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The Western Civilization: TheWesternCivilization.jpg
Noisy indie-pop band whose songs ache with longing, anger and frustration.
Rachel Hansbro -- vocals, guitar
Reggie O'Farrell -- vocals, guitar, keys, harmonica, glockenspiel
Gretchen Schmaltz -- vocals, keys, guitar
Anthony Schillaci -- drums
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Love Struck Angel
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Bruise the Paper
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Letters of Resignation
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Track #1
The Western Civilization EP, 2006
Letters of Resignation, 2007
Mia Kat Empire Compilation Vol 1, 2006
The Western Civilization is a melting pot of players and sound. When the band's writers - Rachel Hansbro, Reggie O'Farrell and Gretchen Schmaltz - want to hear 20 tambourines or a distorted organ, they procure the instrument or find the people to make it happen.
"When I'm writing, I play the guitar and hear other sounds in my head," Hansbro says. "I describe the noise to Reggie, he grumbles and says, 'We'll have to figure that out.'
"Then the search for new and interesting instruments begins," O'Farrell says.
Also fitting for a melting pot, the three songwriters are solo performers working on their own projects. They gathered to record one of Hansbro's songs two years ago, and the result was a band they weren't expecting.
"Rachel played guitar, and I played piano and xylophone and Gretchen came over and sang all the backup stuff on it," O'Farrell says. "It was good. So we decided to do it again and then again and then eventually we decided that we had a band."
Drummer Anthony Schilaci - who is readying his singing voice in the "singing bullpen," the band says - rounds out the group.
Letters of Resignation, released in April, is the Western Civilization's debut album. It's a collection of noisy indie-pop that aches with longing, anger and frustration, each song spilling over with elegantly wrought emotion. In lesser hands lines like, "you'll choke me down as some horrible mistake" would sink, but the band keeps everything afloat with pretty flourishes and balance.
The three voices, tested by years of open mics and previous bands, form a pleasing whole here. O'Farrell and Hansbro sport a similar deadpan sadness in male and female flavors, while Schmaltz's childlike coo hovers in the background of every layer.
"I don't think that our voices sound alike, but I think we use them to make something that sounds cohesive," Schmaltz says.
O'Farrell and Hansbro saw back and forth with their world-weary pipes on Love Struck Angel, telling the story of a disastrous fling: Don't ever trust a liar with bad intentions at heart. I couldn't have imagined I'd just rip you apart.
Reggie Goes to War is the most startling example of the band's use of noise, with a crescendo of shattering glass - recorded in a night of grand destruction at O'Farrell's residence - reflecting the mental collapse of a friend. The Sun Will Rise features stomps and claps to punctuate an angry breakup scene.
"We had a big party at my empty house with hardwood floors. We got everyone drunk and had them stomping and clapping," O'Farrell says, laughing at the memory of trying to coordinate the drunken stompers.
The let's-make-this-harder-than-it-needs-to-be mentality at work within the band is the function of the members' goal to create something original.
"When musicians get together in a practice setting to write something, they're automatically going to play whatever is most comfortable to them," O'Farrell says. "We're playing a lot of stuff that we wouldn't have naturally come up with on the fly; instruments that we've never played before or never played and sang at the same time."
The resulting music, equal parts chaos and craft, makes this an interesting new band to watch.
-- Sara Cress | May 24, 2007
Lina Fuh