Jeff Miers' Sound Check: Discovering a sonic treasure from Department of Eagles
Miles Davis once famously asked one of his musicians, who’d been roundly savaged by a horde of bloodthirsty jazz critics, “Who you gonna listen to — me, or some music critic?”
I love to think about this, imagine I was in the dressing room when guitarist Mike Stern, then a young man, was feeling down on himself, and the surrogate father Miles offered this sage advice in his menacing rasp.
As it turns out, one would have been far better off, at the time, listening to Miles than to the assorted music critics who were busying themselves tearing Stern apart in print.
Yes, it’s odd for me to count among my favorite quotes one that wholly denigrates what I do for a living. But I often hear that rasp in my ear, and it’s usually offering some expletive-laced truism, the type the Miles legend is partially built upon.
Things slip by me, too, try as I might to avoid this happening. Every year, when I compile my favorite records of the previous 12 months, someone will write a letter saying something along the lines of: “I can’t believe you didn’t pick so and so as one of the best of the year. You’re clearly out of touch.”
This year, I’m hoping to trump the writers of the inevitable “told you so” letters. I’ve fallen in love with an album that came out in October. Sadly, I only discovered it this past week.
The band is called Department of Eagles; the album is “In Ear Park.” I happened upon the thing wholly by accident. Stopping into an area record store to feed my vinyl fetish, I heard playing over the store’s stereo a sound that was immediately compelling. It was really lush, cello sounds bolstering a very nice finger-picked acoustic guitar figure, a big, billowing drum sound, and these layered vocal harmonies that seemed to sneak in and out of the mix in unexpected spots, to soar heavenward or ease back into the sonic melange at will.
After two songs, I walked up to the counter to scope out the “now playing” display. The band’s name rung a bell, vaguely, and the guy working at the counter assured me that “Dude, this is one of the best albums of the year.”
Uh oh. It didn’t make my list. Here comes existential despair.
Swallowing my pride and, very nearly, my chewing gum with it, I stumbled dejectedly to the “pop/rock” section of the store and somewhere between Deep Purple and Derek & the Dominoes, found the Department of Eagles’ disc. I wanted to hate the thing, of course. I mean, if it was really so darn great, I would’ve heard about it, right? Probably only one or two worthwhile things on the record, the rest filler. Yeah. That’s the ticket.
Nope. “In Ear Park” is completely awesome, it turns out. And then, there it is again, the Miles Davis rasp in my ear, like Poe’s Raven pecking at the window and squawking “Nevermore, nevermore!”
“Who you gonna listen to. . .”?
Eventually, I remembered where I’d heard of the DOE, as the people who are cool enough to be “into” the band refer to them. Grizzly Bear is a group whose 2006 album “Yellow House” is a recent favorite of mine. DOE is a Grizzly Bear side project of sorts. That band’s Daniel Rossen began recording with his roommate Fred Nicolaus while the two were students at New York University. These home recordings eventually led to a small record deal, and then Rossen split to join Grizzly Bear. The two would send each other songs as often as possible, and get together to work on them when schedules permitted.
This makes sense. “In Ear Park” does not sound like a record that was made beneath the weight of expectation, the pressure of commercial appeal, nor the artificial time constraints major record labels like to impose on bands. It sounds like an unfettered labor of love, music made for its own sake.
Rossen and Nicolaus recorded the album in an old church in Brooklyn, where both DOE and Grizzly Bear make their homes. The album has a bold, ambient sound that suggests high ceilings and stained-glass windows, and the music is reflective, certainly, though it avoids being overtly ponderous or self-important. Instead, the songs blend the rustic with the modern.
It’s fantastic stuff. Now that I’ve found it, I’m not going to let it go! So, if you were planning on writing a letter lambasting me for missing the boat on Department of Eagles, well — you’re too late!•
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