It seems inconceivable now that there was a time, not very long ago, when a slew of new bands claimed to be influenced by, and sought to match the beauty and ambition of, the likes of Burt Bacharach, the Beach Boys, the Free Design, and other well-known and obscure practitioners of orchestral pop and easy listening from the 1960s and early ’70s.
The movement — often referred to at the time as “orch-pop” — was a fleeting one, and it ultimately produced little of worth. Most of the participating bands had neither the technical skills nor the songwriting talent to be of use to a style of music whose success is exceptionally dependent on both. Their hearts were undoubtedly in the right place: It was the late ’90s, and something needed to be done to redress the increasingly diminished horizons of indie-rock and the dregs of grunge, wherein seeming to not try very hard — and being palpably miserable doing so — was worn as a badge of honour. Here was an opportunity to hark back to a time when popular music had yet to be saturated with irony, when a sincere belief in the transformative power of pretty music was nothing to be ashamed of. That so much of the results sounded like Sebadoh and a seasick woodwind section covering “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” didn’t diminish the value of the bands’ intentions, but neither did it redeem the painful experience of listening to them.
Some bands got it right, primarily because they shunned slavish replication and instead sought to create a modern notion of their influences that combined the old-fashioned with the newfangled. Sean O’Hagan, linchpin of the High Llamas, spent a few years making full use of windfall major-label budgets, producing albums that are like aural travelogues of 20th-century non-rock music. (Less attentive ears insisted he was making nothing more than one Brian Wilson pastiche after another. That argument can wait for another time.) Stereolab (in which O’Hagan was sometimes an auxiliary member) were virtually infallible throughout the second half of the decade; always using traditional melody as a jumping-off point, their simultaneously academic and gleefully childlike experiments with technology — from Moog synthesizers to digital editing — and song structure reached dizzying heights of sophistication.
Chicago’s the Aluminum Group, though, arguably made the single greatest recordings to come from that somewhat nebulous cluster of artists: the albums Plano (1998) and Pedals (’99). (A promising self-financed debut, Wonder Boy, came out in ’95; it was later reissued with extra tracks as Wonder Boy Plus.) Made up of brothers John and Frank Navin and an ever-changing cast of supporting players, the Aluminum Group answered the never-posed question of what sort of music Bacharach and Hal David might’ve made if they had been uncommonly close gay siblings who came of age in the ’80s. Plano, especially, is a masterpiece: a collection of concise, economically orchestrated pop songs that harbour innovative — and, in their own modest way, subversive — flourishes beneath their classicist surfaces.
Those surfaces alone are enough to recommend Plano. Featuring a dozen players — including horns and strings — and impeccably produced by David Trumfio, the album’s sound is as elegant and purposeful as the Eames furniture line from which the Navins took their band name. The songs “Chocolates” and “The Mattachine Society” are especially lavish, recalling the period in the late ’60s when A&M Records artists such as Bacharach, Claudine Longet and Brasil 66 gave the label an unofficial house sound that evoked cosmopolitan sophistication and jet-set leisure. Other tracks, including “Angel on a Trampoline” and “Steam,” evince the Navins’ ’80s roots, their programmed beats and percolating keyboards hinting at affection for electro-pop pioneers OMD and Soft Cell.
But if the Aluminum Group’s music is a summation of the Navins’ record collections, their lyrics are nigh on incomparable. Sung in a calm, unobtrusive croon (both brothers take turns at the mic), Plano presented something that had perhaps never been heard across the length of an entire album: observations about gay life that are presented as nothing more than matter-of-fact reports from the people living it — high and lows, triumphs and disappointments, exceptionality and mundanity. Unlike Rufus Wainwright, whose vocal dexterity and outsize personality tend to make him want to write about everything as though it were the end of the world, or Stephin Merritt, who over-relies on a pose of cynical detachment, the Navins are a recognizable tangle of contradictions, swings of mood and changes of heart — just like everyone, albeit with the power of poetry on their side.
