Blowin' Indie Wind After Surviving Car Crash, Spokane Celebrates Their 'Able Bodies'

Author: Erika Mercer

Imagine that you are trespassing in an old deserted house. You push open the heavy front door, stepping cautiously inside to find yourself enveloped by pervading darkness and the unsettling whistle of air through empty halls. You are uneasy, but your curiosity overwhelms your fear, so, seeking orientation, you bend down to touch the hard floor beneath your feet. Your hand touches cold, grimy tiles and your first finger traces rough, cemented grout. You stand up again and continue walking through the eerie shadows of the hallway, eventually discovering a steep wooden staircase. Its wooden banister feels uneven and jagged as you grope your way along its length to the top, listening as the wood beneath your feet creaks with every step.
At the top of the stairs to your left stands a large, dim structure, which your fingers quickly discern as a solid wooden desk housing drawers with stony, metal handles. You contemplate whose fingers besides yours have touched the same floor, the same banister and the same desk and you are suddenly filled with a powerful sense of grief and melancholy at the dejection of the old house and the loss of the people who cared for it.
Spokane took shape in 2000 as the side and solo project of singer-songwriter Rick Alverson, former front man in the Virginia–based band Drunk. Enlisting Courtney Bowles on drums and vocals and Karl Runge on violin, Alverson (bass, guitars and lead vocals) began recording Spokane's first album, "Leisure & Other Songs" (2000). Released on Jagjaguwar Records, "Leisure" was a major success, hailed as more personal and more alluring than Alverson's previous work with Drunk.
In 2001, Spokane went on to release their EP "Close Quarters" and their second full-length album, "Proud Graduates," both of which profited from the additional sounds of musicians on cello, glockenspiel and violin. Spokane's most recent album, "Able Bodies," recorded by Dan Burton in Bloomington, Ind., was released in May 2002. Besides Alverson, Bowles and Runge, "Able Bodies" features Molly Kien on cello, Maggie Polk on violin and Ben Swanson on vibraphone, creating Spokane's most polished and haunting release yet.
Drawing influences ranging from Simon and Garfunkel to Leonard Cohen to Galaxie 500, but sounding more like today's slow-core bands Low, Idaho and Dirty Three, Spokane manages to create unique songs redolent of a slow-motion version of the song "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme."
Spokane's bleak, ethereal music echoes the ghostly breath of air through an empty house and evokes the feeling of touching abandoned pieces of furniture. One critic wrote of "Able Bodies," "Spokane makes sad music, to be sure, but it's a satisfying and strangely lovely kind of sad —the kind you need to feel from time to time.''
The reminder of conciousness and mortality is ever-present in Spokane's music, especially in "Able Bodies," which was created with this intense sentiment in mind.
Namely, during the production of the album, while driving on the interstate between Virginia and Indiana, the band's car spun out of control and overturned on the highway. None of the band members were seriously injured, but the dangerous accident remained poignant and unforgettable for the band and greatly influenced the direction of "Able Bodies," a title conceived one week after the incident. The album serves as a conscious voyage through the emotions surrounding the accident, examining themes of displacement, transience and fate, both through the music and the vocals.
Spokane uses chiming guitars, glockenspiel and minimal drum brush strokes to produce a sound that is simultaneously dynamic and subtle, heavy and wispy, cutting and tender. It is frightening and melancholy music, evoking a sense of rural isolation, serene beauty and complete desolation. Just under 32 minutes, "Able Bodies" whisks the listener through a terrifying and engulfing series of emotions, creating the effect of synesthesia in which senses of smell and touch are stimulated through haunting sounds.
Alverson's lyrics are equally mesmerizing, acting as a series of fragmented thoughts spoken with heightened awareness and a sense of reality.
In the final song on the album, "The Made Bed," Alverson sings, "I took my thin trunk of ribs out the door / By twenty cars I've passed before / I've heard it said the day becomes a chore / Don't make the bed for me." The image of ribs conjures thoughts of death and mortality, while the mention of everyday objects, such as the door or the bed, summon the listener's senses to feel and see the object.
One cannot listen to Spokane continually or at any occasion; it is an album that you need to be in the mood for. Its dark, somber tone could bring any high, positive thoughts straight down to the cold tile floor. At the same time, it is an astounding masterpiece of human mortality, emotion and raw senses.