Music:
Member Since: 03/08/2007
Band Website: http://www.mendozaline.com
Band Members: Timothy Bracy
Shannon McArdle
Peter Hoffman
John Troutman
Paul Deppler
Sean Fogarty
Philip McArdle
Clint Newman
Adam Gold
Margaret Maurice
Ray Ketchem
Andres Galdanes
Lori Carrier
and a cast of thousands!
"EVERYONE SEES WHAT THEY WANT TO,
NO MATTER WHAT THE CONSEQUENCE,
ALWAYS AVOIDING THE OBVIOUS,
DO WHAT EVERYONE EXPECTS.
-Baby, I Know What You're Thinking, We're All In This Alone album.
Influences: POP MATTERS INTERVIEW WTH SHANNON MCARDLE OF THE MENDOZA LINE
[27 January 2005]
by Matt Gonzales ******************************************
When the Mendoza Line released Lost in Revelry in 2002, it was met with some of the most simultaneously faint and flattering praise ever doled out when the Village Voice called it "a small classic of no cultural import whatsoever -- merely the most likable record of the year, a toothpick Blonde On Blonde held together with chewing gum." That the Mendoza Line wholeheartedly embraced these words, even including them on the bio page of their website, should come as no surprise to those familiar with them. They are a band who will take whatever they can get, and you get the feeling that they half-suspect that they don't deserve it anyway.At least that's the way that I'd always thought of them. But since talking with Mendoza Line singer/songwriter/lovely human being Shannon Mary McArdle, I've learned that the slack indifference and solipsistic tendencies that characterized the band's early years are gone. They are grown up. They are responsible."If you are offering people something that you consider art, you have to feel somewhat responsible," she told me over the phone from Brooklyn, where she was on a break from her day job of teaching English as a second language. "I think that if you have any kind of power -- be it money, or fame, or whatever -- I think that you have the responsibility to use that to do something."McArdle was a late addition to the Mendoza Line, joining the band in 1998. Since then she has gradually gained equal footing with founding singer/songwriters Timothy Bracy and Peter Hoffman. In a way, it's easy to conclude that her influence has helped steer the band away from the apolitical, aconcerned-with-much-anything-outside-their-immediate-world ethos of its youth.It's more complicated than that, of course -- factors like the inexorable approach of older age and an increasingly charged political climate obviously have a lot to do with it. But for reasons not verifiable by facts or evidence, I suspect that McArdle -- who is exceedingly kind, confident, grounded, and really quite funny -- has at least partly contributed to this shift, and never has it been more apparent than on their new album. Fortune contains by far the most politically oriented songs the band has written, the crown jewel of which is a sad and swampy anthem called "Fellow Travelers", an America-weary account of disillusionment and national apostasy sung in the heartbreaking rasping tenor of Timothy Bracy, the man who six years ago invited McArdle into the band."We were all going to the University of Georgia in Athens," she recounted, "Or at least I was going to UGA. It's not clear what any of the others were doing in Athens, but they were there. So I met Tim and Paul [Deppler, the band's bassist and resident composer of oblique liner notes], and they invited me to come to the studio. I started by singing some backing vocals, and then I guess I was just in the band.""Tim had given me a guitar before he moved to New York," she continued, "it was an old acoustic that he had, and I didn't know how to play. But he just said to me, 'Write a song.' So I got my twin brother to teach me five chords, and I wrote my first song that night. I didn't really have a lot of the obstacles that a lot of people have, because no one said to me 'Why are you writing? You don't know how to play anything.'"McArdle's confidence -- powerful in its unreasonableness -- helps imbue Fortune with unlikely poise. Whereas in the past the band had avoided politics because (you got the feeling) they felt that they had nothing new or especially relevant to say, now they don't care whether it's new or relevant or not.It seems like everyone wants to read a subtext of inter-band turmoil -- of hostile competition and barely concealed jealousy -- into the Mendoza Line. They assume that there must be a Yoko effect regarding McArdle's initiation into the band since she's Bracy's