Rose Hill Drive: A Better Way

Check out songs from Rose Hill Drive’s new album on MySpace…

By: Dennis Cook

Rose Hill Drive by Danny Rothenberg

“We tried to do whatever we wanted to do,” offers Rose Hill Drive‘s bassist-singer Jake Sproul on the loose philosophy behind their new self-produced second album, Moon Is The New Earth (released June 24 on Megaforce). “We’re all very distinct personalities but we want to get together and make something that speaks for all three of us. This is the culmination of our frustrations turned into a positive progression in a direction that makes us feel comfortable and full.”

Moon coalesces a lot of elements the trio – rounded out by Sproul’s brother Daniel (guitar, vocals) and childhood friend Nathan Barnes (drums) – have been playing with for a while, tossing aside the vintage rock tag that’s dogged them from day one. Opener “Sneak Out” is a punchy, fresh calling card that could easily compete with The Strokes, Queens of the Stone Age or any other jaggedly catchy modern rock. Other spots hark back to the suede clad, big amp ’70s but in a way that’s an homage rather than a reproduction. Feel is impossible to define but there’s a heavy soul inside Rose Hill Drive that infuses everything with a pleasant density, a trait that permeates the new album.

“It’s hard to get things across, live or in the studio. We didn’t exactly get our whole live show vibe across on the record. That’s just a part of us, and maybe not creatively where we feel most comfortable. Getting to that core energy took everyone coming together, with friends helping us turn the knobs and place the mics,” Sproul says. “We’re really sensitive people. When we get put in a situation we don’t try to push our way through or shove our ideas. Doing that is just the environment manipulating you. We finally just became comfortable when everything was out in the open and the air was clear. Nobody had any preexisting notions of how we should be. That it took a while to reach this place wound up being helpful. There was an intensity that we could suspend amongst the relaxed feeling that we tried to maintain – play and work, keeping a certain vibe, but also knowing how to egg each other on to really get the right take and just doing it until it’s right.”

Rose Hill Drive by Jake Krolick

Compared to their self-titled 2006 debut, Moon Is The New Earth is a quantum leap forward, an exciting mingling of acoustic and electric instruments, intuitive studio savvy, increasingly tasty chops and the feverish drive only young folks possess. The first words sung are “Honey, I got another side of me I don’t show.” Moon is a band looking in the mirror and seeing themselves instead of the traces of their ancestors.

“Listening to the first record, I knew we could do better but we frustratingly had to wait a couple years to show it,” offers Sproul. “We started writing tunes for this album immediately after our first one. It just feels like we’ve been trying to catch up in the recording sense with where we are as band live. We tried to sign quickly to get our first record out, and then it took even longer! We pretty much got pushed out on the road five years ago, and our songs weren’t necessarily resonating so we started covering songs and molding ourselves into something that could keep us surviving on the road. Playing those cover songs was something attractive that kept us playing. That was a fortunate thing for us to grow out there, and our live show was a creative thing unto itself but not necessarily what we set out to do when we started this band. I don’t really know what the scope of this band is but the fun we were having in the studio, the high we were riding, was some of the best times that we’ve shared as friends and as a band.”

The Song Does Not Remain The Same

Jake Sproul by Tobin Voggesser

“I think we’ve always just been trying to find out what we want to do, which I don’t think is a bad thing,” says Sproul. “I think that growing creatively is a major part of what keeps you feeling alive about what you’re doing for art. It’s important to not get stagnant because if the creative energy gets stale it ceases to exist.”

Labeled a Zeppelin knockoff from the beginning, Rose Hill Drive may have the feel of a classic rock band but there are more than enough twists to squirm out of that pigeonhole. Cranking “Raise Your Hands” or “Cool Cody,” it’s easy to understand the retro comparisons. They just don’t come off as something that grew up today, sharing far more in common with say Thin Lizzy than Maroon 5. But, the new album makes clear Rose Hill Drive is a contemporary group and not some nostalgia act. Despite many having written their soundbite a while ago, this trio is tougher to pin down than many think.

“The Thin Lizzy thing is so European! That’s the response over there, where Thin Lizzy is considered the greatest band of all time. I had never heard Thin Lizzy until I went over there and our tour manager gave me Jailbreak. It was totally brand new to my ears,” says Sproul, handily debunking preconceptions about their inspirations. “Everybody has a lot of information right now but the walls are closing in and the balls are bouncing faster. Things echo a bit more now and people hear what they wanna hear sometimes. When we listen to music we lump it all together. It’s not a decade thing or that we’re trying to sound like a particular style. In the beginning of the band, we were so young and listening to everything we loved, and I remember getting high and listening to Radiohead’s The Bends. That was right before we developed into the three-piece, and at the time I thought it was the greatest music I’d heard to that point. It was the most emotional experience; every sound sounded brand new, every note that followed every note was the most beautiful, perfect step into the next. The Bends was just as important for us as Led Zeppelin II.”

