#thesearmsaresnakes

[bubblesandgutz]

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I’m pretty flattered these gents took the time to deep-dive into These Arms Are Snakes’ second album, Easter. As I’ve mentioned before, I feel like this one didn’t get a lot of love when it initially came out, but it’s always felt like our definitive statement as a band. I’m glad to see people discovering it years down the line and appreciating it outside of the context and climate of 2006.

[vinylexams]

INTERVIEW with Brian Cook of SUMAC, Russian Circles, Botch, These Arms are Snakes, and Roy 

Brian Cook of the MANY gnarly bands listed above took time to answer a bunch of questions that had been burning a hole in my mind for years earlier today. Did you know that aside from playing bass in some of the heaviest bands currently in existence, Brian is also an avid record collector and he also runs a very similar page where he posts all of his records and writes up a bit of history and personal context with each one? A man after my own heart! I’ve dropped a link to his Tumblr below and you’d be a fool not to go check it out and follow his work there.

https://bubblesandgutz.tumblr.com⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

I really appreciated having a chance to talk to a very talented musician who also places a LOT of importance on physical medium and the recording process. All too often I get submissions from bands who either don’t know the in’s and out’s of the vinyl format or they took a lot of shortcuts and deprive their art a chance to really shine in the ways that vinyl allows. I picked Brian’s brain about his approach to creation of physical musical media as well as his history as a collector (and even tried to convince him to get These Arms are Snakes play my big gay wedding reception!). Thanks for taking the time to tell your story to us, Brian!

You've been a member of several incredible bands over the past few decades (Botch, Sumac, Russian Circles, These Arms Are Snakes), all of which have released pretty much everything they've recorded on vinyl. How important is the vinyl medium for you as a musician and creator?

Thanks for the kind words. It's really important to me for my music to have some sort of physical format. I realize that mode of thinking might seem sort of old school or outdated, but i've always been enamored by music as a kind of historical artifact. When I was younger, that meant it was important for me to have an actual Dead Kennedys cassette as opposed to a dubbed version from my friend. It was like the difference between owning a painting versus owning a xerox of a painting. When I became a musician, it was a sign of validation. By having a record with my name on it, I had created something that would potentially outlive me. And now in the digital age we've convinced ourselves that everything lives forever on the internet, but it's not true. Myspace just lost all their music. I've written for a lot of online music outlets that have closed shop or simply deleted old posts. Meanwhile, I have a trunk full of old zines that outlived the supposed permanence of blogs. So while the digital age is great for convenience and scope, creating a physical recording is really the more reliable way to make sure something exists for more than five to ten years, or however long it takes for the newest technological fad to become obsolete. Vinyl seems to be the longest lasting format, so it's my preferred medium. But if my music exists on tape or CD, that's fine too. 

Do you approach your recording and production processes with specific formats like vinyl in mind? If so, what do you do differently? Absolutely. The main concern is that we're dealing with the time constraints of vinyl. For bands like Russian Circles and SUMAC who have really long songs, it means we have to be careful how we sequence our records because we can easily exceed the 22-minutes-per-side rule. We've also been told by pressing plants that it's better to have long drones in the middle of an album side than at the beginning or end because there tends to be more surface noise at the beginning of a side and more warble at the end, and drones don't do much to mask these imperfections. But while one can complain about the limitations of vinyl, there are also issues with digital formats that can alter the way an album is put together. For example, the digital version of Empros has a longer drone at the end of "Batu" than the LP version, partially because of vinyl's limitations, but also because digital outlets like iTunes don't recognize records with long songs as full albums unless at least one track is longer than ten minutes. So we stretched it out on the digital version so that we'd be compensated appropriately for our work, but condensed it on vinyl so that we didn't compromise the sound quality.

Of all of the albums you've contributed to, which one stands out to you as the one you feel most connected to?

