After awhile, I just realized that that wasn’t important to me, that I’d still play music even though nobody cared.” I’ve been playing music for so long, and for most of the time nobody paid any attention, nobody cared. “It’s not even a consideration when we’re making music.” A minute later, he resumes that train of thought: “I’m happy when people like the record, but when they don’t I don’t see that there’s anything I can really do about it necessarily. “I have no idea what type of person listens to this,” he laughs. “Because it was so difficult for us, we basically started just aiming for … trying to get up to our previous standards, which was enough of a struggle.” More than the 14-cut record itself, Coomes says that learning the production process was what Quasi benefited from most during its creation. Since the duo devoted so much time and energy to production, developing a “new sound” took the backseat on The Sword of God. We were still mixing it like two hours before the deadline, put the tapes in Fed Ex and sent it to the mastering place.” When it was finally done, it was more like relief and not really elation. It took a long time to get it to sound good, let alone worry about our performances. “It was fairly difficult for us to do the record, actually,” Coomes admits, “because we recorded it ourselves.” He continues, “I thought we knew a lot more about recording than we actually did. But unlike you’re average indie rocker – giddy with the four-track and splattering together incongruent sounds into a hasty clutter, Quasi’s immediacy is actually a belabored product. Temperamental flights of thought mixed with rambunctious, flailing sounds distinguish the Portland, OR duo in a vivid light The Sword of God (Touch & Go)’s brilliant, unheeded bursts of drum crash and keyboard panic characterize the album as one of the year’s best. It’s the art of the momentary impulse that Quasi has so perfected. Which is a hair’s breath away from that phenomenon of finding something directly relevant to what’s happening in your life at a given moment with some random song on the radio.”
“Psychotic people hear voices on the radio addressing them directly. That was one of the ideas I had … but of course I wasn’t thinking about it literally, destroying and killing innocent people. Coomes ties in the song “The Sword of God” with today’s current affairs: “One of the things I was thinking about is probably in some ways similar to how the people who planned these attacks were thinking: Allah coming down to instill divine justice. Needless to say, the perpetrators of September’s attacks exemplify a case of distortion as a result of literalism. “It’s possible for people to think that way if they get too literal-minded,” he says. In keeping with the Kali theme, he mentions the Thugee cult, which performed human sacrifice in the mid-19th century in the name of the goddess. To an extent, band members and former spouses Sam Coomes (vocal/keyboard/guitar, bassist for Elliott Smith) and Janet Weiss (drums/vocal, Sleater-Kinney drummer) lust for the destruction and recreation of those enterprises.Īt the same time, Coomes – on a cell phone en route from Philadelphia to New York – wants to ensure that his potent lyrics (“Birth by birth we’re cast out on this earth/ To a welcome of blood & screams”) are not misconstrued. Songs like “Fuck Hollywood” and “Genetic Science” are respective jabs taken at vehicles of propaganda and modern technology. Quasi’s fifth album, The Sword of God, concerns itself in part with the role of Kali a painting of her appears inside the album sleeve. On the other, her ability to rejuvenate and cleanse is revered to the highest degree by many worshippers of the faith. Adorned with human skulls and dripping with blood, the vengeful goddess is on the one hand a source of utmost fear. In the Hindu pantheon, the goddess Kali inflicts destruction and regeneration upon the Earth. On February 23, Quasi will finally drop their first proper studio album in a long four years: American Gong.Īs fans rev up for the record, here’s a look back at the previously out-of-print Sword of God piece I wrote way back when. True to his words, it’d be an understatement to say Quasi haven’t been rushing their releases. “There isn’t any point in us rushing to get albums out quickly anymore,” he confessed at the time.
Way back on Octo– with the horror of 9/11 still damp in everyone’s minds – Quasi’s Sam Coomes took a few to talk with me about his band’s then-new album, The Sword of God.
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