Following the more expansive Pedals — home to their single most ambitious song, the almost 10-minute “Rrose Selavy’s Valise” — the Aluminum Group moved toward a predominantly electronic sound with 2000's Pelo, whose clean, retro-futurist tone showed that, together with friends and neighbours Jim O’Rourke, Tortoise, and the Sea and Cake (and frequent visitors Stereolab and the High Llamas), Chicago had become the home base of a new, indefinable experimental pop.
Throughout the following decade, the Aluminum Group perfected that sound on their “Happyness trilogy”: the albums Happyness (2002), More Happyness (2003) and Little Happyness (2008). The Navins’ retreat from the ornate, large-scale productions of Plano and Pedals is understandable: as expensive to make as it is difficult to sell, it became a particularly unsustainable forte once everyone had stopped paying for music. Although the Happyness trilogy isn’t as immediately seductive to the ears as Plano’s epic landscapes of melody, repeat listening proves it to be their best work — compact and linear where its predecessors are expansive and painterly, but full of stealth complexity that rewards the use of headphones. And, as always, there’s the Navins’ extraordinary way with words.
John Navin, who will celebrate his 53rd birthday later this month, answered the following questions by email from his home in Chicago. Wisely, he didn't take any of it nearly as seriously as I did.
There was a fleeting moment in the late '90s when easy listening and orchestral pop became popular influences in indie music, and Plano seemed perfectly timed to that moment. But the Aluminum Group seemed to be the one of the only acts whose demonstrable interest in those genres predated the trend. I'm always interested in how musicians who hadn't jumped the bandwagon became interested in that music, since it was considered archaic for so long. What was the case for you and Frank?
John Navin: I don’t know about bandwagons except I love to be on them, especially at hayrides with cotton candy and caramel apples — it’s sticky. I think people collectively gravitate to things they like; it’s a way of identifying ourselves. It’s our red flag or personal marker: “Look! This is me. This is who I am."
Frankie and I have loved music our whole lives, all kinds of music. It’s well documented. Our tastes change; our interests widen, deepen. For instance, the last 10 years or so I’ve devoted to classical music, learning as much as I can. I even bought a piano and started taking lessons. I raced to every opera I could. Thankfully, we live in a city with a wonderful lyric opera company.
I love all kinds of things, genres in music. Sometimes these interests are juxtaposed and collide, like punk and pretty music, like the Clash and Claudine Longet. You never know where inspiration comes from; it just does from so many human endeavours — especially, but not exclusively, in the arena of the arts.
Your interests in music, design and fashion seem to be of a piece, in that they represent old-fashioned notions of "the good life," and conjure up a time and place where people were more polite and took greater care in how they presented themselves. Does your music provide a sort of wish fulfillment — a soundtrack for a world you wish existed?
Life — existence, or what I perceive it to be — is the starting point. Then it’s scrounging around and seeing all that we accomplish in life. I’m inspired by so many things. Also I’m saddened, but that can be fuel for inspiration and dreams. For instance, I’m blown away to the core of my being by a person as humble and fascinating as [New York Times street-fashion photographer] Bill Cunningham and one as garish and outlandish as [multimedia artist] Matthew Barney.
I try to be as good as I can in this life. You never know what’s after this…. I hope something is, but all our human baggage will be gone. That’s an inspiring thought: free of art, beauty, things around us, but not the souls we care about. No, those molecules will be combined with our own in the hereafter — or so I would hope. Our soundtrack, if we have one, is to be good to one another, be humble, smart, open to things, and try, try, try to be happy, because it’s not so easy. The world is a strange place. It’s like that children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are: We could almost be zombies, if you think about it — the crimes we commit, the things we do. The good life is paying your bills, being debt-free, not buying into the Man, keeping some element of yourself free, free from what I’ve just listed. Oh… my new theory: Pay yourself first, because you’re the most important. It took me 53 years to figure that out. I always paid everyone else first and little was left for me.
