Wild Decade
Dan Leech & Phil Maves are Wild Decade; the wildest decade yet. (courtesy of the band)
The East by West coast duo Wild Decade present a following listen to their new compilation that documents their early years as The Actors titled I Think It’s Fine: The Actors Recordings, 2010-2007 accompanies by an exclusive oral history of provided by Phil Maves & Dan Leech. Before they would be known as Bad Bibles—let alone Wild Decade—Phil & Dan were already working on scheming out a dream that would inspire their off shoot Proudest Ever (fka Ferns) and more. With the current incarnation as Wild Decade working from coast to coast; Leech & Maves provide a premiere listen to the early days & years that provided the foundation & basis for their current directions & connection.
Beginning with The Actors’ High and Low EP era, we are appropriately treated to the synth underscored feelings & nerves of “First Date” that sets the tone. “Through a False Door” ruminates on life’s chutes & ladders, to the cascading helium synth rising of “Go Home”, the melancholy of “Dead Horse Bay” & theoretical electro bop that bounces & bubbles on “Theory of Something”. Moving forward to The Actors’ Foreign Stares EP, Phil & Dan paint a portrait of the brave new world with the wild tom-tom romp of “Frontier”, moving to new dimensions of dissonance and ferocity with “Stop Blanking Everybody” that finds the duo firing on all cylinders of unbridled energy & constructive rage. The dark turn in tone as heard on the instrumental tension found in the soundscape of “Darkness Is Spreading”, right before the presenting pleas for decent humane treatment on “Not A Beast” that illustrates a program that pushes toward something more human while utilizing all electronic everything. You can hear the increased depth & definition in the Leech & Maves sound by the time you arrive to The Actors’ Anticipate Heat with the sidewalk rocking “Heat In the Street”. The action is then hurdled through the atmosphere on the high-flying action of “The Skydiver”, to the 10 years ahead of their time cut “Box Score”, to the sweeping experimentalism heard on “An Unremarkable Location” that closes out the EP with epic illustrations of the mundane. Bonuses on the disc provide the Painting Fireworks remix of “Heat In the Street” that moves with an ecstatic & electric fervor, to slow jam b-side “Red Museum”, closing out with the a-side single version of “Frontier”.
Dan Leech & Phil Maves of Wild Decade provided the following oral histories of their time as The Actors:
“Through a False Door” (track 2, originally from High and Low EP, released September 2010)
Phil: Let’s go backwards in time, starting in 2010. “Through a False Door” was a genuine breakthrough, lyrically and musically. There’s just a lot of heart here, inside a compact song structure. It’s a great example of automatic writing. Every songwriter says this at some point, but in this case it’s true: I was feeling lonely and I picked up a guitar and started singing, and most of the song just poured out. Lyrically, I suppose wanted to talk about complex things in an approachable way: mortality, transcendence, and the importance of other people in our lives. I’m singing at the top of my range, which is pretty obvious, but I had heard other singers do that, and it moved me enough to try it. Our upcoming singles follow the musical path forged by songs like this, combined with the quieter elements of our Conductor LP which, by the way, is the last great rock album ever made.
Dan: “Through a False Door” came at a time where we were both moving towards pure pop, and away from it. Shortly after the release of the High and Low EP we sort of threw our hands in the air and started a noisier project. I feel this song specifically never got its due, since the band was experiencing a transitional phase. But ultimately with Wild Decade, we came back to our strong points—melody, harmony, words. The tension and release between the verses and choruses really push the energy of the vocals. The guitar solo, in particular, marks a point where I began to really focus on creating melodic hooks that interplay with the singing, rather than shredding or whatever guitar players tend to do.
“Frontier” (track 6, originally from Foreign Stares EP, released March 2010; early solo version is track 16, released October 2007)
Phil: This song appears twice on this compilation: track 6 is the far superior full-band version that most people haven’t heard. My former co-workers at Google had the (mis)fortune of hearing the early solo single version of this song (track 16 on this recording), but they were very kind and supportive and seemed to like the lyrics. I wrote this song while watching a “Mystery Science Theater 3000” short where they riffed on an old industrial film called Assignment Venezuela (fans of MST3K know that this short was a rarity and wasn’t officially released for many years). Anyway, I was idly strumming chords while watching this, and then began singing about what was generally happening in the film, but I changed the story to be about how the guy just can’t fit in. Whereas the short film is extolling the virtues of this place in a blustery 1950s tone, which makes for great joke fodder for Mike and the Bots. So, not for the first time with our band, comedy saves the day, and yet gives us a mostly-not-funny song.
