“Get Up Get Out”
from the album Night of the Furies
2007
iTunes
MP3 – “Get Up Get Out” [right-click/save-as]
The Rosebuds‘ Night of the Furies has the sound and quiet fury of a soundtrack for an imaginary ’80s movie. Principals Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp spin melodic dream pop, lush and sweet yet never shapeless or languid.
The North Carolina duo’s third full-length, to be released on Tuesday, variously recalls earlier co-ed acts the Sundays, the Human League and the Thompson Twins. The songs hold gentle washes of keyboards, chiming electric and acoustic guitars and blissfully haunted vocals. Despite the ’80s British influences, the Rosebuds also sound thoroughly American and Southern.
Howard’s North Carolina accent is occasionally discernible in Night of the Furies. He and Crisp met while attending the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Kindred spirits who’d had similarly secluded childhoods, they became friends who shared a mutual love of music and, after years of camaraderie, partners in life and music.
Howard grew up on a tobacco farm outside of Raleigh. Crisp sent part of her childhood on remote, marshy Cedar Island.
“It was miserable for a kid,” Crisp said from Raleigh of the island-bound portion of her childhood.
“Ivan and I both grew up really isolated,” she added. “Ivan didn’t know about popular music. Whatever he did like was so random. The same with me.
“Ivan’s two favorites were Roy Orbison and Depeche Mode. Now, what kind of kid likes Roy Orbison and Depeche Mode? And we didn’t really have a peer group, because we were both weird kids. Most kids pick a peer group, an identity. We never picked an identity.”
Not having an identity isn’t such a bad thing. It lets the Rosebuds be free to make their own kind of music, no matter what that may be. That explains why the duo’s three albums are so different from each other.
“We can do whatever we want to do to entertain ourselves,” Crisp said. “We don’t see ourselves as a traditional band, so we don’t do what bands do. We don’t have a style.”
Howard and Crisp’s musical partnership began at UNCW when he asked her to join his new band. He’d been in bands before, but she’d been a theater person and performance artist.
“Ivan was playing music with some other guys and he got an invitation to open up for a band,” Crisp said. “He told them, ‘My regular band can’t do it, but my other band can.'”
Howard didn’t mention that he hadn’t actually formed this other band. So he went to his friend, Crisp, and said, “All right. We’re in a band. I’m gonna teach you these five songs and we’re gonna play tonight.'”
The last-minute engagement, featuring Howard singing and playing guitar, Crisp playing keyboards and a drum machine, went surprisingly well.
“Everybody kind of went crazy,” Crisp remembered. “They started asking, ‘How long have you guys been together?’ We said, ‘About five hours.’ And they were, like, ‘Oh, come back and play again!’ We got more and more invitations. Everybody was taking it seriously. So we thought maybe we should be serious about it.”
Howard and Crisp were especially serious during the production of their upcoming Night of the Furies. They produced it themselves, a time-consuming choice, in part because they had to learn how to be producers.
“We’re just so fiercely independent,” Crisp said. “We know what we want, but we can’t really communicate that to many people. We figured it out for ourselves, but we also have a bunch of talented friends who helped us engineer it.”
The Rosebuds are anxious to see what happens when Night of the Furies is released next week.
“We’re on pins and needles,” Crisp said. “We’ve got some devoted fans who like everything we do. I can’t imagine they’re gonna be angry because it’s so different. I think they’ll be excited and embrace it; but if there are people who don’t like it, I can’t be angry with them. It won’t hurt my feelings if they don’t like it because we totally made the record we wanted to make.”
So making art is its own greatest reward?
“Absolutely.”