Caspian is coming to town! Tonight at Rock’n’Roll Club

Formed in 2004, Caspian is one of the most interesting bands to have emerged from the American post-rock scene in recent years. Embracing post-rock after Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai, the sextet from Massachusetts reinvigorated the genre with atmospheric touches and epic runtimes. To present his brand new album “Waking Season”, called “The best post-rock album of 2012” by Spin.com, the band is in tour around Europe now: tonight in Bolzano at Rock’n’Roll Club, on Thursday in Lustenau (AT) and on Friday in Conegliano (TV). Here the interview with Philip Jamieson, the leading guitarist of the band.

The name “Caspian” arouses many suggestions, the power of nature (Caspian Sea, the world’s largest lake) and epic greatness (Prince Caspian in Chronicles of Narnia)… Nature and epics are essential elements of your poetics, aren’t they?

Yes, absolutely. We live in an area (north of Boston, Massachusetts) that is very rich in natural elements such as ocean, forest and many varying seasons. The winters are very cold and the summers are extremely hot, which might explain why our music oscilates between high highs and low lows. But who knows.

The new album’s title “Waking Season” evokes a rebirth, a regeneration, a new start… Do these images reflect your actual feeling?
Yes, they reflect it very much. It is important for us to continually try to keep our approach to music and everything that goes into being a band as fresh as possible. “Waking Season” was the culmination of three years of trying to create a record that we felt moved us forward creatively and was able to re-charge our band. A “Waking Season” can refer to every kind of re-birth both physically and emotionally.

Are US living a new “Waking Season”? How do you see the match between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney?
It is hard to say to be honest. As a band we are fairly a-political and not as interested in politics as much as other post-rock bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor for example. I think that politics is something that exists, at this point, purely to divide people and doesn’t bring anyone together. Plus I believe that politics attracts mostly power hungry individuals seeking their own glory and to provide for special interests, even Obama. As a band we’d rather stay out of the discussion and focus on our music and the relationships surrounding us.

The album seems focused on the research of the perfect balance between digital sounds and the full-on attack of a rock band. Is that a good key to understanding your album?
Yes. Bringing in electronic elements was something that happened when we started to get a little bit tired of communicating the same way over and over again with guitars. We wanted to create textures that maybe didn’t resonate on the 1st or 2nd listen, but rather took time to develop within the listener in a way that was more long term as opposed to just an immediate accessibility that has characterized a lot of our approach to past, strictly guitar oriented records. And yet still, we very much value the presence of raw, unbridled emotion and always want to make sure that this finds its way into our albums, which is why we still have to absorb the element of the living, breathing rock band into the mix.

Spin.com called Waking Season “The best post-rock album of 2012”, well done guys! But term “post-rock” includes a very eclectic world, different bands from Tortoise to Stereolab, from Mogwai to Sigur Rós… What does “post-rock” mean in your personal experience?
It is very hard to say what “post-rock” is or is not. We have always just considered ourselves a rock band that tends to lean on the more atmospheric, less structured and intensely emotional side of things. I guess “post-rock” is a description that people need to categorize this kind of music that is more free and liberated in terms of song structure and instrumentation, and it makes total sense for people to want to be able to call it something more than just rock. We are fine with being just a normal rock band though.

Your music is strictly instrumental. Don’t you feel the lack of words, the lack of a human voice sometimes?
We do sometimes, yes. That is why we used vocals on a few songs on our most recent album. We still view the presence of the human voice as something that can be used as a melodic texture though and not as much of a rock-star kind of thing with a singer running around on stage telling people what to think about. We prefer it when people approach our songs however they wish and sometimes vocals can take away from that. That said, we listen to primarily vocal based music and appreciate many singer songwriters. Being primarily instrumental is how we feel most comfortable communicating our feelings though, so we feel at home where we are most of the time.