“Jazz is really, really above my head because I haven’t focused on it. But, I definitely love listening to John Coltrane. It’s just part of creativity, and if something is inspiring you then you’ll want to go in that direction. You’ll do it your own way, no matter what, if you’re feeling that creative energy. You can try to imitate but if you imitate all the way you start to get that stagnant feeling,” says Sproul. “It doesn’t matter where the spark comes from. It can come from a movie. Like, I felt a lot of creative energy after I watched There Will Be Blood. And I think The Big Lebowski is the ultimate. It’s got all the elements and it breathes so well. There’s this super chilled out protagonist. He speaks without speaking, and they captured that. He goes through a range of human emotions but he’s always still The Dude.”

Continue reading for more on Rose Hill Drive…

I remember getting high and listening to Radiohead’s The Bends. That was right before we developed into the three-piece, and at the time I thought it was the greatest music I’d heard to that point…. The Bends was just as important for us as Led Zeppelin II. –Jake Sproul

Photo by: Danny Rothenberg

Got Live If You Want It

The growing complexity of their studio material does pose a challenge for just three dudes in a van traveling around to clubs and theatres.

Daniel Sproul by Lisa Siciliano

“We were experimenting with other players. At one point we had our brother Ben out on the road with us, and it sounded really good but it needed more development than Ben was going to allow. He’s real young and he’s still trying to figure out who he is. Another player sounds really good but we’d have to play with them for a long time before we can get into the improvisation that happens when we play live, which I think is a really important part of live music – to not recreate a moment in time that is the record,” says Sproul. “We just try to get the right tones. Live, it can be about tone and simplicity. Even though there’s a lot of tracks on certain [studio recordings], it works live if you nail the right vibe. One of my favorite live performances on YouTube lately was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs performing ‘Gold Lion’ [see it here]. There’s no bass but there’s ways they compensate for that, and it inspired me to think about how you can compensate minimally instead of hiring a bunch of other musicians. With the songs we’ve created it would take away from that energy that happens when just the three of us come together and begin improvising.”

In concert, Rose Hill Drive excels at using the space within a trio, pulling back and lying out consciously to accentuate elements or create suspense.

“It’s not just sitting out, it’s taking that step further, thinking about the interplay and then taking that a step further so the interplay is silent. But, it’s never just not playing,” observes Sproul. “I think that space is super powerful. We’ve been trying to gather more knowledge of what that space means. There’s not too much space on our [new] record, in that we don’t really allow it to breathe. It’s pretty up-tempo and energetic the entire way through, which I think is pretty cool. We weren’t trying to create Dark Side of the Moon [laughs]. We were trying to create a vibe that says, ‘Let me out of here!'”

There’s a definite Wild In The Streets vibe to Rose Hill. Rare is the time I’ve listened to them and not wanted to break a window or pants the clergy or engage in some other hooligan behavior. “Someone on MySpace posted, ‘I just heard ‘Trans Am’ [off Moon] and it made me want to punch my mom in the face,'” relates Sproul. “That’s so dark!”

Do You Wanna Get High?

While one may be tempted to take Moon‘s “Do You Wanna Get High?” literally, subtle lines imply something other than a freshly sparked joint is being suggested. Rose Hill is gently tilting at elevated consciousness but anchoring it to crushing boogie so it slips past our guardrails with ease. What we have is three white boys offering their version of Sly & The Family Stone’s “I Want To Take You Higher.”

Rose Hill Drive by DR Meadows

“That’s kind of always our vibe, not just the music but also as people,” says Sproul. “I love talking about what it means to break out of our skin and what chemistry really means. I didn’t write that lyric, that was Daniel, and I think we both have different interpretations of what that song means. Being too literal about that lyric, in any sense, wrecks the edge of where it stands. People know how to get high. It just depends on what your vehicle is. I wouldn’t want to say it’s any one substance, but at the same time, I wouldn’t want to put Hare Krishna things as an underlying tone [laughs].”

Rose Hill Drive’s philosophizing is marbled into their musculature, another element that gives them strength. There’s never the sense, like in say the Polyphonic Spree, that someone will put a burlap sack over your head and you’ll wake up surrounded by robed devotees with hand bells spouting doctrine at you. With RHD, the deeper spiritual vibe seems connected to an irrepressible urge to punch through things, to know what’s on the other side, to see what is hidden from normal sight.

“I do feel that way. I think you can make a direct tie to the shamanistic approach to music that Jim Morrison took. He read the book The Doors of Perception, which isn’t really a spiritual book but it’s about a logical journey into the occult. That has always fascinated Nate and Daniel and I in different ways, even if we all have different beliefs as to how to get high and find out what makes the undercurrent tick. There’s certain things that happen that are just weird, regardless of who’s God – and who am I to say that ALL gods aren’t included – and you take solace from the feeling that two people, both of you, experienced this weird thing. There’s something there the English language can’t describe.”

That said, Rose Hill Drive has made some of the greatest stripper music of all time. This band rarely forgets about life below the waist even as they ponder the imponderable. Thoughtful as they may be, there’s always a huge set of balls swinging between their legs.

“It can get really intense and people can get self-righteous, which reveals itself immediately in music,” says Sproul. “Music is always trying to be truth, and the human ego is always dissonant to that truth. But, rock ‘n’ roll has got to rock or it wouldn’t be rock ‘n’ roll [laughs].”

Rose Hill Drive tour dates available here.

Rose Hill Drive – “Showdown” live at The Boulder Theater 12/31/06:

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