Probably Geneva by Russian Circles, if I had to pick one. We wrote that record over the span of several months at a house in rural Wisconsin. It was one of those ideal scenarios I'd always dreamed of---hunkering down in some isolated retreat and just immersing ourselves in the writing process. I've never walked away from an album feeling as accomplished as I did with that one. It just felt like we'd achieved something that had previously been out of my level of expertise. I think we've made better records since then, but I don't think I've ever felt as successful in making the sounds in my head translate to the recording. With regards to my other bands, I feel that way about Botch's We Are The Romans, These Arms Are Snakes' Easter, Roy's Killed John Train, and SUMAC's What One Becomes. But Geneva will always hold a special place.

How did you get into vinyl collecting and how does it play a part in your life?

I started buying vinyl around '92 because it was cheap. My first LP was Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet's Savvy Show Stoppers. I bought it for $2. Then I discovered 7"s, which was the dominant format for hardcore and punk bands at the time. Throughout high school, I mainly bought 7"s because i could buy 3 or 4 a week on my allowance. And let's be honest... most hardcore bands in the '90s had better 7"s than full albums. But vinyl was so dead at the time that you could also go to thrift stores and scoop up the entire Creedence Clearwater Revival discography for the cost of one CD. Even new vinyl was cheaper than their CD counterpart back then. So it's a bit of a drag now considering that vinyl is currently the most expensive format, but I still get a thrill from going to record stores, digging through crates, and coming home with a new LP. I can't say I buy that many 7"s anymore though.

What do you think about the relatively recent resurgence of large-scale vinyl production and collection?

It certainly has its advantages and disadvantages. I buy a lot of reissues just so I can have a clean, good-sounding copy, so I appreciate the resurgence in that regard. At the same time, the vinyl boom has made used record shopping a bit more of a drag. I don't know how many copies of Neil Young's Harvest I saw in used bins throughout the '90s and '00s, and then when I finally decided to buy a copy five years ago, it seemed like they'd all been snagged and the reissue was going for $50. When the Zeppelin discography got reissued a few years back, I mentioned wanting a new copy of Physical Graffiti to my husband. He went to our local indie record store in Brooklyn and asked the owner if they carried it and he totally balked at the question. "Why would we carry a reissue when you can buy a used copy of that in any record store for $5?" he said. My husband was like "every used Zeppelin record you carry is beat to shit and goes for at least $20... what the fuck are you even talking about?"

If you had to pare down your entire collection to no more than three albums, which would you keep?

What's the broader context? Like, are those the only three records I can listen to for the rest of my life? Or is it just a matter of only being allowed to own three records? If it's the former, I'd probably choose Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Miles Davis' In a Silent Way, and a Can album... either Ege Bamyasi or Soon Over Babaluma. Ask me tomorrow and I'd probably list off a different three. If it's the latter... like, if i'm merely holding onto records because the actual artifact means a lot to me but I can still listen to music in some other capacity, then I'd probably go with the His Hero Is Gone / Union of Uranus split LP, Undertow's At Both Ends, and Sticks & Stones Theme Songs For Nothing, just because those seem like a pain in the ass to replace and they're important records to me. I have records that are worth way more money, but I'm not someone who buys records because they're valuable. 

Do you have a "white whale" record you still haven't found?

Not really. For ages I resisted the urge to buy used records online, but I've since relented. The record that finally broke my ordering embargo was Hack's The Rotten World Around Us. They were a band from Adelaide, South Australia in the late '80/ early '90s who sounded like a grungier version of the first couple Swans records. Super heavy and scary. I got turned onto them through a 7" on Alternative Tentacles, but the LP was never available stateside. The first few times I toured Australia i went to every record store I could find in hopes of finding a copy. No one had ever heard of Hack. The singer was in another band called Grong Grong, and members of that band had gone on to be in King Snake Roost, Lubricated Goat, and Tumor Circus (with Jello Biafra on vocals), but no one had heard of them either. In my mind there was this rich underground of Australian noise rock from that time period that was still vital and valid, but the reality is that it was largely ignored and forgotten. I eventually found a copy online and bought it for $20. A year later i found a used copy in Boise. Oh well. I'd love to find Acme's To Reduce The Choir..., or an original copy of Popol Vuh's second album, or the Neu! 7", or the Greenlandic prog band Sume's Sumut album.

Hypothetically how much money would I need to raise to get These Arms Are Snakes to reunite to play my wedding reception? My family will hate it but my partner and I will be very happy, etc.