Dan: “Frontier” really exemplifies the music-making process between Phil & I. We can start with an idea, a shell of a tune, or even a whole song. Then we’ll completely blow it up, go through several iterations, and end up with a completely different final product. “Frontier” started as this swingy, jangly shuffle, that eventually transformed into a loud rock sing-a-long, just from rehearsing and playing it live. People seemed to respond to it whenever we performed it, and it became a live staple for us.
Video premiere of “Last One Standing” from Wild Decade, live SF shows in the works.
“Darkness Is Spreading” (track 8, originally from Foreign Stares EP, released March 2010)
Phil: This was our first attempt at making imaginary soundtrack music together, and so far the only piece like this we’ve released. I don’t know too many songs that feature a triangle, a lap steel, and a melodica, but I found a way to work them into the arrangement, and they all sit really well. Dan and I are also sitting on several more instrumental soundtrack pieces in a similar vein as “Darkness Is Spreading” that we just never got around to releasing. For good reason? Not sure yet. (And again, we can’t stay away from comedy completely: the title is a reference to a famous “Chapelle’s Show” sketch, though the music has nothing to do with that.)
Dan: The origin of this song had everything to do with me getting a Nord Electro keyboard for our live gigs. Since we were a three-piece for most of the time as The Actors, I had to put on my multi-instrumentalist hat and play keys/synths/guitars/harmonies live. One day in the jam room, I came up with the main keyboard lick, and our drummer at the time, Justin Ward, responded to it immediately. From there, the three of us fleshed out the rest of the song and it became this interesting instrumental interlude during our sets. It also marked a time where we really began to experiment while recording. I remember plugging my guitar in, grabbing a cello bow, turning up the reverb to 11, and channeling my inner Jónsi from Sigur Rós. Interestingly enough, this song had another life when Justin sampled it as the basis for a track by his later group, NVO (San Francisco-based indie/jam/electronic outfit), which we were really excited to hear.
“The Skydiver” (track 11, originally from Anticipate Heat EP, released August 2009)
Phil: One of the few tracks where I sang and played all the instruments on the recording (check that reggaeton beat on the drums). Musically, this was kind of an affectionate parody of Talking Heads and LCD Soundsystem. Lyrically, this was about my experiences dating a woman who turned out to be an alcoholic, and the guilt I felt regarding some of the choices I made. It was a very unpleasant and stressful time, and this track was maybe the only good thing that came from it.
Dan: “The Skydiver” was the first recorded Actors song I heard. Phil had responded to a musician’s ad I placed, and he sent me the link to this song. I was really drawn to the chorus slide guitar, and the way the bass and guitars weaved in and out with the vocals. It was one of the first songs I learned in The Actors, and was performed at nearly every gig we played. The pulsing beat and open sonic landscape seem like it would still resonate with what’s happening now in live music.
Wild Decade’s’ Phil Maves, opposite a green glowing Dan Leech from the “Glowing Green” video. (photos courtesy of Wild Decade)
“An Unremarkable Location” (track 13, originally from Anticipate Heat EP, released August 2009)
Phil: The oldest song on this compilation, from a writing standpoint. Some people thought I was referencing 80s pop songs with that main guitar hook, but the real musical and lyrical inspiration for this song came from more esoteric sources. The mood of the narration recalls some of Blur’s weirder songs, the cut-up drums in the break are so clearly a DJ Shadow thing, and the piano during that section has a very deliberate ambient-era Brian Eno feel. But even there, Blur were referencing The Kinks and the Silver Apples, DJ Shadow was building tracks from samples of the producer David Axelrod, and Eno was drawing from Erik Satie. So, nothing anywhere is really new. Anyway, I wrote this as a much younger person wanting to leave my hometown. And then I did.
Dan: The first song I ever recorded in the studio with The Actors. After only jamming a few times with the group, Phil asked me to play the solo on this track during a recording session at Mark Pistel’s studio in San Francisco. I quickly realized that Phil had a similar taste in comedy as me, so we would often (and still do) recite funny bits from Mr. Show, Bill Hicks, Dr. Steve Brule, etc. During that period we would constantly do the TTOMO (Three Times One Minus One) R&B parody from Mr. Show. If you listen closely to the guitar solo in this song, you can hear a little homage to “Ewww, Girl, Ewww” in the crescendo. As Wolfgang Amadeus Thelonius von Funkenmeister the XIX 3/4 would say, “Damn.”
Listen to more from Wild Decade via their Bandcamp.
