This Thursday night at the Terrace, Madison gets a visit from Eau Claire when local band Laarks takes the stage. The band is known amongst fans, and the Eau Claire music scene, for their electro-rock-fueled energy and evenly sentimental lyrics. Their first album, An Exaltation of Laarks, came out in 2009 with the now-defunct label Absolutely Kosher. While the band has been actively playing around the country, this two-plus-year gap between albums definitely heightens the anticipation for the upcoming Fiat Lux.
One of the guys behind these beautiful ballads, Ian Jacoby, was generous enough to speak with Jonk Music about the upcoming album, what the guys have been up to, and how their Wisconsin roots have stayed with them. Jacoby also gave Jonk Music an exclusive listen to some of their new tracks, allowing us to declare that Fiat Lux offers a more cohesive, rhythmic sound. We have to agree with Jacoby when he says “epic.”
Your new album, Fiat Lux, is being released over two years after An Exaltation of Laarks. What are some notable differences fans should expect?
“I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing but everyone who’s heard it said we sound a lot more mature and grown up…I hate to use the word epic, but it kind of is. It’s different because there’s a lot more space on each track and not so much 3-minute pop songs. I’d say that’s the biggest difference for sure and definitely helps translate to a large show. I don’t know, people have been comparing it to Coldplay and The Killers which I guess is a good thing.”
Most of you were members of other bands, like Amateur Love, Peter Wolf Crier, Land of Talk, before joining Laarks. How does this experience compare to that of your former bands and why is it working? Have things become more or less challenging now that your former label, Absolutely Kosher, is now defunct?
“Aww man, that’s a big question. Well actually Laarks was, well, the only band Brian was in — in terms of the Eau Claire scene, before Laarks was Amateur Love, then the other ones were created after Laarks, so we’ve been working around people’s schedules forever. The hardest schedule to work with is Zach who’s part of Bon Iver, so we’ve made our tour schedules opposite each other. It’s weird for me because I was in Adelyn Rose playing keyboard for a while; other than that I was playing around Eau Claire. I’m a primary songwriter/singer and stuff. It’s hard to say those bands rub off on us but I don’t think that’s happened. Yeah, it’s been good for sure with the label stuff. Absolutely Kosher was super nice and a great label and put out stuff that I loved in early 2000s. I think they had a really hard time when MP3 stuff happened. Their main strength was putting indie stuff into distribution. People just download stuff now, so I think they had a really hard time adjusting to that whole new thing. For us it’s kind of nice because we got to have them for the first album and they definitely opened up a cool door for us, but we definitely caught each other at weird points in our careers — we were winding up and they were winding down. But now it’s kind of nice because we got this album down and they’ve written nice stuff about us and I think it kind of worked out for everybody. They’re not putting out anything new from anybody, but it wasn’t like they dropped us because they didn’t like us. They don’t have the money to do it.”
Well, this is a great segue into my next question: The Internet has dramatically altered the way artists can reach an audience. What are your thoughts on the power of the web in terms of helping (or hurting) your music?
“It just changes it; I don’t know. It definitely hurts in that you can’t make money selling your albums anymore, for sure; that’s a thing and it kind of sucks. I never counted on that before anyway, so I guess it kind of counts more for like Puff Daddy. I met this really cool guy who went to Columbia who produced a video for us. Such a cool guy, video came out really cool. I’m really into Spielberg, The X-Files, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and we were just hanging out and talking, started off on Twitter and Facebook, started hanging out and now we’re doing all kinds of stuff together. People can watch videos now and there are a lot of other bands that are putting cool stuff off. And it’s a good way to get stuff done and another way to be artistic, sort of, and I think that’s been cool for us and exploring those types of productions. It’s all what make you of it.”
How does performing in Eau Claire and other Wisconsin venues compare to those outside the great state of Wisconsin? Any favorites?
“I don’t know, there’s a lot flannel everywhere these days. Eau Claire is awesome. It definitely spoils you for like local bands for sure. We’ve toured around and sometimes local bands can be really good and other times not as good, but in Eau Claire, I think even us as music consumers in Eau Claire you’ve gotten really high quality, even before Bon Iver. When I was growing up it was Amateur Love and those were awesome — people love Justin Vernon, he’s always been a big deal. It’s good, but I mean I love playing anywhere. People have been receptive all over. The crowds, when you come to a show you want to see good music. Eau Claire, I think every musician thinks where they grew up is the best place, so that’s what I think of Eau Claire.”
What are you listening to these days? We’re always on the lookout for new artists. Any new discoveries that you’d like to share?
“I’m a really bad person to ask this question because, and I hate saying this but it’s probably true, I haven’t really listened to a lot of new stuff. Sam Cooke, Etta James, that’s all I’ve really listened to for the past year. There’s like amazing live stuff out there, Sam Cooke, I think Live at the Harlem Club 1963 — have people listen to that energy, it’s insane. Live (Donny Hathaway) from 1970s, that’s amazing too. I listen to a lot of Australian music, Tame Impala and that sort of psychedelic stuff. OK, I’m not very good at name-dropping but Adelyn Rose from Eau Claire kind of reminds me of Misery is a Butterfly — they’re really really good, sort of artsy but they rock pretty hard, too. Birds and Batteries, from San Francisco, we’re playing with them in September, similar to Tom Petty rock.”