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LUSK

Paul D'Amour - Chris Pitman

If Free Mars, the mystery-riddled debut album by Lusk, leaves you teetering between bliss and bewilderment, you're not alone: even it's creators admit to being caught off-guard by the album's careening blend of surrealism and sharply etched songcraft.

"It's completely different than what I expected," shrugs Paul D'Amour. "I had hoped to do this psychadelic, f ucked-up, lo-fi, edit loop madness, but it turned out to be a highly orchestrated pop record. I guess I've learned to let myself go wherever the music leads. The songs are already there, just waiting to be discovered and as a result this album sort of created itself."

Having arrived at their otherwordly destination, D'Amour and his Lusk co-conspiritor Chris Pitman now invite the rest of us to follow along. Leadoff track and debut single "Backworlds" embodies the entire vibe of Free Mars: strikingly unconventional - but in an unforced, unplanned manner - "Backworlds" wraps its dark themes in disarmingly silky sonics.

Juxtaposing Pitman's breathy vocals against D'Amour's soundscapes, "Backworlds" also features contributions from Brad Laner (Medicine) and Greg Edwards (Autolux, Failure, Replicants). The playfully macabre "Backworlds" video is co-directed by D'Amour and Len Burge.

Amid the stately guitar jangle of "Gold" and anthemic "Mindray", Free Mars emphasizes velvety harmonics and pop infrastructures. But elsewhere, Pitman and D'Amour give vent to well-focused ferocity: the storming rhythm of "The Hotel Family Affair" foreshadows outbursts of guitar on "Kill The King."

The diversity is purely intentional. "A lot of music today seems so monochrome," laments Pitman. "Everyone knows that feeling when you get when you hear one song and you've pretty much heard the entire album. We wanted to mix up all the sounds and make it a circus, with a bit of humor thrown in."

With that in mind, Free Mars is peppered with classical instrumentation, including horns ("Savvy Kangaroos", "Gold"), harp ("Doctor", "Mindray"), and especially cello - which infuses more than half of the albums tracks, most notably "Free Mars" and "Undergarden." Moreover, D'Amour and Pitman eagerly employ just about any electronic gadgets they can get their hands on, be it Sandoz drenched vocals wired into Vox AC30 amps, or musty vintage gear (mellotrons, chamberlins and theremins are just the tip of the iceberg).

"We torture guitars, use old effects pedals - all sorts of of stuff that most other people use a little more subtly than we do," admits D'Amour. "Subtlety is great, but sometimes it's nice to mix things up. We're mainly concerned with making each song a good song, and then you can beat it to a pulp: you can discombobulate all the sounds, but the underlying melody should be strong enough to come through all the racket." Ultimately, Free Mars is heavily influenced by the site of its genesis: The Alley, a notoriously freaky Los Angeles rehearsal studio. "It's where Fleetwood Mac, Crosby, Stills & Nash and all those 70s bands rehearsed," nods Pitman. "I swear, you could scrape resin off the walls."

The Alley not only inspired Lusk's music, but the group's very name. "The whole place is filled with crazy posters and graffiti," laughs D'Amour. "There's even an entire wall with denim pants embroidered onto it. We saw a poster of two stoic, politician-type people with 'Lusk' written underneath. We loved the word. It sounded kind of primordial, blending lust and musk and tusk. When we looked it up, we found it's a British term for an unemployed, lazy layabout. There's also a Swedish word spelled 'lusk' which means gypsy or vagabond."

The vagabond definition seems particularly appropriate; both D'Amour and Pitman followed roundabout paths into their Lusk partnership. A native of the Pacific Northwest, D'Amour originally moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film industry career, but ended up making his mark in music. As co-founder of Tool, he helped create the group's massively successful 1992 debut Undertow, and after working on much of the material for Tool's sophomore album Aenima, he left the band shortly before recording sessions began. "I liked the physicality of Tool, and being in the band was an amazing experience," he explains. "But I was ready for something different and that's why I decided to move on."

After first meeting D'Amour via the Tool orbit, Kansas City-native Pitman became charter member of the Replicants with Greg Edwards. Later, D'Amour and Pitman played together in the Los Angeles experimental improvisational group Zaum (a Russian phrase for "transcendental language of the future"), before setting up shop at The Alley in early 1996.

Eventually, the two gravitated toward a more cohesive studio aesthetic. "We took the skeletal songs from The Alley," says D'Amour, "and basically overdubbed the shit out of them at my house. We fleshed out the ideas and mutilated them like crazy." The resulting Free Mars somehow manages to simultaneously combine jam-induced spontaneity with meticulous musicality. Look for Lusk to tour throughout the U.S. later in 1997 with D'Amour on guitar, Pitman doing vocals and accompanied by drummer, keyboard player, stand-up bassist and harpist (!). The unusual live instrumentation just seems better suited to conjuring the off-kilter beauty which lies at the very core of Free Mars.

Live instrumentation:

Paul D'Amour - guitar

Chris Pitman - vocals

Chris Forrest - drums

Joe Kennedy - keyboards

Chris Wise - stand-up bass

Patti Hood - harp

From the Volcano Entertainment press packet

Thanks to Chindem