12 hours a day.”

“Kind of a slumber party atmosphere,” O’Connor recalls. He is also quick to point out that despite the fact that a song is 75 percent complete by the time his bandmate hears it, the songwriting on the new album “was a collaboration. Even if the different parts happened separately, I still feel like we both wrote all the songs.”

Molinaro agrees, adding that it “felt really good to come together that way. It’s not always that way. Sometimes we’ll write songs together, but it just happened that Kevin had a large bank of songs that he’d been working on and they were awesome.”

The two have written material together in the past, including two songs on the band’s previous record, Beat Romantic, the core of which was cooked up by Molinaro. But the proven method thus far for Talkdemonic has been O’Connor doing most of the musical work initially on his own, a system that has been in place since the band’s first album, Mutiny Sunshine.

Originally conceived as a solo project, O’Connor put that recording together not long after moving to Portland from Eastern Washington in 2002. “I had been partying way too much the first year and a half I was here,” he says. “I knew that I wanted to make music more than anything. So I sold my [Gibson] SG and got this beat machine, the Yamaha 7000, and started recording songs and ideas on it.”

It was working with Molinaro, who O’Connor had met while sharing a bill playing with a different band and who later contributed strings to the first Talkdemonic record, that convinced him to turn the project into an actual band. “I think I always wanted Lisa to be a part of it,” says O’Connor. “It was always so much better when we played together. And it’s a lot more fun to play with people than by yourself with a computer.”

This became the first band that Molinaro had ever joined, despite having played plenty of one-off gigs and helping friends in the studio (she has recently been filling in for Peter Broderick at Horse Feathers’ live dates and was also the touring viola player for The Decemberists during a recent U.S. tour). The classically trained musician came to Portland after dropping out of music school in Florida, in search of “music, change, youth, action, activity, activism,” she says.

Although Molinaro did find all of that and more in her new hometown, the most significant asset of her move to Portland was the musical and personal friendship she shares with her Talkdemonic bandmate. “We know each other inside and out,” says O’Connor, “and we work together better than we ever have.” The two have an evident ease with one another, so evident in fact that it has led a great number of people to the assumption that they are romantically linked.

“We’ve been asked about that many, many times,” says Molinaro, “usually at the merch table on the road. People just assume that because you’re on tour and playing music together that you must be sexual partners.” Adds O’Connor, “We have a stock response to the question that’s shocking and usually makes people speechless. You’ll have to come to the merch table to get it, though.”

Before and since the release of Beat Romantic, Talkdemonic has spent a fair amount of time behind the merch table, doing U.S. tours with the likes of The National and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, as well as their own West Coast jaunts. It has established their reputation as a dynamic live act, due in no small part to O’Connor’s expressive and sometimes aggressive drumming.

Although they both like the touring lifestyle, the two have very different mindsets about it. Whereas O’Connor thrives on those 45 minutes spent performing, Molinaro has “trouble reconciling these ideas of art and performance and music. No matter whom you’re doing it for or why you are doing it, it’s a reproduction,” she says. “Even our music is in and of itself part reproduction. When you a write a song and then play it to death on tour, that I find to be one of the most challenging things.”

Another challenge comes in recreating the lush, complex sound of their albums in a live setting. Talkdemonic does perform along with some pre-recorded tracks, removing those parts that they can recreate onstage. In the past it has meant stripping back their sound considerably, but nowadays, Molinaro is finding ways to remake the dense string parts. She explains, “I’ve begun using a loop pedal, which helps fill the sound. I am much happier with this setup — I like creating my parts on stage.” This setup also gives Molinaro plenty of room to reinterpret her string arrangements, as well as the opportunity for more variety. “My parts vary from show to show,” she says, “and it’s proving to be challenging, which I’m always up for.”

With as much thought and energy as Talkdemonic put into its live show, it stands to reason that when asked about the highlights of her time on the road, Molinaro favors those moments of “quietude in the midst of the chaos of touring.” This could be relaxing in the hot tub at the Stardust in Vegas (a much-needed repose after the band had half its gear stolen in Denver), or standing on a rooftop in Brooklyn enjoying the sunset and the New York skyline.

The two are in complete accord about wanting to take their tour to Europe to play some shows. “I think we’re gonna do great there,” says Molinaro. O’Connor agrees, saying that a lot of the delay is just a matter of “getting it done right. We just need to find someone to help us out. Could that be the title of the article: ‘We Need a Euro Booking Agent’?”

Although Talkdemonic will concentrate on touring in the months surrounding Eyes At Half Mast’s September 2 release date, both O’Connor and Molinaro are clearly enjoying having the album done and having time to focus on their own pursuits. For O’Connor, it’s helping run Lucky Madison Records and working as a substitute teacher. Molinaro, on the other hand, is restoring a violin and being “really domestic,” she says. “I’m pretty radical in my views, kind of a post-feminist mindset, but I still love to bake and cook and sew.”

In the midst of this, the band will be booking time to work on new material. “We work ahead of ourselves a lot,” says O’Connor, “and write stuff, get it together and play it at shows for about a year, and then put it out.”

If there’s anything that Talkdemonic can come to a true consensus on, it is that they love playing music together no matter what the situation. “I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next,” says Molinaro. “Anything could happen. We could do it the exact same way, which gives me more time to work on more challenging parts, or we’ll write the next record from scratch in the basement. It can go anywhere.”

www.talkdemonic.com