Alternative Press – November, 1993
Slack Attack
“There’s this kind of
tension here,” guitarist/drummer Berry adds. “Everyone’s focused on what
they’re doing. It’s not a friendly city—it’s kind of cold and impersonal.”
While that sense of
tension and isolation are present in Idaho’s sound, blending meditative, deep
tenor vocals with tenuous guitar chords and scorching feedback. Like Los
Angeles’ hot, arid, hazy climate, Idaho, on The Palms EP and new Year After
Year album (both on Caroline), can be enveloping, intoxicating, even
mesmerizing, hiding beauty in its stultifying ether. Songs like “God’s Green
Earth,” “Memorial Day,” and “One Sunday” bring to mind slow motion images of
girls in tank tops mopping their faces with cold soda cans; a homeless man
rolling over as he tries to sleep on the baking sidewalk; lovers holding each
other by the neck, kissing foreheads; a car , the
roadside, its radiator venting like a geyser. In short, the
soundtrack for an indian summer.
Martin admits the scenic
views from his home-built Piercing Sound Studio play inspirational role. “It
either helps it or hampers it. It’s just so nice up there that you can get
lazy, stare off into space...” A quality definitely present
in the music.
“Yeah, the stuff I’ve done
with John has always been like that,” Martin agrees, we’ve always made this
kind of creepy, lonely stuff.”
Though they’ve known each
other and played together for twelve years, Martin and Berry come at their muse
from nearly opposite perspectives. The for-attended private prep school, learned classical piano, composition and studio
engineering, playing for hire on tours with famous names he’d rather not
mention. The latter, well...
“You don’t work for the
National Enquirer”?” Berry asks this interviewer over the phone. “I’ve been
burned by them. They tracked me down and they waned to do a story on my dad.”
Berry, as it turns out, is son of television actor Ken Berry (Mayberry R.F.D.,
F Troop). “I was broke at the time and they kind of suckered me into talking to
them for money.” That’s only one of many archetypal Hollywood experiences the
younger Berry has packed into his 29 years—playing in bands since the late
‘70s. hanging out on the LA. punk
scene with friends in the Dils, Deadbeats and
Blasters (“I actually had the banner from the Masque for a while”), and
acquiring a habitual taste for heroin. “I used to see Anthony from the Chili
Peppers around,” he recalls, “he and his girl on one corner, me and mine on the
other, waiting for the same pusher” After a few possession raps, a parole
violation led Berry to a couple months hard time in the L.A. County jail. “It’s
a very real experience,” he says, “getting to learn the underbelly of society,
and how many scumbags there are in the world.”
Berry doesn’t deny that
his experiences affect his music: “I think junkies, I mean ex-junkies, like the
kind of sad, melancholic music. I do.”
“His life’s been a very
bumpy road,” Martin says of his partner. “I’ve always been fascinated by it,
and I guess I pick up on that energy. I find a lot of my lyrics, especially on
his songs, have this kind of gloomy, doomish thing.”
Critics have already picked up on that vibe, using words like distraught,
devastating, sombre, melancholy, ennui, hopelessness
(and that’s just one review!), which leaves Idaho faced with the question of
whether they have a fascination with death.
“I would say not really,”
Admitting the influences
of Codeine, Red House Painters, Leonard Cohen (Martin adds Sebadoh,
Pavement, Nick Drake; Berry notes Crime and the City Solution, Swans, Neil
Young) the pair now look forward to a progression from the sound Martin
describes as “kind modern blues, a catharsis thing.” Up to now they’ve
performed most of the instrumentation themselves—Martin using a customized
four-string guitar—but this July,
—Eric Gladstone