full catholic has a new album out, Things Go Quiet, and I think you’re going to want to set aside an afternoon to listen to it from front to back – the whole thing. It’s a meal with an important progression. Enjoy in your own order later but have it as created first. It’s an interesting listen for our time – both motivating and calming but fantiast.
I have enjoyed seeing you a few times but for folks who haven’t seen you, can you please tell us about Full Catholic?
Hi Ann, sure! full catholic initially began as a songwriting project among friends from different parts of the country. Mostly it started as an outlet to support our strange artistic hankerings. But it was the cultural barometers collapsing all around us that began to unite our processes. Even in day jobs full of direct action, we were feeling a lot of disorientation and powerlessness at the time. The music was a way to respond to some of that confusion and anchor to constellations that provided more trusted passage while confronting what we were encountering with an alternate view.
The word ‘catholic’ refers to the original definition: universal, whole, embracing. The project, both in name and purpose, aims to reclaim what it means to preserve humility and courage in sight of the cosmic mystery we find ourselves in. Exploring that inseparable nature, woven into every distinct part of our ecology, is the focus of much of our art. What would the world look like if we stewarded that essential wilderness with curiosity instead of fear, hubris, and diminishment? We live on a rock, floating in space, hurling toward some great attractor at 1.3 million mph. Anything could exist. Yet we insist on paternalizing systems of harm in exchange for safety or some perceived ascension. It is so difficult to see outside of the spin. The brainwashing of whole civilizations is a parasite to the imagination. It’s truly one of the most remarkable of human feats. But I really believe shared creativity can both protect and draw people out of spells if made with enough depth, humility, and sincerity and that what is truly good will never intend to confuse or exploit you.
That’s all to say, this is a big, fun, sometimes messy experiment which evolved into something much bigger and never expected. This music scene restored our faith in community when we were risking misanthropy. It’s been life-giving beyond measure. And the fact that we’ve been able to share stages that bands like Low have played? Gratitude is the only word.
You have a new album Things Go Quiet coming out. The first four songs have a staccato urgency to the music. The rest have a focused energy with a darkness or instructive nature. I can’t always decide. But it’s an album that seems born of our time. It is both unsettling and cathartic in a way that only art can be. It could (maybe should) be the soundtrack to the Heart of the Beast annual show. I’m hoping you know it. The show is always different but it’s about the time of Halloween being a middle ground between life and death and a chance for the living to celebrate and hopefully learn from the past. The arc is always chaos to drama to resolution (sort of) to measured hope. Some years that hope is very measured. Can you talk more about your intentions and inspirations?
Wow, thank you for reflecting that. I love these insights. This album follows a conceptual arc that begins with a question and ends with another. It’s a work that we very much intended to be experienced as a whole. The concept woven throughout is best described by ‘kairos’, the uncertain moment right before freeze, fight, flight, that may determine our best nature and capacity to respond to what scares us. Despite our intention, it’s not always clear what that moment will reveal — both in regard to ourselves and the circumstances we find ourselves in. That uncertainty can be terrifying, and maybe this is why we do our best to delay it. Despite our self-belief, what will it say about us, how will the way we respond unmask the form of that which we are confronting. Will the moment be a beacon, or an annihilator, or a doorway?
For ‘Intro to truth,’ we wanted to build a very distinct atmosphere where the listener would feel like they were embarking on a hero’s journey and nothing yet had been decided. The intensity you described in the first half is meant to reflect the inevitable confrontation that follows that invitation. ‘All new drugs’ and ‘Get up kid’ are their own kind of mantras that convey the outer/inner chaos that rock the human condition and risk misalignment. There’s so much controlled chaos on those tracks. ‘Good Man’ checks our memory for what’s cosmic and undifferentiated by virtue. There is a wakeful respite in ‘Courage’ and ‘A part of’ before a penultimate final conflict introduced by ‘Obelisk.’ The coda (Still it dawns) is a howling lullaby, there to welcome you home after battle. A ‘measured hope’ is a great way to interpret that. Will it tuck you in or bury you? Have you won or lost?
HOTB is a fantastic parallel that I had not linked directly. But I am part of the Halloween show with Barebones every year. The first one I saw left me awestruck, weeping. It was effective art — purposeful and confrontational in ways I’m extremely inspired by and always in search of. This album preceded my involvement with the production, but the intentions on ‘Things go quiet’ were similar. We use focal points, chanting, and sirens of sort in the music that can invoke a kind of beckoning that bids for your attention before passages turn to chaos and reflection on the other side. BareBones does this so well with its cycles of light and dark and bids to acknowledge them. If our music landed in any adjacent universe, my skeleton would die agape.
I love the abrupt ending of Intro to Truth – during the plea to concentrate. It’s jarring in the best way. What inspired that awesome use of negative space? There are so many layers to the songs. I’m wondering about the actual making of the album. Does it start in studio? Is there an improvisational edge? Where do you get the sounds and effects?
Thank you! Yes, improvisation and creative play is central to how we collaborate and maintain our connection to songs that could start to feel stale. All the songs start as live demos in front of the band and emerge out of collaboration. Every band member brings song concepts to the table that are ultimately incorporated. We spend a good amount of time carving away together and stripping what’s unnecessary and then adding detail back in where needed. There is a lot of conversation and mutual respect when it comes to decisions. Lots of questions about why we’re using this or that sound. What does it feel like in the room? How can we communicate this feeling without over-embellishing or distracting from the essence? What’s the point? Even if we feel very attached to a certain part, songs can shift once the band gets together. Decisions are very much a reflection of the cohesive. Once we have the core of the songs, we like to play them out a bit and get a sense of how the room reacts. Is the song having the intended effect? If not, we may re-approach it to be more precise. This conversation with the band and the greater community is absolutely my favorite part of being in full catholic!
We were fortunate to work with local McCoy Seitz at Casino Time for this record. Once there, songs got refined in more subtle ways that amount to many of the layers you hear on the final record. McCoy (who is also a talented musician via Dot Operator) has become a good friend and collaborator on this project and runs a very laid back and comfortable space. It feels open and primed for experimentation, whether it’s John whittling through 17 equally creative synth lines for a single song, Des hammering a cymbal on the carpet for the exact right sound, or Lane triple-tracking oscillator effects to create some new form of cosmic weirdness. On the home stretch of “All new drugs” tracking, for example, we were putting the final touches on the middle instrumental section and it just wasn’t hitting as sharply as we needed. Right before printing that version, I ran back into the room to experiment with a few improvised takes that morphed from guttural voicings to full-on hyperventilation. Who knew? That was what it needed.
Do you have plans for an album release or any other ways we can help you celebrate this great work?
Earlier this month we performed the album from start to finish at Cloudland Theater. The room was full some of our most beloved fans, friends, and family as well as many of our favorite musicians in town. All of our merch – shirts, lyrics books, bracelets – were made by hand. And since we’re part of a movement trying to encourage people to move away from predatory streaming, we provided download codes attached to potted succulents. We are planning a few more shows locally over the fall and winter, trying to come up with creative ways to be seen, heard, and to get ideas out there. Most of all, we feel like ‘Things go quiet’ is a truly special record that is meant for a certain type of person, and we want to find the most organic, human, real way to get it to them. Any suggestions are welcome! 🙂
phot by Ryan Worthley
Mostly Minnesota 