Solid Gold
The local trio talks about their overseas success and their approach to Gesamtkunstwerk.
Solid Gold used to haul organs around on tour, but increased recognition abroad has forced the Madison-spawned, Minneapolis-based trio to travel light, limiting its luggage to keyboards, guitars, basses, laptops, self-designed costumes, and lighting equipment. Rotating instruments between songs, Zach Coulter, Adam Hurlburt, and Matt Locher create an atmospheric, digital sound that’s smooth, spooky, danceable, and in the truncated words of bloggers worldwide, “sxy.” In 2007, between playing SXSW, New York, and Chicago, the band performed at Vice magazine’s pub in London and at the Iceland Airwaves Festival in Reykjavik. Shortly before the release of its recent Who You Gonna Run To? EP, the group sat down with Decider to talk about travels past and future, and its new Bodies Of Water, scheduled for release this summer.
Decider: Did you really record Bodies Of Water in a frozen shed in the forest?
Adam Hurlburt: We started recording at my cabin in northern Wisconsin.
Matt Locher: Mostly to get away from the city, because the tone of the album is dark and very melancholy. The more upbeat and urban songs we recorded in the city.
Zach Coulter: [Our music has] always been influenced by art, lights, cities, movement.
ML: Our approach has always been our hands on the product. [For the new album], a guerilla recording style suited our needs and suited the means that we had, which was basically a budget of zero.
ZC: But, if we wanted an opera part, we found one. If we wanted a string quartet, we got it. We wanted a grand piano, we wanted banjos—we got them. What pleases me about the album is the communal feel.
ML: The three of us have a great time playing with each other and love writing with each other, but it’s when we get to involve a bigger group that it’s really enlightening.
D: Do you tend to collaborate mostly with Twin Cities artists?
ZC: We have friends here, but we don’t necessarily consider ourselves a Minneapolis band. In part because we didn’t have our formative years here, and also because I don’t think we fit in very well. We have a lot of people we like to work with here, but for some reason we do better in Iceland than Minneapolis. We’re signing autographs in Reykjavik; we come back home and can’t even get listed in a paper.
D: Did the warm welcome abroad come as a surprise?
ZC: We knew in our heads we were making a good product and that it might translate better to other cultures. I don’t think we necessarily have an Americana kind of sound, or an indie-rock kind of sound. But we can go over well with DJs, in dance clubs, with rock crowds [overseas].
ML: It was a humbling experience when our official festival show in Iceland was sold out— there were 400 people there, 100 people outside trying to get in—and then we came back to Minneapolis a week later and played 7th Street [Entry] to 17 of our good friends. [Laughs.] It’s refreshing to have a humbling moment like that, but it’s just, like, I guess this isn’t our city. We’ve always regarded it as a pit stop on our way somewhere else. The thing is, any kind of creative media that you’re involved in, you think that you’re the best, and you want everyone to love it. Whenever you run into people who don’t—naturally, you talk shit.
AH: But, normally, it doesn’t come out in an interview.
ML: [Laughs.] I’m glad this is being recorded. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
D: What’s after the pit stop?
AH: A mansion in the south of France. [Laughs.]
ZC: We definitely want to go back to Europe this year.
ML: Tokyo is our next destination.
ZC: Our buddy WOTLIE, who does two remixes on the EP, is a huge DJ in Tokyo and he’s trying to get promoters to fly us over there. Hopefully, that will happen in May or June. South America is another horizon we’re looking to, and we’re going to go back to Reykjavik as soon as possible. The vibe we got [there] was absolutely amazing.
AH: The coolest art.
D: The visual-arts component seems important to the band.
ZC: Matt is really big into design, T-shirt making and screen-printing.
AH: Matt’s our Martha Stewart.
ML: There’s an old German word, Gesamtkunstwerk, which means “The complete work.” It’s the theory that an art presentation should be a complete thing. We’re in a band, it should look good, it should sound good, it should feel good—in all facets. I didn’t ever want to be in a band just to play a local bar. I’ve always had delusions of grandeur.
Adam Hurlburt: We started recording at my cabin in northern Wisconsin.
Matt Locher: Mostly to get away from the city, because the tone of the album is dark and very melancholy. The more upbeat and urban songs we recorded in the city.
Zach Coulter: [Our music has] always been influenced by art, lights, cities, movement.
ML: Our approach has always been our hands on the product. [For the new album], a guerilla recording style suited our needs and suited the means that we had, which was basically a budget of zero.
ZC: But, if we wanted an opera part, we found one. If we wanted a string quartet, we got it. We wanted a grand piano, we wanted banjos—we got them. What pleases me about the album is the communal feel.
ML: The three of us have a great time playing with each other and love writing with each other, but it’s when we get to involve a bigger group that it’s really enlightening.
D: Do you tend to collaborate mostly with Twin Cities artists?
ZC: We have friends here, but we don’t necessarily consider ourselves a Minneapolis band. In part because we didn’t have our formative years here, and also because I don’t think we fit in very well. We have a lot of people we like to work with here, but for some reason we do better in Iceland than Minneapolis. We’re signing autographs in Reykjavik; we come back home and can’t even get listed in a paper.
D: Did the warm welcome abroad come as a surprise?
ZC: We knew in our heads we were making a good product and that it might translate better to other cultures. I don’t think we necessarily have an Americana kind of sound, or an indie-rock kind of sound. But we can go over well with DJs, in dance clubs, with rock crowds [overseas].
ML: It was a humbling experience when our official festival show in Iceland was sold out— there were 400 people there, 100 people outside trying to get in—and then we came back to Minneapolis a week later and played 7th Street [Entry] to 17 of our good friends. [Laughs.] It’s refreshing to have a humbling moment like that, but it’s just, like, I guess this isn’t our city. We’ve always regarded it as a pit stop on our way somewhere else. The thing is, any kind of creative media that you’re involved in, you think that you’re the best, and you want everyone to love it. Whenever you run into people who don’t—naturally, you talk shit.
AH: But, normally, it doesn’t come out in an interview.
ML: [Laughs.] I’m glad this is being recorded. Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
D: What’s after the pit stop?
AH: A mansion in the south of France. [Laughs.]
ZC: We definitely want to go back to Europe this year.
ML: Tokyo is our next destination.
ZC: Our buddy WOTLIE, who does two remixes on the EP, is a huge DJ in Tokyo and he’s trying to get promoters to fly us over there. Hopefully, that will happen in May or June. South America is another horizon we’re looking to, and we’re going to go back to Reykjavik as soon as possible. The vibe we got [there] was absolutely amazing.
AH: The coolest art.
D: The visual-arts component seems important to the band.
ZC: Matt is really big into design, T-shirt making and screen-printing.
AH: Matt’s our Martha Stewart.
ML: There’s an old German word, Gesamtkunstwerk, which means “The complete work.” It’s the theory that an art presentation should be a complete thing. We’re in a band, it should look good, it should sound good, it should feel good—in all facets. I didn’t ever want to be in a band just to play a local bar. I’ve always had delusions of grandeur.