girlfriend, and before her arrival, Bracy and Hoffman, friends since childhood, had shared all of the songwriting duties. Now those duties are split equally between McArdle, Hoffman, and Bracy."I know that Tim was really excited about the prospect of me writing a third of the songs," she said. "I never really spoke to Pete about it. It just sort of happened, and he has been really supportive, you know, unless we're fighting about something. I can remember one fight we had a couple of years ago, and Pete said, 'You sang on one of the songs and all of the sudden you're on all of the albums!' But they've all been really supportive, and have never discouraged me."If anything threatened the band's togetherness during the recording of Fortune, it wasn't jealousy or competition, but a passionate desire to capitalize on the strong critical reception of Lost in Revelry. There were disagreements among the band members on how best to accomplish that, and for McArdle at least, it made for a grueling studio experience."I was feeling a bit less like compromising. It wasn't like 'I really hate this,' or 'I hate what this person is doing,' but I just felt less like compromising and more frustrated as a result. It comes down to feeling more pressure on this album.""In the past," she continued, "we had always been a band where whoever wanted to play on the record could play. If your cousin was in town and he knew how to play an instrument, then he could come play on the record. On this one, I guess the stakes were a little higher, and everyone said, 'I do this, I do this, this is my instrument, this is my part,' so it was more difficult and more expensive because not everybody lives in the same place, and it wasn't easy to get everybody in the studio to record their parts. I found that a little frustrating because the album could have been done more quickly and more cheaply.""But I'm guilty of it too," she confessed. "Like, if I want to be the woman who sings on something, and then they invite someone else to sing a backing vocal I might go, 'Well what's wrong with me?' I think everybody does that to some extent. We were a little bit territorial, because there's more to gain. At least we're hoping there is."Oddly, one of Fortune's most rewarding songs is a hidden track written and sung by the least assertive member of the band, bassist Paul Deppler. It's just a little love song, and it sounds like it could have been lifted from McCartney's first solo album -- a beguiling piece of whimsical poetry sung in the voice of a man who's not quite sure he wants to be heard."Paul is a great songwriter," McArdle said enthusiastically. "He's just a little shy about it. He's a great singer, too -- a really good harmony singer. I'm always begging him to sing harmonies with me. He's just very secretive, very humble. That's just his personality. We'd like him to come out a bit more."But there's too much talent in this band for a shy guy to shine -- so much talent that their thus-far-only-modest-success seems a bit of a crime. But while their fanbase lacks big numbers, it does include some big names, specifically venerated rock critic Greil Marcus.Marcus has been regularly lauding the band in Salon (among other publications) for two years now, and he has taken a particular shine to McArdle's twangy, untrained voice. To read his commentary, one might even conclude that Mr. Marcus has a touch of a schoolboy crush. When I suggested this to McArdle, she responded first with blushing laughter, and then said, "I flatter myself to think so. I don't know exactly -- but I think maybe I have a little crush on him too."So how in the world did Marcus come across the Mendoza Line? Do they know him somehow?"No, we don't know him. It's a complete mystery. But I think he's a big fan of the Mekons, and it's possible that he heard a lot of people associating us with them, or saying we sound like them, and maybe that intrigued him, I'm not really sure. We're just so flattered that he's taken such an interest."If nothing else, Marcus's praise is proof that the aging critic still has some discernment left in his ears. He knows what the rest of the music-loving population deserves to know, and that's that the Mendoza Line matter in the rock and roll universe.***************************************************
************************THE MENDOZA LINE
Full of Light and Full of Fire
(Misra)
Rating: 9
US release date: 22 November 2005by Michael Franco......................................................
