Hicks holds a dominion over his drum kit in a way few others do. No movement or sound is excessive or unnecessary, and he is more than capable of keeping up when a song suddenly changes time signature and tempo. And Will is also an accomplished pianist. Charlee actually met Will in the eighth grade, when the two of them won the “Most Musically Talented Award.” His keys skill is on display on many tracks. On the majority of their songs, Charlee is the lead singer, but Chance often adds concise harmonies. While Charlee sings, she also dances, flails, kicks, and plays bass lines as complex and intriguing as early bebop jazz bassists. The girl with dainty hands, too young to buy a beer, can walk up and down the neck of the bass like it’s a sidewalk. She can switch between freeing soft, pure vocals that float out into the air and belting out unbreakable, forceful choruses. One of my favorite songs, both live and on record is “Digital Oak Tree.” It contains all of Charlee’s vocal range, as well as a general sampler of what the band is capable of doing. Chance’s guitar work is the product of a remarkable talent, but he is also receptive to new playing styles and techniques. He adopts and swallows whole any type of music he can, and then funnels it through his own personal mix of determined distortion, and he likes to play loudly.
“You definitely have to be open-minded and in touch with your emotions to get what we’re doing.” During their writing/recording sessions, they don’t play a song together in its entirety. Instead, they force themselves, in Charlee’s words, to “paint the emotion quickly.” It’s a collaboration between people, but it’s also a collaboration between digital and acoustic, man and machine, which makes it all the more impressive when they perform their songs live. In their early years, the songs were rapidly growing more complex, but without having more people to play the additional parts. Translating their music from record to live performance was quickly becoming the greatest challenge they faced. They put so many instruments, effects and samples into their recordings that playing live with only three people was quite difficult. Like a superhero, Dom Marcoaldi swooped in at just the right moment. After playing with the band for some time, he became an official member. Having another guitar on stage allows the multiple overlapping guitar parts that Chance writes to be heard live. But even today, with four people, the band has to “literally relearn the songs before playing them live.” That said, one of the most beautiful things about Linear Downfall’s songs is the fact that one sound or instrument does not trump or overpower the others. Instead, it’s strangely harmonious. The contributions of each member are vital. Seeing them live, it’s hard to believe that there are only four of them. Their sound is expansive—it swims through the audience and crawls up the walls. They fill their stage with as 20
N AT I V E
AUGUST | 2012