Soars: “Throw Yourself Apart” (s/t, La Société Expéditionnaire, 10/19/10)
Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley was once a manufacturing Mecca. Its steel built the New York City skyline, sustaining an entire region for generations. With the turn of the century, however, cities like Allentown and Bethlehem — modestly populated municipalities that supported many of the state’s other communities — went, for the most part, belly up. As industrial manufacturing moved to Asia, the need for Pennsylvania-bred labor dissipated, leaving Valley communities in search of a new identity.
Given the circumstances, it would seem easy for a Lehigh Valley musician to feel isolated, even fatalistic, about one’s future in eastern Pennsylvania. But for Soars guitarist David Kresge, this is no time to feel despondent.
“Home is hard,” he says, discussing the place where Soars’ recorded its eponymous debut album. “I love it and hate it at the same time. We live in a shell of three industrial towns that are trying to survive economically, and that forces me to be creative in a way that I think living in a major city and having everything at your disposal does not. You have to dig for something special. Keeping DIY places going, keeping a job, meeting like-minded people, trying to convince your bedroom musician friend to play out — it’s tougher. But there’s a tenacity in the underground music scene that seems like it exists because we can’t not have this creative outlet. Soars wouldn’t have made this record, this sound, if everything was good and beautiful and fun. We reflect back everything that’s wrong and try to reconcile that at the same time.”
A haunting dream-pop band with musical influences rooted in experimental, punk, and noise, Soars has created a sound indicative of the hard-nosed, love-hate relationship that it shares with the place it calls home.
“We live in a shell of three industrial towns that are trying to survive economically, and that forces me to be creative in a way that I think living in a major city and having everything at your disposal does not.”
“[Vocalist/guitarist/programmer] Chris [Giordani] and [bassist/programmer] Anthony [Perrett] were in a band called Memes that was a really engaging patchwork of pop and noise,” Kresge says. “They were really pushing the boundaries of song structure and recombining all these influences that I felt needed to be heard, but no one was doing at the time. [Keyboardist/programmer] Briana [Edwards] actually suggested I go to this house party to see them play. I was immediately floored by them, spilling beer on pedals, and I launched a beer can at Chris’ head. Our first ‘meeting’ was almost a fistfight. Briana had to assure him I was just having a good time, and I absolutely was, albeit out of my head. After that, we became friends.”
Following the breakup of Memes, Kresge messaged Giordani about taking on a new project. Giordani and Perrett, fans of Kresge’s guitar drone and electronics in Goodnight Stars Goodnight Air, had the same idea. “It made good sense,” Kresge says, “since both projects had so many commonalities, even though the execution was completely different. We were all moving toward deconstructing sound, and I think we all knew it would work somehow.
For Kresge, the album—though it deals with loss, isolation, and the fall-backs of life in a post-industrial region—remains hopeful and forward-looking. “It works through that darkness toward an understanding,” he says. “I think people will find these songs beautiful, not something that takes those themes and plunges you deeper into that darkness.”
The music, in many ways, emulates the mountainous peaks and valleys of eastern Pennsylvania. Angelic, textured swells break melancholic drone. Lilting vocals rise above layers of noise. Each track is an ascent from the song before and a descent into the next. Many of the songs contain an entire series of these ridgelines, an emotional terrain that one must trace and re-trace throughout the album.
Lehigh Valley, in so many ways, is not New York City, not even Philadelphia. But for Soars, the Valley is home. Through music, through its deconstruction of tone, pop, and notions of what life in eastern Pennsylvania ought to be, the band has created a hopeful, arresting album.
“This oxbow lake offers to push you deeper into depression,” Kresge says. “But the flip side of that is you have to work so damn hard at what you want to achieve that you feel like you can do anything anywhere. It doesn’t offer anything but a kick in the ass. I love it here.”