..................................Few bands in rock history have been able to take life's disappointments and make them sound absolutely glorious. Oh sure, many have sung about disappointment, but few have made striking out sound like a glamorous way to pass one's working years. A handful of names come to mind: Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Replacements, early Wilco. Each of these bands elevated society's nobodies by depicting the frayed dignity of struggling and stumbling through life. Springsteen's blue collar workers, the Replacements' starry-eyed losers, Wilco's weary romantics -- all of these characters possess a debauched dignity, a bull-headed and often foolish refusal to give up in the face of reality that makes them heroic.Like these groups, the Mendoza Line specialize in turning life's outcasts into mythological figures. Their albums are full of desperate people trying to simply make it through the day without further messing up their lives. Throughout these tales of disappointment are glimmers of hope: the possibility of falling in love, the sacred communion of a night at the bar, the healing powers of a good song. On Full of Light and Full of Fire, the band's seventh album, the Mendoza Line have perfected their literate brand of songwriting, writing a series of vignettes full of dynamic and round characters. Each song is a glimpse into the mind of somebody that could easily be you, and the effect is both frightening and moving."Water Surrounds", for example, depicts a love-starved mother who contemplates suicide by walking into the ocean with her son: "And I can't tell the others what I feel / That I sometimes see the Light, but Satan's real / I feel his burning rain…" As the song ends, the narrator is submerged in water, haunted by the loneliness that plagues both her waking moments and her dreams. In "Settle Down, Zelda", the narrator wearily tries to convince his love that growing up isn't so bad: "Oh honey I know that rings / And material things / Ain't exactly what you had in mind / But you tremble and dissemble / And then you start to resemble / All the people you left behind." These songs, as well as others on the album, display the band's gift for articulating the cruel contradictions of life -- simply recognizing the wrong path doesn't always prevent you from taking it.Musically, the band's strong suit has always been their arsenal of singers: the worn-out nasal sneer of Timothy Bracy; the soft-spoken sophistication of Peter Hoffman; and the playful, sultry sass of goddess-in-residence Shannon McArdle. This time out, Bracy and McArdle handle all vocal duties, and the result is a record that sounds more centered. For new listeners, Bracy's deliberate Dylanisms might sound like a mere affectation, but his weary, creaky voice perfectly underscores the lyrics. When, for example, in "Catch a Collapsing Star" he sings, "On the margins, in revisions / Where we both first made our living / In an alcove filled with sawdust / There a new light fell upon us," redemption sounds inevitable, even for the unworthy. As for McArdle, her voice is a marvel, sounding seductive even when full of ire. In "Pipe Stories", a not-so-subtle jab at President Bush, McArdle's voice slides and glissades, making protest sound downright enchanting.The singing, however, is just one ingredient of an amazing band. The Mendoza Line have always paid tribute to their influences, and listening to their albums is like making a compilation of all your favorite bands. The band has often been compared to the Replacements, both for the subject matter of the lyrics and the ragged splendor of the music. While this influence is apparent, there are others. "Mysterious in Black" features a raucous guitar solo that makes the Stones' best bar tunes sound prudish. And then there's McArdle's feminine bravado, which channels the spirit of Chrissie Hynde and permeates the entire album.Full of Light and Full of Fire is easily one of the best albums of the decade. Seven albums into their career, the Mendoza Line are finally making albums that sound both brilliant and focused. Gone are the songs that hint at genius but fall apart before the payoff. Also gone are the songs that lack structure and merely meander through snippets of promise. Indeed, while the tracks all sound different, the common link is the attention to craftsmanship. Every melody and guitar riff sounds meticulously sculpted, yet retains a spontaneous grit. More importantly, the Mendoza Line has once again tapped into the American mystique. Like Born to Run, Pleased to Meet Me, and Being There, Full of Light and Full of Fire is another page in American mythology, an artifact of the withered dreams and fallen hopes of the dispossessed.— 23 November 2005********************************************************
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Treble review
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Mendoza Line
Fortune
2004
