Audio By Carbonatix
The incessantly morose Seattle band Fences is coming up fast. Their self-titled album was released at the end of September 2010, and ever since then the band has been popping up on a variety of you-oughta-know lists.
Christopher Mansfield, the songwriter and voice of Fences, had the pleasure of co-producing the album with Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara. The band is also enjoying their time on the road with Against Me!, who they’ll be opening for tonight at the Nile Theater.
Up On The Sun spoke with Mansfield about melancholy, collaborations, and drawing inspiration from Seattle’s music scene.
UOTS: You’ve opened up for St. Vincent and Mark Kozelek,
and you’re going on tour with Against Me! and Cheap Girls. What artist
would be your dream pick to worth with?
Christopher Mansfied: I think I said a long time ago that two
of my real long-term musical goals were to play with Bonnie “Prince”
Billy and to be on Conan O’Brien. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, I just want to
play a show with him. Starting out, he was one of my favorites. I met
him twice. I think the first time I met him, I wasn’t able to talk, and
the second time I think I may have cried afterwards or something.
UOTS: You also got to work with Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara. What was that like?
CM: It was really cool. We sort of developed a good rapport
before working together, so it wasn’t going like going in to work with a
stranger necessarily. She had a lot of respect for the songs and wanted
to further the songs really honestly the same way that I did, so she
sort of had similar integrity with the music, as well as [with] me even
though she didn’t write it. She had heard the old demos, so she maybe
has some sort of attachment to the purity of the song and didn’t want to
just blow it out [into] this big pop extravaganza. Musically, we have a
lot of similarities stylistically, so it was super painless and really
fun.
UOTS: Your self-titled debut album was on SPIN’s list of 10
Best Albums You Might Have Missed in 2010, and you’re also being
featured in Alternative Press’s 100 Musicians You Need to Know. How did
you suddenly catch fire in the industry? What was the turning point that
led to all these people are finding out about you now?
CM: Well it’s a funny thing because I think to people who
aren’t in my immediate circle, be it business or musicians or friends,
it seems very out of nowhere. It happens pretty slowly, so when it
happens, it feels like that’s what’s supposed to happen now. Obviously
there’s probably some sort of commercial market that has been reached
with the help of someone like Sara, but in general it’s just been kind
of grassroots. I try to write good songs and hopefully people like. Some
people have liked them a lot and some people haven’t.
You just kind of keep doing it, and someone hears it and shows it to
someone else who shows it to someone else. It’s sporadic. Someone showed
it to Sara, who showed it someone [else] who might’ve showed it to
someone from SPIN. It just kind of works like that. It’s actually not as
hard as I thought it would be. It’s cool that you can kind of put your
head down and focus on the artwork, and people will find it as they’re
supposed to.
UOTS: Your music is sort of melancholy. Why be “forever bummed?”
CM: I don’t know. It’s not really how I feel as a person. If
Fences were a person, that would be the emotion of Fences as a band. I’m
not really a depressed guy at all. This morning I was sitting by the
ocean and it’s sunny and beautiful, but I was writing a terribly
depressing song. That’s just how it is with this band. I could one day
play in a different kind of band, but I just feel like when I’m in the
creative realm for this music, it comes from a place like that. It’s fun
to me to get to go there a lot. I guess I’m a dramatic person, so it
feels good to be dramatic.
UOTS: You recently tweeted that you bought a Moog. Do you plan on incorporating it into some of your future music?
CM: Yeah. It’s actually on the album a lot. It’s a low bass
synthesizer. My bass player’s been using it for a few months. We were
actually renting one for a while. Then he had something called an ARP,
which is a low bass synthesizer, but it’s really vintage and we didn’t
want to tour with that. So I bought [the Moog]. It’s on the record.
Sometimes you can’t tell what it is. But even on something like the
chorus on “From Roses,” the low sustaining note is a Moog.
UOTS: The band is from Seattle, which is a city with an
unbelievable musical legacy. How do you work the greatness of Seattle’s
famous artists into your own music, if at all?
CM: I don’t think that any of us directly draw from Seattle
music intentionally. Not to be cliché, but it feels like there’s
something in the air sometimes. There are just a lot of cool bands. A
lot of our friends are in amazing bands. That’s not to say that every
city doesn’t have amazing bands and stuff. It seems like that’s what
people do: you might work at the bar or a coffee shop, but you might be a
genius. I know some people in Seattle that have the most amazing
potential [who are in] super impressive bands. A lot of transplants go
there too. Maybe [people] weren’t doing so well where they were from,
but then they came to Seattle… It’s really conducive to music. I can’t
really put my finger on it.
UOTS: I loved the repeating line about talking with your hands. What’s the story behind the song “Hands”?
CM: It feels juvenile to me now because that was one of the
first songs I ever wrote. The metaphor [can be] literal. When you pick
up on something that someone does and you love somebody, [maybe] they do
really talk with their hands. The way a girl talks and she looks to the
side or [touches] her hair…the little things that you really like
about someone when you have a crush on them or whatever… I also [was
referring to] the awkward [experience] when you’re first in bed with
somebody and you’re exploring and touching each other. It’s really
weird. You don’t want to literally speak, so that’s kind of what I
meant. I wrote that song when I was a love-obsessed young man. I find
that song kind of corny to me sometimes. [It was] a weird little phase.
UOTS: You had a pretty busy end of the year in 2010. What’s next for Fences?
CM: The album came out in October, so it’s been out for a few
months of the last year. We’re going to do this tour and do South By
Southwest. We got booked on Lollapalooza. There are a bunch of tours
we’re trying to catch. It’s all up in the air. As far as new stuff,
we’ve recorded maybe five songs in the studio. We’re going to keep doing
demos, and maybe by the end of the year we’ll go in to record. But for
now we’re going to keep working this album and keep touring with it
because new mediums are finding out about the band. I don’t think [the
album] has seen its full potential. There are still so many more people
that haven’t even heard this first record.
