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BIO:
With most bands these days, it seems to be what’s outside
that counts. What makes the imaginative duo of Sarah Scott
and Jonathan Kochmer -- known as Two Loons for Tea --
stand out from the crowd starts inside. Literally in the
case of Sarah.
She’s got an extra rib – 13 of them on one side rather
than the conventional dozen.
Maybe there’s a connection between that and the hauntingly
beautiful voice, hypnotic melodies and colorfully offbeat
lyrics she brings to the music of Two Loons for Tea.
Jonathan, as far as he knows, has the standard number on
both sides. But he mirrors his partner’s asymmetry with
his visionary musical constructions.
Two Loons for Tea returns five years after its second
album -- the critically acclaimed, challenging yet
seductive Looking for Landmarks -- and having forged
intense bonds with an ever-growing legion of loyal fans in
North America and Europe, have delivered Nine Lucid
Dreams. Independent in spirit and in business (with their
growing Sarathan Records label), the album at once
delivers on the promise of its predecessors and opens up
new artistic vistas and possibilities for the
Seattle-based duo.
Their first two albums and expressive concerts have earned
comparisons to Massive Attack, Zero 7, Cocteau Twins,
Portishead, Psapp, and Rickie Lee Jones, among many
others. And Sarah and Jonathan cite a vast range of
influences from Aphex Twin to Xenakis, most of the way
through the alphabet. All that now, though, seems at best
mere starting points.
Recorded in part at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Studio in
Texas with such friends as drummer Matt Chamberlain (Pearl
Jam, Tori Amos), keyboard master Patrick Warren (Michael
Penn, Fiona Apple) and strings wizard Eyvind Kang (John
Zorn, Blonde Redhead) helping out, Nine Lucid Dreams
brings the alchemy of Sarah’s hauntingly beautiful vocals
and colorfully imaginative lyrics combined with Jonathan’s
vivid musical vision to full fruition.
The title is a perfect fit for the songs that are both
crystal clear portrayals and vivid visions worthy of Jung.
The atmospheres can shift from being as lush as the
Seattle landscapes to as arid and spare as the west-Texas
desert, the images range from intimate confessions to
colorful character sketches. Very much not about trends
and hairdos. But what is it about? The tingle.
“Our involvement with music is about making a connection
with something larger than ourselves,” Jonathan says.
“It’s that whole-body tingling feeling we get when we’re
recording or performing and alerts us that we’re on the
right path.” But it’s not just for them. It’s for the
audience. “To hear back reports from others that they’ve
experienced the same tingling at home or at shows is
wonderful. It’s about creating a community of feeling.”
They’ve certainly created an intriguing community in the
character-filled (in both senses of character) array of
songs on Nine Lucid Dreams – from the circus-denizens of
“The Strongest Man in the World” to the defiant prostitute
in “Marietta,” from the delicate yearning of “Tragically
Hip” to the Beat surrealist narration of “Consuela”
(voiced by Jonathan in his frontman debut) and from the
fogged impressionistic account of a hairstylist friend’s
murder in “Eyebrows Are Nature’s Makeup” to the space-age
jazzbohoedown “Dixie It Up!”
Jonathan and Sarah are an unlikely community themselves.
His background is academia and technology, with experience
in biostatistics, human genetics, climate change studies,
evolutionary biology, Internet development and such,
combined with an incurable entrepreneurial bug, is
manifested most recently in the expanding operations of
Sarathan Records, with a roster that includes releases by
Airpushers (two members of the Black Eyed Peas’ band),
Abra Moore, The Purrs and the Trachtenburg Family
Slideshow Players. Jonathan’s past shows a knack for
initiating and developing successful enterprises since
grad school, with the growing Sarathan following suit.
Sarah, in contrast, was raised by a free-spirited single
mom, living in such locales as San Francisco’s Haight-Asbury,
next to a nudist colony in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and
Spokane Washington, with Sarah carrying the bohemian
lifestyle into adulthood.
When they met in the ‘90s, he was playing the Seattle
open-mic circuit and outdoor festivals, and she was
singing in an R&B revue. They clicked immediately, hooked
up with some ex-members of The New Bohemians, first as
Loon, but as the line-up contracted to the duo, the name
expanded to Two Loons for Tea.