Bar/NoneWhere do I even begin? That has been the ultimate dilemma fogging my noggin' for the past few hours. There are so many things to cover! First of all, let's just look at the band's name. Any band who names themselves after the `imaginary' line which represents batting .200 is okay with me. That's right, the real `Mendoza Line' is named after Seattle Mariner Mario Mendoza because during his season with the most plate appearances, he could not hit over .200. Now, every hitter who hits under .200 is ranked below the Mendoza Line. I'm a huge baseball fan and can appreciate the somewhat obscure reference.Secondly, there's the fact that their website and press sheet explain the album's songs in a way lyrics sometimes fall short. It explains the political impetus of the album, how the 2000 election left them in a fugue, how foreigners see America as a country in trouble, how people see protests as anti-patriotism, and much more about love, romance, and corruption in this land of the free. The liner notes even contain a short story which name drops not only the editorial board of Magnet and Spin, but also Halliburton and Rhett Miller!Thirdly, (although it really should be firstly), is the music of the band itself. Fortune is simply put, the best and most exciting album I've heard so far this year. The first time listening through I was mesmerized, the second time giddy, and the third blown away. Somehow, the Mendoza Line manages to take a handful of influences and sculpt creative and original material out of them. At times you swear you hear the Stones' backup singers from Let it Bleed as in the song, "Fellow Travelers," except instead of "It's just a shot away" we hear "wash it away" and "I can't afford you anyway." This, of course, backs up the amalgamation of Bob Dylan and Jeff Tweedy that the lead singer comprises.At other times you would swear that either Tanya Donelly, or perhaps more accurately Liz Phair, became countrified to become Shannon Mary McArdle, the female vocalist of the band. Could Fortune be the middle ground between Exile on Main Street and Exile in Guyville? The short answer is yes, while the long answer is that it is much more than that. Fortune delves into the ugly side of America, the kind of America that makes travelers swear they are Canadian to avoid trouble, the kind of America that destroys everything around it due to excess:I want a big car with a kicking stereo – one that can go anywhere I wanna go.corporate greed:Wholesale notoriety, barcode your anxietypolitical laziness:And for every line you're willing to digest, I toss and turn and count every breath.sexism:Here's what it takes to make a woman. Here's what it takes to make a wife. Take your little shoes off when you enter. May as well keep your shoes off all your life.and abuse:Your neighbors don't like watching what they cannot see from inside. They say they're only peeking, but Jesus Christ, they never bat an eye.The Mendoza Line is comprised of some very intelligent people. What other band would use the words `denouement' or `circumspect' in their lyrics? There are some albums out there that just bear to stand comparison with other bands and albums, but Fortune is a little different. Instead of just composing musical pieces that resemble something else, they take the best of every mentor and predecessor. In other words, the Mendoza line is a musical Frankenstein's Monster of sorts. Take Beulah's pop sensibility, Wilco's alt-country smarts, Dylan's wordplay and nasal delivery, the Stones' gritty blues and country mash-up, Liz Phair's feminine but tough vocal demeanor, and the political bent of a Radiohead record, and you come somewhere close.Consider the band's previous releases to be warning shots, cannon fire across the bow to prepare for this, the sinking blow, the final felling stab, the pinnacle of their creative lives so far. I say so far because I now can't stand to bear the thought of this talented band not making music together. Fortune is sure to make my end of year lists as it should yours, but you have to pick it up first. Unlike poor old Mario, the band named after his infamous sub par performance is batting 1.000. And although they might still raise a few `who?'s after a namedrop, soon that name will be on everyone's lips and wonder how they got so popular so fast. Either that or they'll go woefully unnoticed until twenty years down the line, a music writer `rediscovers' Fortune and the album becomes a lost classic, unappreciated in its time, yet highly influential. It's hard to say at this point.Terrance Terich
08.08.2004
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Treble Review
Mendoza Line
30 Year Low / Final Reflections of the Legendary Malcontent
2007
