The difference between Year 1 and Year 4 is sometimes immeasurable. We’re talking about bands, here; at least, their germination. Or, maybe blooming is a prettier word? Not evolution, that’s clichéd. Let’s call it genre-germination.
When we spoke with Fort Lean, we reminded them how, four years prior, many early listeners expected they’d be a peg that would fit the hole of a Strokes-ian surf-pop band, all full of jangle and summer-vibed jubilance.
“Yeah…no, that is absolutely true…” says Zach Fried, guitarist and co-founder of the group. “I think you just hit the nail on the head. When we started (Fort Lean) and recorded that first EP, we weren’t doing it with a great sense of intent, yet. Back then, we had put the group of people together…” (and that group, formed back in late 2010, is Sam Ubi-drums, Jake Aron-bass, Keenan Mitchell-vocals/guitar and Will Runge-drums) “…and we liked playing music together and we just recorded (the first EP’s) songs basically so we could be able to start booking shows in New York with our friends’ bands and it kinda took on a life of its own that we weren’t expecting…”
Essentially, this New York based quintet had to put some gas in the tank to get their engine humming. With a record ready to go, it could be a launchpad for more live shows. But that was 2011; now, we all dug the cool, cartwheeling hooks and frothy reverb of their head-turning breakout singles like (the tellingly titled) “Beach Holiday,” but now they’re showing their chameleonic colors. (Wait, is that redundant? Doesn’t matter.) The point is that they’re not surf-pop; they’ve got a surplus of weirder-yet-still-fun-facets to show off, particularly on this year’s Quiet Day (on Ooh La La Records.)
“Right,” says Fried. “Now, we’re a few years in, we’ve got a bit more perspective. And, when you think about making an album, versus an E.P., it has a different weight to it. We knew, going in, that we wanted to expand our own conception of what the band is and what it could become while also expanding the possible conception for the audience of what we were capable of.”
When it comes to working out songs, Fort Lean’s knights are setting their swords (er…guitars?) upon a democratically round table. So, yes, it’s evident that you’ll see bands sculpt a much more eclectic pop song (albeit still familiar in its contours) when each of the players are edging the material together, but with their own uniquely curved blade.
Now, this group met, bonded and formed around art school in the late 2000’s (Wesleyan University), so you can anticipate Fried to be an all-too-willing partner playing along with our metaphors as we try to describe their essence.
“A song exists almost as its own organism,” says Fried. “And, we’re responding to what’s already there, to the vibe of it. I’m thinking of the song, “Quiet Day…” We took it further in the studio and wound up adding this melody to it that comes in toward the end and then there’s this high, kinda piercing psychedelic, weird, dark sound that comes in…That song, particularly, we thought of as being very cinematic and we tried to bolster those elements about it without going overboard, but still making it kinda grand.”
The band members each have backgrounds in the arts, which lead not only to visually striking album art and particularly vivid (and sometimes haunting) music videos, but also meant that their “cinematic” ambitions swirled together into a shared sublime realization; a three minute pop-song, per se, that is flush with evocative tones, bent and blustered with a measured amount of ambient-noise experimentation and yet, through it all, never distracted from its main purpose—the propulsive, freeing and flying vibe of pure pop-rock.
“One thing we talked about from the beginning is the name of the band indicating a place,” Fried said. “And we like the idea of being able to help transport people to that place in their mind, that place that is familiar and yet weird. It’s like achieving a slightly warped sense of reality or, really, a warped sense of familiarity.”