We still talk about doing some proper "farewell shows" since we bailed on doing them back in 2009/2010. Granted, now they'd be reunion shows, but in our hearts they'd be our proper goodbye. We're putting together a vinyl release of various odds and ends for next year, so maybe that'll give us an excuse to finally book something.

[groteskanimal]

They butterflied The muscles in my back In order to give me wings I never asked, I never asked to fly Locked away in a mahogany case I always took the strange way It never seemed strange to me @thesearmsaresnakesofficial at @neumos_ 8-28-21 #seattle #seattlephotographer #concertphotography #livemusic #livemusicphotography #seattlemusic #seattlemusicscene #bandphotographer #whiteshroud #groteskanimal #neumos #thesearmsaresnakes (at Neumos) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTfRLe2JAzL/?utm_medium=tumblr

[blastforwardmusic]

ACHTUNG #nerdattack Listen to Botch. #botch #russiancircles #thesearmsaresnakes #minusthebear #narrows #sumac #roy #kenmode #hydraheadrecords #metalcore #ichflippaus #wieinteressant #partytalk #blastforward https://www.instagram.com/p/B_AgXNfotck/?igshid=vk4f7s53jxpk

[jtoddo]

This Is Meant to Hurt You. #jtoddo #cute #creepy #kawaii #creepycute #thesearmsaresnakes #thisismeanttohurtyou #artistsoninstagram #artistsofinstagram #copic #copicmarker #sakuamicron #sakura #lowbrow #lyriczine #art #markers #streetartdaily #streetart https://www.instagram.com/p/BossD5jHLx7/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=zw858bo8ynwm

[divinelydirty]

That Chamberlain record should've been huge. Weird roundup. #starmarket #camber #chamberlain #knapack #planesmistakenforstars #thesearmsaresnakes #killsadie #rockyvotolato #avail

[sirenrecords]

#inutero #tribute #nirvana #roboticempire 2014 #thursday #circasurvive #ceremony #youngwidows #pygmylush #thou #thesearmsaresnakes #daughters plus (at Siren Records)

[beatdisc]

Heaps good! Sleep / Municipal Waste / Touché Amoré / These Arms Are Snakes #sleepsholymountain #municipalwaste #wasteemall #toucheamore #tothebeatofadeadhorse #thesearmsaresnakes #tailswalloweranddove (at Beatdisc Records)

[deepergroovesrecordlab]

Anyone else miss #thesearmsaresnakes ??🐍💪🐍💪 I sure do- so I’m starting back at the beginning for this lovely #thursday evening. Hope everyone is doing well and that your #ears are dancing to sounds you love! 👂💃🕺👂#thisismeanttohurtyou

[bubblesandgutz]

Will we ever get a Tail Swallower & Dove retrospective?

Sure! Let's kill two birds with one stone and make this a ERIO post too, though.

Keep reading after the jump if you have a bunch of time to kill...

Every Record I Own - Day 794: These Arms Are Snakes Tail Swallower & Dove

This was the third album by my old band, These Arms Are Snakes, released on October 7, 2008. It wouldn't be the last batch of songs we'd record together, but it would be our final full-length studio album. Our previous record, Easter, had sold about half as many copies of our debut album Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home, which put us in a difficult spot. We still owed our record label Jade Tree one more album, but the label had gone strangely quiet right around the time Easter came out, and we weren't entirely sure they were still actively releasing new music. We still got regular accounting statements showing that both of our albums and our EP had recouped and garnered royalties, but there wasn't much in the way of label support or communication during the entire touring cycle for Easter.

When it came time to make a new album, we spent weeks (maybe months?) trying to get them to answer emails about securing a recording budget for a new record, and it was only when we asked if we should look for another label to release the album that we got a response. It was a list of conditions for leaving the label including stipulations like surrendering the rights to our existing catalog and paying a to-be-determined sum to buy ourselves out of the contract. We insisted that we were happy to fulfill the contract---we just needed the label to actually engage with us about making a record---but it didn't really matter. The label was now committed to us leaving and paying them out.