Glurp"And you may tell yourself / This is not my beautiful house / And you may tell yourself / This is not my beautiful wife""I now can't stand to bear the thought of this talented band not making music together.""One of my greatest hopes is that the Mendoza line, or at least Bracy and McArdle in some incarnation, will have as long and fruitful career as the Cash's."Most of you, being the music fans that you are in peeping this site, will recognize the opening quotation. Although the Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" wasn't necessarily about divorce, it may as well have been. The following two quotations are taken from my own reviews of the Mendoza Line's previous releases, Fortune and Full of Light and Full of Fire. Maybe it was just too good to be true. Here we had a group of singer / songwriters from Athens, Georgia who championed a blend of country and punk much like the Mekons, yet who also proved a love of baseball with a clever name. In other words, the Mendoza Line seemed to be a band tailor-made to my particular tastes. But alas, as I know from my own life experiences, marriages don't always last. Principal members Timothy Bracy and Shannon McArdle married in 2005, the same year as the release of Full of Light and Full of Fire. Just a few short years later, that marriage fell apart, and thus, so did this incarnation of the band. 30 Year Low and its accompanying disc of rarities and covers are the final words from the Mendoza Line, a collection of songs not so much full of light and fire as they are full of vitriol and sadness.As I look at the quotations from my previous reviews, I have to wonder, is all of this my fault? Did I put too much pressure on this band? The answer is probably not, as I'm not even sure they've even read them. Perhaps somewhat prophetically, the Mendoza Line named the first album featuring McArdle, We're All In This Alone. And now, seven years later, that prophecy is fulfilled. Divorce is a terrible and painful experience, but thankfully, over the years, that dissolution of the institution of marriage has made for some of the finest songwriting of this or any other generation. Before, I made comparison of Bracy McArdle to the Cash's, the Rosebuds and Bob Dylan with Joan Baez. It turns out that I should have been comparing them to Nicks and Buckingham or Richard and Linda Thompson, and a completely different era of Dylan's career. Bracy has always made his voice emulate that of Dylan, and now it appears he has his own Blood on the Tracks. Yet, instead of never hearing the side of Sara, Dylan's ex-wife, with 30 Year Low, we not only get McArdle's side of the story, we are very nearly overwhelmed by it.All of my love for the Mendoza Line came rushing back with the opening track, "Since I Came," a melancholy song told from the point of view of an immigrant laborer. McArdle's voice in this woozy and deliberate number finds her alongside such heavyweights as Neko Case and Emmylou Harris. In other words: powerful, emotional and brilliant. As "Aspect of an Old Maid" began, I found myself wondering how much Timothy Bracy's voice had changed when I realized that the singer in question was Okkervil River's Will Sheff. After reveling in The Stage Names for the past few weeks, a little more Sheff was more than welcome. His duet with McArdle is electrifying. "31 Candles" is the second track written by McArdle and redefines the word scathing. How Bracy could have contributed music to this song, I'll never know, just as some could never figure out how Stevie Nicks was able to sing backup vocals on a song that demeans her directly. Upon further listens, however, you can hear just how much intensity is in the guitars as is in the vocals. Bracy finally makes his vocal debut in "I Lost My Taste," the first song on the album that most definitely calls to mind snippets from Blood on the Tracks.Although the pair's relationship had changed, it's apparent that their gift for lyrics hasn't changed with it. The words that Bracy and McArdle use on their palate to paint their pictures of a love gone bad are as clever as always. "Love on Parole," for instance, features the lyric, "that was no one's wedding, baby, that was Pickett's Charge," comparing nuptials to the defining last and futile effort of the South in the Civil War. The twangy title track sums up all of the feelings of despair at the turning of a third decade in life, using business references to mask the hurt of a broken relationship. McArdle sings the final track, another one written by Bracy, which makes for six of the eight songs to feature her vocals as opposed to the three with Bracy. Could this be some clue as to the reasons for the split? Or could Bracy just not bear to vocalize most of his feelings? I don't know that we'll ever find out. We'll just have to be content that we even have this musical document of pain to begin with.This `mini-album' only consists of eight songs. The Mendoza Line make up for that shortage with an entire other disc of rarities and covers called Final Reflections of the Legendary Malcontent. The sad times just keep on coming with the opening track looking at a world gone mad in Cole Porter's "Anything Goes." Throw in Linda Thompson's "Withered and Died," Bruce Springsteen's "Tougher than the Rest" and perhaps most appropriately, Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry," then you have a virtual divorce compilation. Though this series of live tracks, b-sides and such make the album somewhat a Mendoza Line fan's paradise, if not a sad final farewell, it's the 30 Year Low disc that is the real treat. It may seem somewhat insensitive of me to revel in music that comes from such a sad place, but when the listener is in the same sad place, and that music comes from one of my favorite bands, it's hard not to find solace. Great art has always seemingly come from tremendous pain. Same as it ever was.Terrance Terich
08.20.2007
Sounds Like:
Record Label: Misra, Bar-None, Cooking Vinyl, LTI, Glurp
Type of Label: Indie
