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Adam and I have discussed how our dream band – though not really musically – is Steely Dan, where you infiltrate the pop world with these things you're not supposed to say in a pop song – cryptic, poetic comments on society that you're tapping your foot to and then suddenly stop as you realize what's being said. -Jordan Dalrymple |
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Underneath the phenomenal musicianship and stratospheric intellect, Subtle retains an aggressive, "fuck you" DIY punk core that surfaces in their explosive energy and "what the hell was that" wildness. Try, as many critics have, to wedge them into little boxes, Subtle remains slippery escape artists with a gold key under their tongues and a bottle of KY tucked in their sleeves.
 Subtle
"We'll always fight being made into a soundbite. It just doesn't work for us. We get called schoolyard names because they can't figure out our art and put it into their small man binary," says Drucker. "They don't do that with say Jamie Lidell or Bright Eyes, which is interesting. What I liken it to is nerd-on-nerd crime [laughs]. There's precedent for what we do. Dax recently gave me a bunch of old band Kraftwerk, when they were Kraftwerk and Neu! together. That band is fucking Subtle! They were about to do music that the times surrounding them weren't really prepared to deal with so they broke into two separate bands. But now, here we come approaching music very similarly - maybe a little different fashion and improv and sound sculpting - but we don't have to shut it down. We can just explore and shape it."
In this polyglot age of globalized everything, Subtle makes perfect sense, if you just step back from the incessant need to categorize things. As African high life bleeds into Brazilian batucada and Staten Island Wu, music's DNA is shifting, rapidly, but people that worry more about iTunes classifications and sales blurbs than the music seem to have seized the candy store nonetheless.
"This whole record [ExitingARM] conceptually is about this. The boogieman is coming for these motherfuckers. Everyone has let choice fall from the center of the choosing mechanism and apathy has taken full stride. I notice with my kid sister, who's 13, the shows she enjoys the most, daydreams about being in, aren't Transformers or My Little Pony but reality TV shows with people pretending to be honest. Her imagination and downtime and twiddling her fingers, staring at the sky time is filled with fake reality. I think it will have some kind of very curious effect on the modern imagination," comments Drucker, a master of understatement at times. "We have the same thing with music. I bet somewhere in L.A., right now, there's people discussing how a band looks on an iPod first and then working backwards to the actual music. It's gonna make a thimble where there once was a big, full vase of stuff inside of music."
ExitingARM is a ballsy title given the aftermath of their tour accident where Pierson has only limited use of his hands. But, like Wallace Stevens' "palm at the end of the mind," this album finds him still firmly grasping things creatively in Subtle. Outside of an inability to tour, Pierson has used their golden key to slip loose of normal expectations.
"In a very short amount of time using Abelton Live, pedals he's modified and other tools, he's put in the same work, the same contribution he would have before the accident but in a totally new way. He still comes up with basslines but in this new world he's created. With these new restrictions he's more focused in melody and sound choice than ever," says Dalrymple, pointing out a perverse silver lining of an indescribable turn of events. "He's the heart of the band. We all listen to the music we're making through the filter of his ears, his tastes. That's been the stylistic edge to Subtle the whole time, and even more so after the accident. I always ask myself, 'What would Dax do?' with each musical decision."
 Dax Pierson
"Now [Subtle's music] is getting to the point where you could show it to a friend [laughs]. It can work in a car now; it has a new set of legs. Still, I think we put in a lot of complexity that doesn't always organize itself around its exhibition in the world just yet. Today's attention spans don't always serve us well. We're built for fans and that kind of loving relationship," says Drucker. "We don't have slogans where our substance is. Each album is a full-proof effort. When you come back to this music later hopefully it's only interesting. The method and the whimsy are supposed to be magical. This is not a fantastical world, mysticism is missing and unreality is coming for everyone quicker and quicker. This is one of the battles inside [ExitingARM]. People lack a center, and it is all about meaning. Everything else is a dilution and a bodily flow-through, weather related thought; nothing about the meaning of life, only it's temperature and loose coordinates. Art should bring you closer to that center."
"The human mind is the bastion of our evolution. And we're sitting here naming everything, which is just fucking ridiculous! Eventually the universe starts to enjoy that it's being named. In fact, it never realized what it was about before. Man brings meaning to the universe because it's looking for its own meaning," continues Drucker. "It doesn't all have to be 'lifestyle' choices. I believe there can be a music that affects real life choices, music that fills you with mantra, music that recharges you and is both escape and stone tool. For escape, you should be able to bump it, show it to friends, etc. For stone tool, it's someone listening to our stuff and then writing a poem or reflecting on themselves or making some kind of art of their own."
Subtle began a nationwide tour this week. Peep their tour dates here. And you can check out the unfolding world of Dax Pierson on his blog, Breakneck Speed.
(inside)ExitingARM
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