We were essentially shelved. The label didn't want to talk to us about making another record, but we weren't allowed to move to another label either. We couldn't even get them to give us an exact number to pay them to buy ourselves out. Fortunately, we had just started working with a manager named Cathy Pellow who put the pressure on Jade Tree and eventually got us out of the contract without having to go to court.

We opted to put out the album on Suicide Squeeze Records, who had previously released our Good Friday 7". We recorded the album at Red Room, our drummer Chris Common's studio. Chris also engineered and mixed the album. I think we spent three or four weeks in the studio---a luxury afforded to us only because we essentially had free studio time.

I remember feeling a little defeated by the reception Easter got. We'd put a lot of time and effort into that record and I felt like it was a huge step forward from our first album, but the public didn't latch onto it. Maybe it was because we didn't have the label support behind it. Maybe it's because we didn't do as many support tours on it. Maybe the album art wasn't as exciting. Or maybe folks just didn't like the music. But going into writing Tail Swallower & Dove, I remember being pulled in two directions at once: I wanted to keep pushing the music forward, but I also just wanted to make a lean and mean record. And I think that duality ultimately meant that the individual songs were some of the best things we came up with over the course of our career, but the album as a whole doesn't feel as cohesive as Easter. The best songs are on the front end, while side 2 feels like it could've been a bit more refined.

Here's a song-by-song take on it:

Woolen Heirs: Easily one of my favorite Snakes songs. And definitely one of the harder ones to play. Like most TAAS songs, it was written around a handful of bass lines I brought into practice. I find that the best songs in any band tend to be the ones that come to fruition somewhere later in the writing process, when there are already a few songs under the belt and everyone in the band is firing on all cylinders. Ryan, Chris, and Steve all took a moderatly interesting handful of bass lines and transformed it into something special. The lyrics center around a particular homeless man that wandered the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle back in the '00s.

Prince Squid: This was another one that came about later in the writing process. I don't even remember how it came together. Chris's opening drum pattern might have actually been the original impetus. He had a habit of throwing out these weird beats during practice---not even as actual suggestions, but just as little accentuations in our conversations between running through songs. But however it started, it came together quickly. I was playing on a Gibson Ripper in this era of the band, and on the opening riff of this song I'd sweep through the Ripper's five pick-up settings to emulate the filter sweep of a wah pedal. Always loved Ryan's solo in this one too. Much like "Woolen Heirs," the lyrics focus on a particular Capitol Hill character, this time a certain barfly who was a regular at the Cha Cha Lounge where Steve and Chris worked at.

Red Line Season: This was the single off the album. The main riff was a leftover from another band I'd been in at the time called Roy. But Roy slipped into dormancy, so I changed the tuning of the riff from E standard to drop B and it suddenly got way more menacing. Ryan filled out the low-end by switching to keyboard for the first half of the song. We recruited our friend Alicjia Trout of The Lost Sounds to do backing vocals on the song. Our manager Cathy arranged a video shoot on a bare bones budget that involved us driving an old car through some green-screened backdrop. The whole fake-rocking-out-on-camera thing was a tough sell, but we were coaxed by several cases of malt liquor that had been brought to the shoot, and by mid-afternoon we were all sufficiently hammered and more than happy to trash the car while head-banging. Fun fact: we shot the video on a day off on tour, and Steve has a black eye from an unfortunate encounter with a microphone several days prior.

Lucifer: I wrote this one on the ol' microKorg synth, tho the opening synth line was handed off to Ryan, and I jumped back and forth between auxiliary keys and bass. We didn't overthink this one much. I think the song structure was mostly fleshed out by the time I brought it into practice. I liked how Chris mixed the keys on this one so that they sounded like they were plugged straight into the mixing board. While I usually like synths to sit in the mix as if they were a part of the overall sound in the room, the in-the-face approach he took here was very satisfying to me.

Ethric Double: This is easily in my top 3 of all the songs we wrote. I don't entirely remember how it all came together, though it was definitely a collaborative process. If my memory serves me right, the opening clean guitar part was a fluke---something I stumbled across during practice---and the rest of the song sort of fell in place. Ryan came up with the chuggy riff at the end. I'm not sure where the dueling high guitar leads at the song's climax came from---maybe it's better that it remains a mystery. Anyways, after the relatively short and vicious four songs that opened the album, I liked how this one reverted to the tension-building long-form songwriting we'd started dabbling with on Easter. The lyrics center around some book on metaphysics that Steve was reading at the time (the typo in the title was unintentional, but we stuck with it). The same book prompted the album title, which was a very literal description of the book's cover.

