The trio celebrates the release of its sophomore LP “If There Were Water”
Starting from the beginning of this album isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Tulsa’s Endless Forms wanted its sophomore LP “If There Were Water” to commence quietly with a gentle wave and continue into something bigger. Frontman and multi-instrumentalist Justin Allen, 26, believes people aren’t ready for art upon arrival.
“We all are focused on all of the tiny, unsorted things that comprise our lives, and we need to be rightly oriented in order to enter the mind of a work,” he told The Oklahoman. “We kept building the track into this large wave in an attempt to begin the album with a representation of this infinite, quiet, ephemeral weight, happening for billions of years, all the time, everywhere, as this sort of background radiation.”
Think of it as white noise. Album opener “No Genesis” continues a never-ending conversation rather than simply introducing one. The mystical idea is geared toward seeing a bigger picture rather than focusing on one song.
“No Genesis,” and much of “If There Were Water,” deftly blends shoegaze and rock influences. It’s somehow heavy and lightweight simultaneously as it explores humanistic themes and languidly hangs its curiosities out to dry. It’s a heady, dreamy and welcomed trip from and through the heartland.
Tulsa natives Jessica Lee (vocals, bass) and drummer Joe Moore round out the current Endless Forms lineup. The band’s been around since the debut record “Lazarus” landed in 2015. “If There Were Water” will release Friday and borrows its name from a T.S. Eliot poem called “The Wasteland.”
“The line, which is from the last section of the poem, is a part of an expression of unfulfilled but lasting hope for rain in the desert,” Allen said. “That dual movement of the temptation of despair mixed with the unwillingness to actually let go really resonated with us for this record.”
Once again, the trio chose to self-record the effort and handle every aspect of the songwriting process themselves, even mixing and mastering it.
“We definitely are the ones pushing ourselves to keep creating,” Allen said. “It’s hard work, but it’s not like it’s grueling. We do it because we love it and because we think it’s important.
“It would be a letdown to me if I found out Picasso didn’t know how to mix his own paints and had someone else do it for him. So, I think it’s important for musicians to at least know how to engineer their music.”
Here’s a few highlights from my email interview with Allen.
Q: You’re doing so much of the songwriting and recording in your apartment studio. Does Endless Forms ever feel like a solo project?
Justin Allen: I’ve never thought of Endless Forms as a solo project, but this album was definitely more collaborative than “Lazarus.” There were some songs on this record that I finished writing entirely before showing them to the band, but there were others where one of us would have an idea and the others would develop it. If I write a song, and let’s say my song sounds like the color blue, and then I show it to Jess and she comes up with a really great harmony, or Joe adds an unexpected rhythm part, it’s like that adds yellow to the song, and suddenly the song is green and totally new to me, even though I wrote it. That is more fun, I think.
Q: I understand making music helps you exercise emotions and has helped you cope with depression and anxiety. How does channeling those emotions into your music help?
Allen: Creating inside Endless Forms definitely carries an element of catharsis, but it’s about more than somehow getting an emotion out, or relieving the tension of it. I think it’s much more about making meaning of it, and illuminating it. It’s hopefully not just about myself, and instead more about, “What does this experience say about being human?” Hopefully that process connects with and illuminates something for the listener.
If the music doesn’t take the listener to an important place, then I think there is something selfish about hoping they’ll listen to it. I’ve learned that, for me, anxiety and depression often revolve around the fear or the pain of losing something I love. But if I’m willing to enter into that feeling, that courage actually brings me further into my care and my love, rather than my fear. My hope is that our music can take others to that space, as well.
Q: What do your bandmates bring to the table?
Allen: Joe and Jess are so talented in ways that I am not. When we’re writing or recording, I tend to think very big picture for a song, and they are excellent at searching for the nuances. Sometimes they’ll think of things that just amaze me. We all like some of the same bands, but we each have some different influences that mix together in surprising ways. For quite a while it was the current three of us plus Robert Redmond, who played keys. He left the band right before we really got going on “If There Were Water,” and we had to work hard without him to figure out our sound, which can get really large at times. We decided we never wanted to have automated tracks when we play live, so the three of us always
have to
be pretty focused and multitask on stage. Our songs can be challenging for three people to play.
Q: You don’t sound like a lot of bands in Tulsa or even in Oklahoma. How do you feel you fit in?
Allen: This is something I think about a lot. First, I think everybody suffers if artists draw too many lines in the sand. It’s important instead to focus on expanding our collective taste in Oklahoma to include more different expressions, and I think many people are actually doing good work on this. There is a lot of musical talent in Tulsa still emerging in more traditional genres, and that is OK, but we also want a seat at the table.
Q: I picked up on a lot of religious imagery in your lyrics. Did you have an upbringing in a Tulsa church?
Allen: I did grow up in a Pentecostal church in Fort Worth, Texas, which impacted me in both positive and negative ways. So much has changed for me in terms of spirituality and beliefs, but I still have this feeling that something strange and elevated is happening in the world. Something big is at stake, and I want to know what it is. In the band we’re all naturalborn seekers, but we express it differently. Sometimes Joe and I can be very questioning and prefer a much more open approach to spirituality, while Jess is Eastern Orthodox. There is room for those differences in our relationship as a band.