Photo courtesy of Lorelei
While D.C.’s musical landscape in 2015 provides listeners with plenty of excitement and evolution, whenever a touchstone from the 1980s and 1990s comes out of hiding, it’s always cause for celebration.
There have been no shortage of those droolworthy reunion shows over the past five years as bands like Tuscadero, Black Tambourine and Unrest have all popped up to remind us that the scope and quality of indie pop acts were pretty great. On Monday at the Black Cat, Lorelei will do the same thing.
Admittedly, the trio of guitarist/singer Matt Dingee, bassist Stephen Gardner, and drummer Davis White hasn’t been entirely silent since the release of 1995’s excellent, if underappreciated, Everyone Must Touch the Stove. They released Enterprising Sidewalks in 2012 and played a run of local shows over the 18 months that followed including a barnburner at the Chick Factor 2012: For the Love of Pop! showcase at Artisphere.
However, the reason for their reunion this season is that 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of Everyone Must Touch the Stove—and they wanted to make sure to actually celebrate that milestone before the year was out. “The notion of doing this only came up a short time ago, so it was now or never in order to celebrate the anniversary,” said Dingee. “We got it in with a few days to spare.”
The manner in which they will look back is to play that LP from front to back in its entirety—a format that some people find tiresome—including members of the band.
“Stephen [Gardner] used some kind of Jedi mind trick to get me to agree to this,” said Dingee. “I don’t actually recall agreeing.” Dingee recalls enjoying the results of seeing the Jesus & Mary Chain play Psychocandy in its entirety, but says, “[I’m] still not sure it is a good idea. But here we are.”
Gardner points out that this format allows the band to do something that they never did in their heyday—play every song from this album live. “It seemed like we should rectify that, particularly before we move on to whatever comes next for us together and this LP further recedes.”
Photo courtesy of Lorelei
Indeed, one of the most impressive feats of Everyone Must Touch the Stove is how layered it is. This noisy and dissonant effort never entirely seemed like the work of just three people. The guitar riffs would vary from abrasive to melodic and gorgeously fuzzy. Songs like “Today’s Shrug” and “Windmill” are lovely and dreamy but other songs like “Throwaway” and “Inside the Crimelab” rely on the maniacal energy of the band members.
As such, the band is bringing in multi-instrumentalist and D.C. music mainstay Justin Moyer to help flesh out some of their busier songs. Such songs probably would have sounded incomplete live without Moyer, but the band said that they felt guilty bringing in a fourth party even now and certainly would not have done so twenty years ago when they were on the point of disbanding in the mid-’90s.
“Poor Justin was coming into a difficult situation sitting in with us,” said Dingee. “We really speak our own language at this point and create a very particular vibe that would be impossible to recreate.”
In fact, all three members said that practicing the album live has made them appreciate both the songs and their relationships with each other.
“This record still sounds innovative to me, despite an abrasive edge that will probably scare some listeners away,” said White. “Pretty much the same as how I felt about it back then. I am surprised it is still sounding so fresh and have been enjoying playing the tunes again.”
Lorelei will play Everyone Must Touch the Stove in its entirety at the Black Cat on Monday, December 28th. For now, DCist has this exclusive live clip of the band practicing “Windmill” in advance of the show.