Seven Curtains: Side 2 opens with this song that Ryan and I came up with at practice while messing around with our Digitech Whammy pedals. Ryan was an interesting guitar player in that he never showed up to practice with anything written, but he was always able to whip out some fully formed idea on the spot. It was even more impressive because it was usually a counter-melody or something completely unrelated to whatever idea I was proposing, but it always seemed to fit perfectly. He's just an inherently creative and confident player, and that made him a fun person to write with. All that said, I feel like this song lacks some of its original power, perhaps because it's another long-form song unfortunately placed after the apex of "Ethric Double."

Long and Lonely Step: This is another one written around a guitar line I brought to the table. I love this song and the mellower late-Fugazi vibe it conjures. I just wish we'd developed it a bit more as I think it feels more like an interlude than a full song. Steve said the lyrics were written with bad drug trips in mind and were meant to talk people down from panic attacks.

Lead Beater: Like so much of side 2, I feel like this is a solid song that suffers from standing in stark relief to the more energized material on the front end of the album. It was also a song written early on in the writing process, so it already felt a little lacking in that initial creative spark by the time we recorded it. That said, I love the bass lines on this song and still play them regularly when I'm sound checking or dialing in my tone. I have no idea what the lyrics are about, even though I'm in the background yelling "Nine hundred and ninety-nine" through the song's chorus---a reference to Jorge Luis Borges' short story "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv," where hell is described as "999 empires of fire, and in each empire shall be 999 mountains of fire, and upon each mountain there shall be 999 towers of fire, and each tower shall have 999 stories of fire, and each story shall have 999 beds of fire, and in each bed shall that person be, and 999 kinds of fire, each with its own face and voice, shall torture that person throughout eternity."

Cavity Carousel: This was another one where Chris casually threw out a drum beat and we were all like "what the fuck was that? Play that again!" We pieced the song together in the practice space; none of it was written independently. I remember Steve wanting the vocals to sound like a nightmarish version of The Shangri-Las. The lyrics revolve around the true story of a suicide victim whose organs were harvested. His heart was implanted in another man, who eventually met and married the woman who was in love with the original owner of the heart. The transplant recipient eventually committed suicide too. I was absent for the mastering of the album and my vote had been to keep this song off the album and to save it for the Japanese version of the album (the Japanese label wanted a bonus song). But for some reason the guys cut "Washburn" instead, even though that song was a companion piece to "Long and Lonely Step." I was always a bit miffed about that as I feel this is the weakest song of the session, but listening back to it this morning, it's a pretty decent tune. I particularly like the harmonizing Ryan and I do on guitar and bass at the end of the song, which I haven't heard in probably over a decade at this point. I was probably too salty about the decision to include this song to ever properly enjoy it as part of the album.

Briggs: This was supposed to be another epic long-form song along the lines of "Ethric Double," but for some reason it just doesn't have the same magic. I think part of the problem is that I recorded the opening guitar line to a click track, and I think it makes it sound too lifeless, whereas if the tempo pushed and pulled a bit more it would have more emotional resonance. The rest of the song is fine... but something about that intro stunts my enjoyment of the remainder of the track. But there are still some great things about it. Our friend John Spalding contributed some guitar to the track at a point where he was in the final stages of a long fight with cancer. I was stuck working the day he came in to track his parts, but my understanding was that he was pretty fatigued by the process. I'll always appreciate that he was willing to put his stamp on the song in his final days, and that in and of its own makes "Briggs" special for me. The song title is a Twin Peaks reference, which was a strangely apt way to end our final album, considering that the first song we wrote together was also named after a Twin Peaks reference ("The Blue Rose").

And there you have it... more than you ever needed to know about an album released 15 years ago.

