On the Freedom of Lo-fidelity and Being Indie in Indiana
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Knoxville Voice, March 2007
“I just like trying to find the right balance between work and inspiration,” says Chris Barth, singer/guitarist and mastermind behind Bloomington, Ind., psych-pop collective The Impossible Shapes. Barth was just a teenager when the Shapes began recording their unbridled brand of indie rock in the late ’90s, and, though his creative process has changed a bit over the past decade, his appreciation for a spontaneous moment certainly has not.
“When I first started writing songs, it basically involved throwing things to tape on the spot,” recalls Barth, who still champions the lo-fi, four-track recording technique. “I always want to have that going on in some way, where it’s just a raw, intuitive, immediate thing that hasn’t been over-thought too much.”
Still, any good musician will eventually have to succumb to some degree of discipline, and over the course of the Shapes’ six full-length albums, Barth has learned to integrate the freedom of the recording process with a more contemplative pre-jam regimen.
“I will usually start with a very small lyrical or musical theme—maybe just a couple notes put together—and expand upon it depending on whatever music or art I might be into at that particular time. I’m definitely working more with words than I was back then. It’s just more important to me now to sculpt the perfect phrase, rather than just sort of haphazardly throwing words together.”
Of course, once a song has taken a form to Barth’s liking, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will find its way into an Impossible Shapes recording session. Like many bands in the exploding Bloomington scene, the members of the Shapes divide their time among a number of separate projects. Barth has released solo material under the pseudonym Normanoak, bassist/keyboardist Aaron Deer records as the Horns of Happiness, drummer Mark Rice plays with the Coke Dares and Magnolia Electric Co., and guitarist Peter King has just returned to the band after focusing on his own group, Buffalino. If that weren’t enough, all four men are members of another very popular Bloomington band, John Wilkes Booze. It might seem a little chaotic, but Barth sees the good and bad of the circumstances as it relates to the Shapes.
“The advantage, and I think everyone would agree, is just to be able to get away from each other for a while —to play music with other people, or even just on your own, in the case of myself,” he says. “I’m a pretty demanding person, so when I can work on things on my own, there is something about that I just love and need to do sometimes.”
And the negatives?
“For me, I think the main disadvantage is that when you’re practicing as a group in preparation for something, we don’t often have the time to get together and really just play around for fun with no goal, you know?” he says. “I wish we had more time to do that, and I do wish we had more time to tour, as well. I mean, we split our touring time up between so many bands. That can be a good thing, too, but part of me just wants to travel more with this band.”
One thing Barth has no regrets about is being in Bloomington, where the Shapes have spent several years under contract to one of indie rock’s most respected and rapidly growing labels, Secretly Canadian.
“Well, staying in Bloomington, and being with Secretly Canadian, no matter how you look at it, has had a big effect on our musical lives,” he says. “I think that it’s just a really special place, no matter what you’re doing, and I’m grateful to be here and to know the people that I know.”
Barth says that being prolific is a lot easier when you have a support system of bands and friends around you. It also has allowed the Shapes the artistic freedom to follow up a woodland acid-rock album like 2005’s Horus with a twisting, freestyle folk experiment like Tum. Still, the jury is out on whether the Impossible Shapes will eventually enjoy the same breakout success many of their label mates have experienced.
“I’m sure there have been people who have gotten into us because of the [Secretly Canadian] name,” Barth says. “But on the whole, I don’t know. We might be on the verge of something bigger, but that whole notion is just becoming a little silly. It seems to be such a random process, in terms of what bands become really popular. I try not to be conscious of that sort of thing. But you know, you can’t go to South by Southwest without realizing that there a lot of bands trying to make it big.”
He pauses and chuckles a bit. “Which is why I don’t like going to that festival anymore.”
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