Miyuki Furtado: Vocals, bass
Jennifer Rogers: Vocals, guitar
Laura Rogers: Drums, backing vocals
THE ROGERS SISTERS - THE INVISIBLE DECK
"The title comes from a card trick our father used to do when we were kids," says Jennifer Rogers (vocals, guitar), explaining why the Brooklyn-based trio titled their new album, The Invisible Deck. "It's mind-blowing, like real magic. Plus, we thought the word deck had a lot of different implications decks are stacked and played, people and halls are decked, there are tape decks. The word invisible has a double meaning too; it can mean powerless or it can mean sneaky."
"The idea of playing with a full deck versus playing with a less than full one is obvious," adds her younger sister Laura (drums, backing vocals). "But I think playing with an invisible deck can have a lot of interpretations. Sleight of hand, and the idea of magician vs. mark are interesting symbols for power dynamics: do you want to play, or do you want to be fooled? Are you seeing what you think you're seeing? Are you in on the secret?"
THE ROGERS SISTERS have themselves been an underground secret since the turn of the century, as anyone who's witnessed their hip-shaking, synapse-firing live show can attest. Building on the spiky dance floor maneuvers of last year's Three Fingers mini-album and 2002's debut LP Purely Evil (on the Troubleman Unlimited label), The Invisible Deck exudes a melodic intensity that should transform them from in-concert maestros to home-listening favorites.
"For the new album we experimented by writing music with a more classic song structure," explains non-female sister Miyuki Furtado (vocals, bass). "Something that exhibited my melancholy and sinister personality", he slyly added. "Jennifer feels that her tunes have always had a dark side, but that may have been disguised in earlier Rogers Sisters songs, beneath either girl group energies or more arty peculiarities."
Laura cites the textured, doom-laden grind of eight-minute finale 'Sooner Or Later' as a personal favorite, noting that while Three Fingers was very bass-driven, The Invisible Deck is heavily guitar influenced. "We experimented with new sounds and a lot of layering, while avoiding making things overly complicated." Tim Barnes and TJ Doherty, producer and engineer respectively, helped the group broaden their palette, complementing the sense of drama that pervades the ten-track opus.
"In addition to using a variety of unusual amps and guitars, we tracked some instruments straight to the board," recalls Miyuki. "We took our time in capturing different drum sounds, by incorporating creative mic placement and covering drums with different materials. We also added some percussion and flute to our usual arsenal of sounds."
He's especially partial to the down tempo atmosphere of 'Your Littlest World', a six-minute master class in controlled virtuosity, unveiling Miyuki's gentler side. "Jen's singing is very graceful and there are some righteous guitar and bass solos on it. Though it's the flute playing that's the icing on the cake."
The re-recordings of 'Emotion Control' and 'The Conversation' previously available on seven-inch vinyl and as downloads further demonstrate their studio prowess, striking a punchy accord between dissonance and detail. Meanwhile, freshly minted anthems such as lead single 'Never Learn To Cry' and 'Why Won't You?' confirm what the cognoscenti have known for a while: here is a band who pack pop smarts, rock power and dance rhythms in equal measure. As before, these restless grooves are filled with meaningful (but never precious) content, be that social discourse or oblique existentialism. The Rogers Sisters don't write love songs, but nor do they polemicize. Nonetheless, their questing lyricism and expansive worldview have seen them tagged as "political".
"That's another one of those labels," muses Jennifer. "We are expressing our own ideas about the state of things, but we're not presumptuous enough to think our music will change anything. If people think what we are saying reflects their feeling, thats cool. I wish we could make more of a difference, but I just don't believe it's possible."
Miyuki is more forthright: "If writing lyrics about our thoughts on ballerinas, sugar, Gene Hackman, dreams about having big hair and the dangers of flying off the face of the planet makes us political, then we're a political band. We may have opinions about many issues political or not, but we try to comment on the trials and tribulations of simply being human and living in society in general. We prefer not to tell anyone what to do or think, and hope that they would make decisions for themselves."
Another misconception about The Rogers Sisters is that they're a throwback to styles from the late '70s and early '80s. Their previous records scored rave reviews across the board, from Rolling Stone ("the Rogers fuse vitriol and limber funk into a single buzz bombthe results are sharp enough to draw blood") to New York Magazine ("Sounds Like: Quit complaining and get your ass out of that chair rock and roll"). Critics were quick to hear echoes of new wave and punk-funk staples such as ESG, Gang Of Four, The B-52's, X-Ray Spex and The Cure (whose early number 'Object' was covered on Three Fingers alongside the Captain Beefheart nugget 'Zig Zag Wanderer'). The truth, as evidenced by the deeper sonic vistas explored in 'The Invisible Deck', is more complicated.
"Each of those bands had their own distinct sounds," says Jennifer, whose primary inspiration was actually Led Zeppelin. "Today a lot of people are taking the same influences, filtering them through the same lens and they come out sounding like Duran Duran. We appreciate the weirdness of the original music, not the generic re-hashing of it."
"I'm an avid lover of all music and have omnivorous listening tastes," states Miyuki. "I've been influenced by everything from Lawrence Welk to Black Flag to Wu-Tang Clan to The Kinks to The Banana Splits to Suicidal Tendencies to Oscar Brown Jr. to Destiny's Child to XTC to Tina Turner to CCR to the Bacon Brothers [Americana outfit fronted by the actor Kevin and his elder sibling Michael]. Well, probably not the Bacon Brothers."
Although none of them are native New Yorkers Jennifer and Laura hail from Detroit, Miyuki was born in Hawaii The Rogers Sisters are firmly ensconced in Brooklyn. In recent years the borough has earned a reputation for left-field sounds. Miyuki feels a degree of civic pride, though he's keen to point out that the trio are not part of a specific clique.
"I wish I could say that I have high tea with members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio and Le Tigre every day, but I can't. We do, however, know many people in many bands by default from living in Brooklyn and being in a band ourselves. The great thing is that there are so many micro-scenes; it's not just your usual rock scene; there's the Def Jux folks doing interesting hip-hop, as well as the Antibalas crew doing Afro-Cuban music. There are also bop jazz groups, experimental musicians and the psych-folk posse. Don't even get me started on the salsa, tango, merengue and bluegrass bands."
In addition to their musical activities, the sisters run the popular Brooklyn watering hole Daddy's. The name was inspired by a conversation about Burt Reynolds' vintage comedy caper 'Smokey And The Bandit'. Jennifer: "We were laughing about Junior Justice whining 'Daddy!' to Jackie Gleason's character Sheriff Buford T. Justice. Jackie Gleason seemed like a cool person to name a place after, plus he was born on the same day as me - him and Johnny Cash and Fats Domino."
"We started the bar when we were still a local party band and didn't realize we would have a chance to take music more seriously. Laura and I had worked in bars and restaurants for a while so we wanted to try our hand at our own place. It couldn't have been better timing because no other job would let us go out of town now as much as we do!"
Although they're not a bar band in the traditional sense, The Rogers Sisters began their own career in a drinking den. Jennifer put the group together the day before their first gig: a birthday party at Enid's, a place run by some friends of hers in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.
"We did a cover of Ike & Tina Turner's version of 'You Are My Sunshine'," she remembers, "with Happy Birthday lyrics. It was reckless and by the skin of our teeth. That's how a lot of our shows were in the first couple of years. We still have that energy, but nowadays we try to play the right notes."