[vinylexams]

These Arms are Snakes - Oxeneers or The Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ @bubblegutz @stevesnere @erindavidtate @i don’t know ryan’s insta but tell me and i’ll tag it etc ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I’m going to do something I don’t often do and post 3 records in a row from one of my favorite bands. Go to the store, buy a hat, and get ready to hold onto it because we’re gonna listen to These Arms Are Snakes tonight. Oxeneers, their first album, came out when I was hilt deep in college grieving my mother and experiencing life as an out and proud gay man for the first time. It was loud, it was mathy, it was weird, and it made me wish I had more pedals and a MicroKORG of my own. It sounded like nothing i’d heard before, frantic and somehow still fun, screamy but not metal, and entirely unapologetic from start to finish. This album is the auditory equivalent of Mick Jagger’s weird-ass chicken walk being run through multiple DL-4s and tube screamers. I got so into how dark and intense the lyrics were that for a while I pretended I knew how to write a story like Steve Snere, their flamboyant frontman (spoiler alert: my lyrics sucked big time). I later found out that Brian was gay and wasn’t ashamed of it and as a young guy in a band in a dark red state, I’ve gotta say that was huge for me too. I spent a couple of years absolutely canonizing this album and studying the drum parts so that I could steal them for the pop-punk band I was playing in (hint: it didn’t work) and I made everyone that hung out with me listen to it whether or not they were wired for the task. After my partner and I started collecting records, this was one of our first honest-to-god white whale albums and I remember convincing a guy it was a shitty record so he’d sell it to me for $50 instead of $100 bucks. (Sorry dude, it’s actually a total fucking ripper, I just didn’t have $100). If you don’t know this album, please go remedy that. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #seattle #thesearmsaresnakes #briancook #stevesnere #jadetree #vinylexams #vinyl #vinyljunkie #onmyturntable #nowspinning #nowplaying #vinyligclub #vinyllovers #vinylclub #vinylrecords #vinylcollectionpost #lp #records #nowplaying @secondnaturerec @jadetree (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwLvhCMg1WM/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=eva1wsw77i0u

[groteskanimal]

Shot my first show since the before times last weekend. And what a show it was. @thesearmsaresnakesofficial at @neumos_ 8-28-21 #seattle #seattlephotographer #concertphotography #livemusic #livemusicphotography #seattlemusic #seattlemusicscene #bandphotographer #whiteshroud #groteskanimal #neumos #thesearmsaresnakes (at Neumos) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTdiPw1lMbP/?utm_medium=tumblr

[odontophobia]

Strolling down memory lane, here. #thesearmsaresnakes #polaroid @bobbycore3

[vinylexams]

These Arms are Snakes - Tail Swallower and Dove

@bubblegutz @stevesnere @chriscommon @i don’t know ryan’s insta but tell me and i’ll tag it etc ⠀ There’s something kind of bittersweet and sad when you listen to a band’s last album and despite any departure of previous sound or snobby feedback they got about this one, I really loved it and I look back on it with a little more fondness for each year that passes since they released it. They’d left Jade Tree for Suicide Squeeze here in Seattle and their sound was much fuller, bigger, and more produced but it never really lost the edge and bite of the earlier work. This was the first album where I felt like they could probably cross over and get people who weren’t just Myspace era scene kids excited about what they were doing and I was right...though it all came too late. They broke up and went on to focus on their other projects to different degrees of success. Brian is still very successful with both @russiancircles and @sumacbandofficial, @chriscommon is focusing on all forms of music production in El Paso, Ryan went off to work on Narrows, and I have no idea what Steve is up to but I’d be more than happy to interview him here if he sees this and wants to answer to TAAS questions for all of us! I hope that tonight has made you at least curious about this band and their incredible, but short, discography. If you already knew them, you aren’t surprised by my posts and if you you didn’t, I hope you’ve been curious enough to take a listen on a streaming service. I’ll close this by saying that there are few bands and artists that make such a big impact on you that you carry them with you throughout life despite timely trends. When you find one, hold onto it with both hands. TAAS will always be one of those for me. ⠀ https://www.instagram.com/p/BwL5p9VA0eN/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1wx7qk41dye89

[no-peace-ever]

Listening to Botch, learned that their bassist was in these, now I'm here. #thesearmsaresnakes #oxeneers