When Kevin and Anita Robinson of Viva Voce finished their
extensive tour last year, they knew they wanted to approach the next
project differently. So rather than begin another album as a duo, as
they had done for so many years—with each of them playing and
overdubbing all the parts—they aimed to try something more
spontaneous. It became clear their next project would be “something
distinctly different from Viva Voce,” says Kevin. “It began with songs
that, for lack of a better term, were just something ‘else’—more
organic than what we’d been doing up to that point. We’d played with
some friends before we went on our last tour, so we knew when we got
home we had some assembly required.”
They asked Evan Railton, formerly of the Swords Project, and Seth
Lorinczi, of the Golden Bears, to join them in the new endeavor. Says
Lorinczi, “I think Kevin and Anita felt constrained by the format of
Viva Voce—just the two of them, playing with a pretty dense
prerecorded backing for the most part.” The four recorded an EP,
without “any expectations of what it was supposed to be or turn into,”
continues Lorinczi. “It was all very low key and fun, just hanging out
in the studio and playing.”
The band—and it became quite clear that what they were dealing
with was an actual band—is called Blue Giant and their
tunes are remarkably different from Viva Voce’s swirling psychedelic
kaleidoscope. Several of the songs are rooted in traditional country
music, reflecting a greater piece of former Alabamians Kevin and
Anita’s Southern heritage.
“Target Heart” uses the ponderous 3/2 beat-and-a-half of the Kinks’
“Strangers” to tell a story of being hopelessly defeated by love over
and over again. It’s indie rock gone American Gothic, with its
hymn-like melody and unhurried pace evoking devotion in a potent and
powerful way. Meanwhile, Anita sings “Lonely Girl,” a blue-sky country
song that juxtaposes the purity of Loretta Lynn with the 12-string
jangle of the Byrds.
The desperation and fatalism of some of the songs, though, is
largely just storytelling; Blue Giant took advantage of the new format
and its resultant freedom to don different guises and try different
voices, with the hope of creating and conveying moods in their
entirety.
“The songs I’ve been writing for Blue Giant are just
that—stories,” says Kevin. “Tall tales. Fiction as opposed to an
autobiography, I reckon. Sometimes it’s nice to relate to a character
in a story, rather than just hearing about someone else’s broken
heart.”
Attendees of Blue Giant’s debut show this Friday, June 20, will
receive a digital copy of the EP included in their ticket price, and
Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney will be appearing as a special guest,
which hints at the epic possibility of dueling lead guitars between her
and Anita. It’s just the start of a project that’ll include an album
later this year.
As Kevin says, “We’ll start recording the full-length soon after the
show at the Wonder. This is a deliberate change for us; we’ve typically
recorded, then performed the songs. But, yes—there will be
more live shows, and a proper release of the EP and LP in the short
future.”