Having a recognizable name in music can seem impossible at times without radio exposure or maybe some type of viral sensation, but it’s still very doable.
Having a recognizable name in music can seem impossible at times without radio exposure or maybe some type of viral sensation, but it’s still very doable. Just look at rock veterans Guster.
Sure, you could put on an independent radio station and probably hear “Fa Fa” or “Satellite,” but for the most part, Guster has avoided exposure in the ways normally deemed essential for band to “make it” in music. Yet despite this, Guster has spent the last twenty years not only surviving as a band, but thriving and only getting better as times rolls on. It’s as evident as ever on their latest record released this past January entitled Evermotion (out on Ocho Mule and Nettwerk Records) and it shows that after all this time, Guster still has plenty of novel and relevant music to bring to the table. Go to any one of their shows and you’ll see there’s certainly an audience for it.
With every new record from Guster, the talking point quickly becomes how the band “reinvented themselves” or attempted this “bold, new sound.” It’s certainly something music fans hear all the time in press released about new albums from anyone, but for Guster, it actually rings true. Drummer & percussionist Brian Rosenworcel let us know that it’s not a “specific agenda so to speak” for the band, but just something that naturally comes out due to their own inner drive. “Anytime we come across an idea we’ve already done, we reject it and move on to the next thing. There’s always pop melodies in our songs so there’s a thread between our albums, but when I hear this record, it’s a step in putting more space in the music and featuring the grooves a bit more. It’s definitely shocking to some people because it doesn’t sound like Guster to them, but the more you hear it, the more you can understand our evolution.”
Coming up with a new sound in general can be career ending for musicians so to do it pretty much from album to album can be almost incompressible to some artists out there. Rosenworcel downplayed this though, again just relaying how it’s part of the band’s DNA. “It’d be harder to sound the same for us because the things that are inspiring to us are always in the new frontier. I’m always excited to try a new groove on my drum kit or to use a new sample. I know Ryan [Miller] just wants to play keyboards now and not touch a guitar. That may change and it may come full circle. There are no rules, but you definitely have to go where your creative influences are.”
At the root of this constant evolution for their music is Guster’s trademark songwriting, certainly the undisputed key to their sustained success over these years. For anyone who’s ever put on a Guster record or seen them perform live, you know all too well that there’s just a way that Guster puts together a song with lyrics, melodies, and groove that no one else can come close to. “We’ve come a long way and it’s all due to songwriting I think. Nobody ever really took the time to get good at an instrument. We just kind of moved on to the next one when we were adequate at it. All the focus was always on honing in on better and better songs and refining our tastes so we’re getting closer to a classic record. That’s why we take it so seriously.”
Evermotion comes a little over four years since their last record and while it’d be easy to point to the band’s personal growth as family men, Rosenworcel clued us in how it’s much more to do with the way they write songs and approach an album. “Family’s the easy answer of course. I had twins in that gap and there’s all these things going on and side projects. Really though, we’re not prolific writers unless we hunker down and write. There’s some people like Ryan Adams who just goes, ‘Oh, I wrote 37 songs this year. I need to pick the best 11 songs and make a record.’ We’re not like that. We actually take a year plus to write the material and get together intermittently since we live in different cities. It’s just the logistics of it and when we get serious about it.”
It’s a long process for the band and one that’s becoming somewhat obsolete as demand increases and technology advances. “They tell us that bands aren’t going to be making albums anymore, they’re just going to be releasing songs and that’s depressing.” It’s a talking point getting louder by the day now, especially as bigger artists are delaying albums and doling out singles in the meantime. Still, Rosenworcel thinks there’s still a viable place for the record even if the appeal for single-oriented music makes sense in 2015. “If it’s a band like Guster or Wilco or Radiohead that’s been around a long time, I doubt that we can kick that album mold that we are so attached to. But then you see a younger band who’s just organically reacting to how often they need to be releasing music or what their fans want. The organic thing to do for them is not necessarily release 12 songs every three years. It’s to keep feeding your fanbase. There’s something natural about it and technology is kind of demanding it. We try not to be dinosaurs about this, but we can only write songs every so often though.”
For some, hearing Guster and dinosaur in the same sentence must feel like a knife in the heart, but rest assured that Guster is not like other bands entering their 25th year together. Instead of burying their head in the sand, Guster is more comfortable keeping their finger on the pulse of music today. That’s not to say Guster will be releasing a track featuring Iggy Azalea next year, but rather they try to actively study the trends of today instead of dismiss it completely. “We were at Bonnaroo this year and we saw that any band that had a guitar and a guy with a beard had 5,000 people in front of their stage and then anyone with a laptop and light show had 35,000 people in front of their stage. It was just like a realization, ‘Oh, okay – people want something more beat orientated or more visceral or more bass heavy.’ It’s just realizing that what we’re doing isn’t necessarily where the heads of a college kid or a younger person may be. When we saw those DJs at Bonnaroo, we tried to not look at the clouds and start yelling. We tried to understand what’s good about them. What’s appealing about Deadmau5, ODESZA, Flying Lotus, and Bassnectar. There’s maybe somethings we can incorporate so it’s just good to be aware.”
It’s a stretch to imagine Guster at a Deadmau5 show with a pen and paper scribbling notes on what to do for their next album, but it’s also a stretch to say their musical peers have the same mindset. As Rosenworcel implied, the natural implication of their contemporaries is to just dismiss the current musical trends as meaningless fads, but for Guster, it’s just something else that could influence their future songwriting. “There’s a happy medium you can find in all of that. Some of those groves appeal to me in certain ways, but the artificial tones may bother me. A happy medium may be something like LCD Soundsystem. Their songs had amazing grooves that feel like they’re computer generated even though I think he had an amazing drummer that was actually performing it, but these are real drum tones and it feels real and it feels computer-like in the same way. There’s ways to do it, you just apply your own aesthetic.”
With a mindset like that, it’s easy to see just how Guster is still exploring new terrain in music after all these years. Rosenworcel reminisced with us about the band’s initial success that led to a slot on Woodstock 1999 and an opening slot for Barenaked Ladies at the height of their popularity, something he credits as “jump starting our own fanbase.” But as quick as he is to reminisce, he’s even more excited to gush about the new things they’re getting to do after all these years. “Recently, we got to tour Europe for the first time in March and we realized we have all these German fans. Finding these new things at this stage of our careers really just lets us have a much better time on the road when we could be missing our families in the meantime. We’re super psyched to still be doing it and we appreciate it now probably more than ever. It really drives us to just keep pushing and trying to make awesome songs that will just stand up over time. I think we’ve already made a few and I hope we make a few more.”
It’s a modest summation of the band’s career in that regard, but a gigantic hint for what’s to come. After all of this, it seems Guster could comfortably go on for twenty more years with each album still proclaiming to reinvent their sound. For Guster, it will probably still be true twenty years from now.
Guster plays The National tonight with Port Harbour opening the show. Doors are at 6:30 PM and tickets are still available for $28. For more information on the show, click here.
