Eyes Adrift sound off the US of Babylon

Eyes Adrift, despite all the required credentials present, despise being tagged a ‘supergroup’: the band comprises an impressive line-up of Curt Kirkwood (guitar and vocals, ex-Meat Puppets), Krist Novoselic (bass and vocals, ex-Nirvana) and Bud Gaugh (drums, ex-Sublime). The trio was formed after Novoselic saw one of Kirkwood’s solo performances in Seattle and approached him to form a band. Gaugh offered his services a few days later and the unit began writing and recording during Dec. 2001 in Austin, Texas (where Kirkwood resides).

Kirkwood and Novoselic have known each other for a while: Meat Puppets opened for Nirvana on their 1994 ‘In Utero’ tour and Nirvana acknowledged how influential the band had been to them by performing three Meat Puppets tracks during their MTV ‘Unplugged’ performance, with the Kirkwood brothers (Curt and Chris, the latter also a Puppet-teer) providing helping chords. Novoselic subsequently had a short-lived trio Sweet 75 that issued one album only in August 1997.

We spoke with Kirkwood who explained that Novoselic is keeping promotion at bay because “journalists are really unkind, always asking about Kurt (Cobain) and Nirvana. He told me he might have to stop doing the interviews.” Thus, we avoid mentioning the ‘grunge kings’ until Curt does.

After a solo career Kirkwood is back in a band format; it might be superfluous asking, in the light of the album’s strength but, having been in the business for 22 years, what is the motivation?

“I don’t know what my motivation is…” Kirkwood muses, “I started playing in bands in 1977, cover-bands doing Top 40 material; then, my second band was Hard Rock band that played Kansas, Doobie Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, Thin Lizzy… So, my motivation is to play music but I’m still waiting for a turn that would make it acceptable… I might be idealistic but artists should be idealistic.”

A pound of soul

‘Eyes Adrift’ is an eclectic album that contains rocking, indie, grunge, alt-country, poppy sounds but it is the closing ‘Pasted’ that simply has epic written all over it and, according to Kirkwood, it’s become a pinnacle of their shows. Curt sings two-thirds of songs with the rest handled by Krist; there are slight differences in musical approach, the former Nirvana-man appears to be leaning toward more experimental sounds. The trio’s already written several new songs despite living in three different States: Kirk in Texas, Gaugh in California and Novoselic in Washington, North of Seattle.

“You know, there comes a time in your career,” Kirkwood confides, “when you really don’t care about certain things anymore. You have to satisfy you creative juices and that’s what we are doing. But, I’m not too much for these showbizzy times: there are some people doing fashion-shows in their videos!? God, that’s too much to keep up with! Choreography, make-up… New haircut, I am too old, or whatever, to be concerned with it! That’s not what we are interested in. When that is a standard, Krist and I would definitely opt for music.”

Curt’s always made music that was full of integrity, quality and peculiarity; has he ever been tempted to make more commercial sounding songs?

“The funny things is that to me I’m always being commercial,” Kirkwood sounds genuinely surprised. “I can play fusion, country, reggae and it would sound like chart-toppers to me. Back in the days of the SST (their early US indie-label), I’d go in and tell them… After ‘Up On The Sun’ I told them, ‘This is as good as ‘Born In The USA’, don’t kid yourselves,’ and they asked if I believed in a dream? I never thought I was a less of a creative force than anybody else, that’s always been my take on it but the vox populi is what matters.”

“But the problem is that there is hardly anything else because I can’t do too much else very well… What I do here is like Rock music is the freest expression and the most creative at the same time. A lot of things I’ve done have been fun, what is fun to do, whatever genre…”

Springtime for vinyl

Few days before the interview the band’s maiden Euro-tour is advertised but few hours before the conversation, a statement arrives postponing the live dates until April. The band, on Novoselic’s insistence, decided that it might be better if they let listeners have more time to get to know the disc. Kirkwood ends up asking reporter if the decision is sound and my reply is that it might have been better if they had a shorter gap between the album’s release and shows.

A Meat Puppets’ forté has been carried over to the Eyes Adrift, making eclectic records and that is the first hurdle to a global breakthrough in the world that is one-genre taste-preconditioned.

“We can’t be that dishonest…” Kirkwood deliberates. “We can’t be contrived and I feel that we can’t play caustic songs, because I’m a bit too old for that, nor testosterone-driven, it would all be fake. There was no ‘idea’, nor a big plan behind the band, like we’re all gonna wear these fedoras and grey satin shirts with vests or whatever. And then we’re gonna sound like The Velvet Underground meets whoever. It was not like that at all. It was very pure. We just got together and started playing.”

”Far from the demands fame makes on some musicians, observing other people and seeing what went on when we did ‘MTV Unplugged’ with Nirvana.”

What memories are treasured of that appearance?

“It turned out really good but practices were really shaky,” Kirkwood voice gets patina glazed, “we didn’t know whether it would work or not… We also learnt in practices that they were the same band as we were, probably a bit more because they could do whatever they wanted. But, it wasn’t a big deal and they just played, they didn’t really make a big deal out of it. They just went up there and played the gig straight through.”

“We came on and did our three songs and that was it… They only redid one song, ‘On A Plain’, I don’t remember really, it was just a concert. I didn’t realise that other bands did two or three versions of each song to get it all perfect. They just went in there, played and got out. When I stood on the side and watched them, I was spellbound, it was a really brilliant show.”

Nirvana were an ace band but Eyes Adrift are also a great outfit, sometimes loud as hell, as a Rock’n’Roll group should be. Formed around music they love to make. That’s pretty much the story here. Period.