As far as design and art go, I couldn’t survive a day if I didn’t think about them. I just couldn’t. They aren’t beyond bread and water, but they are almost a “host”; they are for me. I love so many buildings and things man has made and is making. I want to keep every old building standing; I hate when things are torn down, I love when new things are put up. My [architectural] interests are too broad to go into here; suffice it to say they include classical, Renaissance, Victorian, Edwardian, art nouveau, deco, modern, brute, ultra-modern — you name it. If there is a building, I want to go see it with you. Let’s go, Michael, shall we?
In a previous interview, you said of your music, "It never overwhelms the listener, but you can take what you like or leave it if your attention is elsewhere." That used to be a guiding principle for scores of pop artists and was nothing to be ashamed of. Why do you think that utilitarian aspect of music is so much less valued now?
I rarely, if ever, listen to our stuff. I did when we were recording it. I love to clean my apartment to music — that’s what I meant. Or at a party, it’s on and you can still have a conversation with somebody. Never overwhelm anybody on the surface, but sub-consciously, on a spiritual level, it’s wonderful to destroy a person or move them to new heights. That’s what I meant: not kill them spiritually but move them beyond words. Speechless.
I have a theory as to why the “orch-pop” revival was so short-lived. Firstly, I think many of the bands involved realized they didn't have the abilities, as musicians or as songwriters, to pull off what they were aiming for. But possibly more than that, I think they discovered that making that kind of music isn't economically sustainable. I wonder if the latter was an incentive, post-Pedals, to move toward more electronic instruments and programming that can be recorded at home by yourselves.
The only lucky people who make money from music are the superstars and those rare indie superstars. We never fell into either category. I don’t know what motivates artists. I hope it’s not money. I mean, money is nice — it’s a calling card, it gets you into everything — but I never thought for an instant about it because it wasn’t in the cards for us. We made some, [and] still do with royalties. But mostly, like Blanche Dubois in Streetcar, we rely on the kindness of strangers, who had bigger bucks than we did. Frankie and I have been blessed knowing [and] loving people who are far more generous financially than we could ever be, and so they helped us many times. Many of our records would never have been completed had it not been for their generosity. They know who they and we are forever in their debt. The incentive for Frank and I was making something we loved — that’s about it. The rest is an afterthought.
We’ve also been blessed to work with so many talented and wonderful musicians and artists across the board. No money in the world can buy taste, refinement, character, talent. That’s the beauty: All this and more was ours, has always been — at least with regards to our work.
I love that your lyrics occasionally deal with the specificity of life as a gay man without being ostentatious about it — it's very matter-of-fact, as it should be, but seems brave for that reason, because so few songwriters do it. When the two of you began writing songs, was there very much discussion about how you would do this?
Not really. We’re gay so we write gay or come at it from that perspective. It’s what we know, you know? It’s an outlet for expression.
Was the Happyness trilogy fully conceptualized from the beginning, or did you simply agree it would be a trilogy and then make it up as you went?
It was pretty much mapped out ahead of time. We love big, colossal projects and commitment. We didn’t have all the songs written, but we knew we would come up with them.
Is the Aluminum Group still active?
Yes, we’re very active — not musically as much these days. We’ve ventured into interior design: my apartment; Schwa [a restaurant in Chicago]. Frank is returning to his roots of producing fine art in sculpture, mixed media, conceptual art, et cetera. He’s brilliant and one of the most gifted artists I know. I don’t know where I am at this exact moment in time. I just took a Valium. Just one. I needed to; it’s been a stressful week. I feel wonderful but I can’t tell you exactly what I’m doing right now except Instagramming, thinking about the summer. We’ve been invited to sail around Sardinia, and so I’m super-psyched with anticipation to be with friends. Fun stuff. But Frankie keeps hounding me, reminding me we need to make music again. I think we will. It’s a lot of fun.
