Hey y'all.
Here's an interview with Mike Fiore of Faces on Film that I wrote for the super awesome Boston fanzine The Noise (www.thenoise-boston.com). The April issue should pop up around the city in a few weeks, so keep an eye out. And thanks to Mike for taking the time to talk.
Good, sometimes great, things come in small doses.
Faces on Film is a good, often great, band that unfortunately does justice to such a claim. They don’t play out often, save for a semi regular residency at the Middle East and the infrequent trip to New York. They kept fans waiting way too long for their excellent new album, “The Troubles,” which finally arrived late last year almost three years after their debut EP. All and all they keep a low key, almost dodgy, profile.
This is a shame of course, as anyone who has ever seen the Faces can attest to. Having first seen them myself on a cold January night in 2007, I’ll be the first to say these guys can take over a room. As the headliners of a wildly uneven bill, one that ran the gamut from spirited post hardcore to synth-driven noise rock, the band closed out the restless evening with a heartfelt and spirited set of indie-folk songs that drew every eye in the room to the stage like a magnet. It was the calm after the storm, a lullaby easing a packed Middle East Upstairs room to an earnest quiet.
The buzz around the Faces has been slow but steady, but on the heels of a much anticipated self titled debut, its one that’s beginning to gather real momentum, as evidenced by a local following that gladly follows them from one gig to the next and glowing raves from the likes the Boston Globe, which trumpeted “Troubles” as one its favorite records of 2008. So what the fuck gives? Why then, with everything that’s seemingly going for them, aren’t we hearing more about Faces on Film?
The answer, in short, is because Mike Fiore isn’t thinking much about it.
In fact, as we sit and talk over beers in a dim lit, tucked away corner of the Independent in Somerville, Fiore, the songwriter and musical engine driving the Faces on Film moniker, contemplates how much he has left to give the project.
“I know this won’t go on forever,” he said matter of factly. “I’m not even sure if it will go on that much longer. I don’t think anyone involved has any real expectation of making money or getting attention outside of here.”
That’s not to say he’s ready to walk away from music. Anything but. Statements as such are just a byproduct of Fiore’s restless musical vision. Having just released one of last year’s finest records to emerge from the Boston underground, he’s not sitting on his accomplishments. Instead he’s contemplating his next move, maybe as Faces on Film, maybe with friends in kindred musical spirits such as Hallelujah the Hills and Mister Sister or still maybe just going out on his own. The next chapter in Fiore’s musical career always seems a page or two away from being closed.
“Right now this is Dave (Hinkley, Faces on Film guitarist/bassist) and I’s thing,” he said. “It’s working now, but there’s not any time frame or anything concrete about it. It sounds sort of haphazard, but I think it suits the music and the people involved in it.”
Fiore’s musical muse has always been fleeting. He formed the Faces’ first incarnation upon arriving in Boston from Rochester in 2004, quickly joining forces with frequent collaborator Ted Gallagher and then-drummer Peter Schaefer to lay down some tracks. Those songs eventually manifested themselves in 2005’s “Seven Sisters” EP, but it didn’t take long before Fiore began distancing himself from the record.
“I came here basically with the intention of starting a band with (Ted) and some people we knew,” Fiore said. “I’d been playing with him for a while, but then things started changing. I just had a different idea of what the band was and what I wanted it to be.
“It was really just a demo,” Fiore said of “Seven Sisters,” a much more streamlined affair that predated the atmospheric sounds showcased on the band’s debut full length. “We never really thought of it as a proper release. It was more something to hold us over in the meantime. By the time it went to press I was really unhappy with it. I really wanted to put things into a different direction.”
It was time to rebuild things from the bottom up. Enter Hinckley and Elio Deluca, who helped Fiore steer the band into uncharted new territory. The band recorded the record at the Soul Shop in Medford, with Fiore tackling vocals, guitar and drums, Hinckley on guitar and bass and Deluca taking on organ and piano duties. The album also features vocal contributions from Nicole Frattaroli on the track “Natalie’s Numbers.”
Fiore drew the lineup of the new look Faces from a collective of like minded local musicians who, along with Fiore, pop in and out of each others projects.
“It’s a setup that I love,” Fiore said. “There’s a collective of four or five bands, about 10 or 11 of us total, and we jump in and out of each other’s projects. We’re all sort of related.”
With “The Troubles,” Fiore carried little over from his previous effort but the name. The album sharply reinvented the band’s DNA, boasting rustic and ramshackle songs that are sweet yet cryptic, simple upon first listen yet complex in arrangement. They’re songs that can shoulder a heavy burden or just as easily leave listeners feeling light as a feather. It’s a blissful study of contrast that serves as the band’s central nerve. It’s music that evokes feeling, mood music that can just as easily pick you up as it can break your heart.
But while the new record marks a sharp break from “Seven Sisters,” the band’s new sound didn’t arise by design. Instead, Fiore insists the shift in direction was natural. The songs, he said, began to take shape over the course of lengthy rehearsals and rewrites.
“I can see how it would appear that way,” Fiore said of the new record’s shift in sound. “But it was never a conscious thing. We never felt that one song had to sound like this or another had to disassociate itself from all the others.
“It wasn’t one of those records where we went in knowing where it was going,” he added. “I don’t know what exactly informed the songs or the arrangements. But having played them for so long, at least the ones that stuck around and made it on the record, we didn’t have to sit around and think about it for very long.”
The growth reflected on “The Troubles” is also indicative of Fiore’s maturation as a songwriter. Themes of family, hopelessness and desperation crept their way into his songwriting, while sonically the singer wrestled to develop his own sound on record.
“I’m finding out what qualities I like in songs and live music, and out of those things what I’m capable of and what I’m not,” he said, citing Tom Waits, the Band and the Impressions as some of the record’s primary influences. “There were a lot of things I had to learn about working within my own limitations.”
Fiore is a searcher, constantly looking one step ahead at his next project and what’s coming up around the corner. But while his career has taken twists and turn down unexpected avenues, what he’s really looking for is something surprisingly straightforward and simple.
“It seems we always revert back to the path of least resistance,” he said. “We go after the things that bring us the most joy and make for the best music. That’s all we’re trying to do.”
