Play Like You Know

"Attack" is not an apt word to describe the way Karate approaches making music. While this Boston-based three-piece group is most definitely a rock band, the music they play is decidedly mellow, jazz-flavored and, very simply, easy to listen to. That, however, doesn't mean that this group plays music that's necessarily easy to make. In fact, Karate's sublime use of sonic space, chord progressions, harmonic and rhythmic shifts, placement and arrangement of musical parts is the result of a meticulous writing process.
Karate frontman, guitarist and songwriter Geoff Farina and drummer Gavin McCarthy are both graduates of Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music. Bass player Jeff Goddard also studied at Berklee, as well as the New England Conservatory, rounding out a lineup whose musical drive is not based only in a love for music, but also a complete understanding of the way it all works. That knowledge is executed in the band's music, showcased in carefully crafted passages of clean and tight guitar riffs, rock solid but decidedly unobtrusive bass lines and drum licks that firmly set foundations without being stuffed into the music's proverbial pocket.
Karate is touring in support of their latest release, Some Boots, and Geoff Farina killed a few minutes on the long drive from Iowa City, Iowa to Omaha, Nebraska by fielding a few questions about the new album and the band's creative process.

Your new album, Some Boots, is a bit different than your last release, Unsolved.
I think Some Boots is a little more representative of what we've sounded like over the years, and it's more of a diverse record, sound-wise, than Unsolved was in a lot of ways. We've just been writing a lot of music and playing a lot of shows in the time since Unsolved, and there are some songs on the new record that are a lot more like the stuff that we first started doing. The song "Corduroy," for example is very slow and long, kind of plodding type of songs like we had on our first record. There are some soul-influenced things and a lot more different sounds on it as well, whereas I think Unsolved was a lot more on the jazz tip.

It's been said that you write music apart from the rest of the band. Why?
Basically, the way it works is, I come to practice with a song written in the sense that it is chords and vocals and the guitar part and some arrangement, then we spend a lot of time together working on fine tuning the arrangement and doing those types of things. But I definitely need to get away from all that when I write, so like, I took three months off this summer and just wrote music. It helps me to be able to wake up in the same place everyday and be able to sit and concentrate and work hard on the music without being interrupted, instead of having to be practicing all the time with these guys while I try to write. I write from a more objective point of view and I can work in a longer term, like spend a week working on just one song and the little details of it.

Some artists don't even listen to music at all while they write. Do you?
Sure, I listen to music all the time but I'll usually have a backlog of things that I want to think about - like I might have a notebook full of stuff that I've listened to in the past year that I want to go back and listen to again and think about. It's usually very small details, like, there might be part of one song that might give me an idea for a part in a song that I want to write, so I'll go back and maybe transcribe some things from that song and think about it a little bit, maybe steal it and change it, or just use it somehow, like consider the process that went into making it.

There's so much going on in Karate's music with Jeff and Gavin, too. Where do they come into the creative process?
They do a lot with the arrangement of their parts. With a lot of these songs, it's almost as if they write another song on top of it. Like, I'll bring in a song that has the structure already there, and they'll work on their parts and write something that's totally complimentary, and that's really a huge part of what we're trying to do and it can take a long time to put together. I'll spend three months on four songs and then we'll spend three months together learning and working on those same four songs, playing them live and getting the various parts to the point where they're ready to be recorded.

You released a solo album last year, and Jeff and Gavin also have other things going on. How does that outside work bear on Karate's music?
It's important to the band to get those outside influences, and we like to play with other people. I think it's really important for us to go out and get the experience of playing with other people, because it makes us think about what we're doing from a more objective point of view, and it makes us think about what it's like to play with each other. It's really different to go out and play with another band or a different group of people, and it definitely comes back and influences us.

Both you and Gavin are graduates from the Berklee College of Music. When you guys write, is use of formal musical tenets second nature, or are you actively conscious of the technical aspects of your art?
I think there are parts of both - the rock world and the formal musical education world - that are really important to what we do. For example, I write out a lot of the musical ideas that I have, it's an efficiency thing, and I can take advantage of the fact that we can all read music and sit there and look at a chart and interpret it together. I think it allows us to do things that you wouldn't normally be able to do in a rock band, where you're usually trying to articulate something verbally or by playing it. My personal style of writing is that I want to know exactly what I'm playing all the time, I want to know exactly what my options are. If I'm going to play something simple, it's because I choose to play it, not because it's the only thing that I'm capable of doing. It is something that's important to what we do - knowing the theory behind the harmony of a song, for example, allows us all to think about our options and gives us a broader palate to draw from. The way that I feel is that I want to make conscious choices about what I do musically. I hear people say things like, 'well, whatever sounds good,' but I don't believe in writing music that way. I think that's the easiest way to make music, but you'll never challenge your ear if you just play what comes easiest or whatever sounds good at first

Bookmark:

Comments down for maintenance.