Nine Lucid Dreams was not necessarily a quicker record
than Looking For Landmarks, but the process and results
were more fluid than in the past. After an enforced
three-year hiatus (“I almost amputated my left index
finger in a bizarre accident involving a butter knife and
a buffalo burger,” Jonathan reports), the two sought a new
environment for recording, setting up shop at Willie
Nelson’s digs in the hills of Texas rather than in rainy
Seattle.
“Because of our improvisational recording process, the
environment made our music a little sunnier this time,
with a touch of the Southwest desert,” Jonathan says. And
to keep the process fresh, Sarah tried some new
techniques.
“I tried on this album to get out of my own head, which I
really enjoyed,” she says. “In the past, the subject
matter has been personal either from me or close friends.
In Nine Lucid Dreams, I also borrowed from movies.
‘Strongest Man in the World,’ was inspired by Bye Bye
Brazil, which is about an unlikely crew of characters that
who all end up in a traveling Brazilian circus.”
Revisiting methods used on previous records, she cut up
words and phrases and allowed chance into the creative
process by drawing them out of a bag or scrambling them on
the floor.
“Pretty much all of the songs on Nine Lucid Dreams were
done that way, except for ‘Strongest Man in the World’ and
‘Stand on Your Head,’ which is also from a film, about the
writer Janet Frame from New Zealand, who passed away just
after I wrote the song. She had a difficult life growing
up and didn’t fit in to her surroundings. It was inspiring
to me because I think I always felt a little odd growing
up, slightly left of center, like she did, but she found a
way to channel her loneliness and discontent into her
art.”
Through it all, Jonathan has worked to blend a wide
spectrum of musical aesthetics into a singular whole – a
process he relates to his PhD research at Yale in the
field of speciation. “To a large degree, what makes Two
Loons for Tea's music unique is that it is a hybrid of
many distinct musical species . . . rock, pop, jazz,
classical, funk, folk, and various ethnic musics,” he
says. “And yet, despite the many parental sources, it has
a distinct identity of its own.”
It’s Jonathan and Sarah who sound like proud parents as
they discuss their hopes for the album. “We want to do
this one right,” Jonathan says. “This time, I’m staying
away from butter knives and buffalo burgers. I don’t want
to miss that thrill when people tell us a song has a
thematic tie to their lives”
“Or even,” Sarah notes, “when they say, ‘We made a baby to
one of your songs! Or ‘your music made me get lucky.’ We
hear this one a lot! And they share far too many details
with us. TMI! Strange to think we’re in the bedroom with
them.”
RECENT CLIPS:
“...glossy
smoothness that’s whimsical and engaging in spirit, but
perfectionist in execution – so little of contemporary
music bears comparison.” ~ The Big Takeover
"...powerful storytelling aligns itself, every ebb to
every flow, with excellent musicianship." ~ Amplifier
"...12 sexy tracks with their grab bag of styles ranging
from pop to jazz to trip-hop, Dixie, folk, rock and even
Latin-laced rumba... a fully realized album for sultry
sunsets or sophisticated after-dark engagements." ~ Relix
"Two Loons for Tea moves between somber and lively; the
emotional landscape in between is bridged by a variety of
ethnic and orchestral instruments -- including vibes,
viola, erhu, and tabla -- that seem to breathe new life
into the compositions... providing a bit of an
experimental and eclectic streak to most of the works." ~
All Music Guide
"...feelgood music for the modern urban sophisticate.
[Sarah] Scott's a star in the making." ~ Yahoo!
"…singer-lyricist Sarah Scott and guitarist-composer
Jonathan Kochmer perform with an engaging simplicity,
their approach is not stripped down. Their subtly
atmospheric arrangements already have found the Loons
linked to the likes of Massive Attack, Portishead and the
Cocteau Twins -- one might add the similarly dreamy duo
Mazzy Starr…" ~ Seattle P.I.
"... hauntingly beautiful voice, hypnotic melodies and
colorfully offbeat lyrics. ...definitely a band to keep an
eye on...Seattle never sounded so sexy." ~ Properly
Chilled
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