Articles

Incense and Insolence

by Alec Foeger, Rolling Stone, October 20, 1994

"It was totally unpleasant for me," says Hope Sandoval, Mazzy Star's laconic lead singer. The dire seriousness with which she makes this confession about her band's recent appearance on "Late Night with Concan O'Brien" is at once touching and unintentionally comical, "If you're nervous in front of 500 people."

Sandoval chooses her very word with utmost care, as if she were baring her soul, and yet negates each response with a scowl and a sidelong gaze, her dark hair wisping into her eyes. This time even the cool, beret- wearing David Roback, Sandoval's songwriting partner and the guitarist in the group, appears ruffled and tries to catch his band mate's eye. "They were nice to use," he says, filling the void, with an easy smile. "It wasn't unpleasant in that way."

After another elliptical lull, Sandoval rejoins the conversation. "They were really nice to us," she says. "I just get nervous and tight...And it's so bright...We're not used to all the bright light."

One hour and two bottles of red wine into a friendly conversation that at moments bears a disconcerting resemblance to the more abstruse exchanges in Waiting for Godot, Sandoval and Roback have made a few salient points: (1) Regardless of the success that has recently befallen the group, Mazzy Star do not relish fan idolatry; (2) Mazzy Star prefer to let the music on So Tonight That I Might See, their second album, speak for itself; (3) Mazzy Star do not enjoy doing interviews; and (4) performing live, particularly performing live on television, has a lot in common with a visit to the dentist's office.

"For me recording is better," says Sandoval. "Live, I just get really nervous. Once you're onstage, you're expected to perform. I don't do that. I always feel awkward about just standing there and not speaking to the audience. It's difficult for me."

Despite a public reticence that verges on the bizarre, Mazzy Star have eked out a bona fide hit with "Fade Into You" nearly a year after So Tonight That I Might See was first released. Exposure on MTV's Buzz Bin and VH-1, as well as Sandoval's cameo on the Jesus and Mary Chain single "Sometimes Always," recently eased Mazzy Star's lush, majestic music into the limelight. They were even willing to brave and October appearance in front of an arena-size crowd at Neil Young's annual Bridge School benefit in San Francisco.

"Things are basically the same," Sandoval says of Mazzy Star's newfound fame. "We're just sticking to our ways. Writing the way we've always done it. There's really no need to change."

Rain Parade, an early Roback band, first hit the scene in 1982 as part of a loose aggregate of psychedelic '60s-influenced guitar bands in Los Angeles - including the Dream Syndicate, the Bangles, Green on Red and the Three O'Clock - that became known after the fact as the Paisley Underground. The moniker acknowledged the scene's two main influences - the Velvet Underground and Woodstock-era acid rock. Dark, moody and drenched in guitar feedback, Rain Parade's music was not merely out of sync with the early-'80s trend toward synthesizer-based New Wave. "They were the trippiest, most hypnotic of all the paisley bands," recalls Steve Wynn, leader of the now-defunct Dream Syndicate. "All the other bands in the scene felt some obligation to rock now and then. But the early Rain Parade played at three speeds: slow, slower and slowest."

Roback left Rain Parade following their first album and formed a quartet called Clay Allison with Kendra Smith, the original bassist from the Dream Syndicate. The group, which included Mazzy Star drummer Keith Mitchell, mutated into a new band, Opal, whose sound was defined by Roback's spare, distorted guitar work and Smith's lyrical voice.

"When I was playing in Opal, we were friends, Hope and I," Roback recalls. "But I don't think we were really part of the music scene in the way that people may have perceived it at that point. Actually, we were both sort of alienated - that's what we had in common."

The waifish Sandoval had admired Kendra Smith as a teen-age Dream Syndicate fan growing up in Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, Going Home, a folk duo she formed in 1986 with her friend Sylvia Gomez, soon caught Roback's attention; he even offered to produce their first album. Although the resulting recording was never released (4AD will finally issue the disc next spring), Roback invited Sandoval to join Opal when Smith left the band midtour. While the new band's musical precepts remained the same, Sandoval's kittenish vocals inspired them to collaborate under a new name - Mazzy Star.

Mazzy Star's debut, She Hangs Brightly (1990), garnered critical acclaim and cultish attention by dosing drug-frazzled indie rock with acoustic guitars and a pedal steel. But within a year of the album's release, the band's label, British indie Rough Trade, closed down its stateside operation, leaving the group without an American label. Capitol snapped up the group and in 1992 re-released She Hangs Brightly. The band has mined the same sluggishly resplendent vein ever since.

In concert, Sandoval's wan countenance and commanding alto are undeniable the center of attention; Roback lurks in the shadows with a virtually anonymous backing a band. Although Sandoval and Roback share songwriting duties, the word chemistry overstates their relationship. For one, Sandoval lives in Los Angeles; Roback is based in Berkeley, Calif. She's moody, and he's withdrawn. Fortunately their edgy songs often get along fine without them. "For 'Into Dust,' David's guitar part was just so moving," Sandoval says. "We didn't even stop and write. He just played the guitar part, I sang, we recorded it, and that was it. What you hear on the record is basically the first time we did it."

These days, Mazzy Star sell out every show. But you wouldn't know it from the crowd reaction at the band's packed club dates; rock acolytes don't come much quieter. "They're understanding that that's what it takes to get us to stay out there longer than 30 minutes," says Sandoval. "It's just like anything else: If you were talking to a group of people, and everybody was there to listen to you, it would be rude if five people were having a drink and a loud laugh. Obviously we're not the Red Hot Chili Peppers." The particularly subdued "Into Dust" is known within the band as the "Shush Song," a reference to the devoted fans who shush the uninitiated whenever it is performed.

William Reid of the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Scottish band that will begin a five-week U.S. tour with Mazzy Star on Oct. 10, feels that it's unfair to expect more than music from musicians. "Some bands - and Mazzy Star and the Jesus and Mary Chain are among them - feel uncomfortable doing all the other stuff: the business and the bull session and doing the deals," he says. Reid also defends his California friends' notorious reputation for stalling interviews, admitting, "It's not the perfect arena to be in if you happen to be a shy person."

Whether Sandoval and Roback's aloofness is a gambit or a genuine case of the introverted blues (it's probably a bit of both), there's no doubt it's contiguous to the band's ethereal, swirling music. All that is difficult and apprehensive about the pair in person becomes that which is most splendid in their music. On "Mary of Silence," Sandoval's echoey voice blends with a repetitive, funereal organ part as Roback's combustive guitar plashes into the distance. "So Tonight That I Might See," the album's title track, has all the primal drama of the Doors' "The End" without its mawkishly serious stance. If music is "cinema of the mind," as Roback likes to say, then Mazzy Star are a beautiful art-house flick dubbed in English, it reels shown out of order.

"I know Dave pretty well, and I don't think it's an act in any way," says Steve Wynn. "Sometimes when people demand to do things the way they want to do it, it's taken as arrogance or snobbishness. It's really just a matter of wanting to do something the way you hear it in your head." To ensure absolute control, Roback produces all of Mazzy Star's recordings.

While little else on the charts indicates a groundswell of dirgelike, introspective music, enduring interest in the dour, faceless Pink Floyd suggests that supermarket-aisle recognition is no longer a prerequisite for rock super-stardom. "There's something nice about being unknown and anonymous," says Roback. "People who are unpopular or aren't successful are making great music all the time. But it's also interesting to be able to do our concerts and to realize some of our ideas. So I don't see success as a negative thing."