Band of the Week: Anathallo

Hometown: Mount Pleasant, Mich.
Members: Matt Joynt – vocals, keys, guitar; Daniel Bracken – guitar; Seth Walker – bass; Bret Wallin – trombone, percussion, vocals; Nathan Sandberg – horns, percussion, vocals; Andrew Dost – vocals, keys, horns, percussion; Joel Thiele – drums, vocals
Why they’re worth checking out: With a hearty array of trombones, trumpets and drums, as well as glockenspiels, chains and melodicas, Anathallo is not unlike a high-school marching band gone indie rock.
For fans of: Animal Collective, Sufjan Stevens, The Books

Chances are Anathallo has probably played your city two or three times. But you’ve never heard of them. What would you be doing at that basement show, anyway? And that’s not even to mention that all-ages gig at the youth center.

Over the past five years, Anathallo has toured coast-to-coast driving two vans to extinction, all without the aid of a booking agent, professional publicity or even a nationally distributed record. “I suppose it’s natural in the sense that we don’t know anything else,” says 22-year old frontman Matt Joynt. “This whole thing began as a teenage adventure that somehow never had to stop.”

Joynt and his six bandmates from an unassuming central Michigan college town were still in high school when they formed. While initially conceived as something akin to a youthful post-punk Stomp! ensemble, Anathallo has been through several incarnations, both stylistically and personnel-wise. The band’s fifth release, Floating World, is tentatively scheduled for a January release. “[By this album] we exorcized the demons of our teenage angst and our necks began to hurt from all the head banging,” Joynt says. “I think we just found different dynamics and structures fascinating and challenging. The Beach Boys reentered the picture, as well as some Russian composers and Nathan’s roots in Jazz. Oh, and Yes. The band, I mean.”

Characteristically, Anathallo will self release the new record, but Joynt and his bandmates are mindful of what the future might entail. “As far as the industry of music is concerned,” Joynt says, “we try to keep our heads in a different world. But we aren’t wary of growing out of what we’ve done in the past, as long as there is balance, and the artistic integrity of the group is never compromised for cheesy publicity campaigns, sales, etc.”

Thematically based—at least in part—around Japanese folklore, the full-length marks a significant first for the band: the use of a proper studio. While past projects involved recording in mobile homes and living rooms, in late September Anathallo traveled to Atlanta producer Matt Goldman’s studio for drum tracking. But, in typical fashion, the band returned to Michigan for all-night recording at a local high school and a band member’s storage closet.

The songs on Floating World began to materialize in 2003, but with members scattered across colleges in Michigan and Illinois, the band’s often-collaborative songwriting was put on hold. Now, with several members graduated, and others dropped out, the band has committed to music full-time. “I’m not sure if it’s inevitable that we enter into the world of labels, promotion, tour support, but we aren’t against it either,” Joynt says. “I know that among the hundreds of vacant promises and ‘I have to work with your band’ people who want to have their name tagged on the next flash in the pan, there are honest people who love music and know how to work for its success in the commercial world. We haven’t met many of them yet, but we know they must be out there, right?”

Undoubtedly, Anathallo’s grassroots success is indebted to the band’s impressive live performances. Incorporating random objects like scissors, Velcro and balloons as percussion devices, at any given moment the seven-piece group might be blowing into trombones and melodicas, or kneeling onstage pounding the several bass drums that always line the stage. It’s cacophonous and dizzying, but simultaneously tender and gripping without any trace of sentimentality. Anathallo nestles itself somewhere between Ian MacKaye’s DIY ethos and Sigur Rós’s pointed emotionality.

Impulse generally rules rock music. What Anathallo does so well is use that inherent urge to maintain rock’s categorically emotive characteristics, while still implementing a measured structure. The result is something almost symphonic.

“We found, like most artists do,” says Joynt, “that when we placed limitations on songs—‘won’t have a loud climactic moment,’ ‘will have a more standard song structure,’ ‘no three-against-four section’—we were forced to look into things that were a little less comfortable and familiar.”