Garcia Peoples
Recommended this month: New Jersey ramblers summoning the Grateful Dead for Pavement fans
It wasn’t all that long ago that the Grateful Dead were toxic territory for most musicians born after punk. But in recent years, as more and more indie rockers have confessed their appreciation for the jam-band forefathers, the window of acceptance has been prised open.
Consider Rutherford, New Jersey’s Garcia Peoples, whose primary concern when naming themselves after the iconic guitarist was that they would let down Deadheads by not jamming enough. Instead, they got the opposite reaction. “Early on, people never really put it together that Garcia was Jerry Garcia,” says tom Malach, one of the band’s guitarists. “After most of our sets, people would say: ‘You guys sound really ’90s.’”
Indeed, even though the opening track on their debut album Cosmic Cash promises to “follow you
into a Dark Star”, the Dead are just one ingredient in the quintet’s stew. Intertwining dual leads from Malach and Danny Arakaki summon up pre-pop Fleetwood Mac or thin Lizzy, chirpy harmonies and jangly guitars port in from Matador Records circa 1993, and the band prove themselves equally capable of sundazed choogle and urgent punk. “the vision we had was to always be able to play with a bunch of different bands and sound different on any given night,” Malach says. “Like let’s play a punk set, let’s play a folky set, let’s play a noise set…”
With their eclecticism and improvisational spirit, Garcia Peoples slot right into a bubbling East Coast scene of artists who emulate the Dead’s experimental attitude while steering clear of the cover band culde-sac. Jam-adjacent groups such as One Eleven Heavy, Endless Boogie, and Wet tuna (who share multi-instrumentalist Pat ‘PG Six’ Gubler with Garcia Peoples) twist traditional hippie iconography into modern shapes and explore the darker and weirder corners of the Grateful Dead songbook – more
Seastones than “Sugar Magnolia”. Word of mouth for these bands spreads through live recordings on sites such as NYCtaper and Philataper and cassette labels such as Baked tapes. though Garcia Peoples were first attracted to the Dead for their songwriting, they’ve recently started expanding their approach when it comes to live performance; at their recent month-long residency at Brooklyn art space Wonders Of Nature, each show concluded in a freeform jam with their opening guests.
Yet Cosmic Cash doesn’t contain any lengthy improv. Even its 14-minute centrepiece is just a suite stringing together five songs in the classic
Abbey Road style. Made at Upstate New York studio Black Dirt – the origin of records by Steve Gunn, Purling Hiss and Black twig Pickers – Garcia Peoples set out to keep things tight in the studio. “We want to have pockets within the songs where you can go off into these extended things, but for this record you don’t want to get people too far out of the song,” Malach says. Another LP, tentatively titled The
Natural Facts, was recorded with Philadelphia producer Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, War On Drugs) and will be released in early 2019. “there’s a lot of three-part vocal harmonies,” Malach promises, “the guitars are a little swirlier.” to Arakaki, the material sounds a little like ’90s post-punkers Chavez, a band nobody would ever confuse for the Dead. But as rock history flattens out, Garcia Peoples demonstrate the new possibilities when old cultural boundaries finally erode. ROB MITCHUM Cosmic Cash is out now on Beyond Beyond Is Beyond
“Without a doubt the most boogie choogle rip-roaring guitar band in America right now. Cosmic Cash is the jalapeño popper and your brain is the deep fryer. Sizzle up and chomp down, homies.” Ryley walker