West Indian Girl
6/15/05
It's 8:30 on a Tuesday night when I arrive at West Indian Girl's downtown L.A. rehearsal loft. The street is dark and heavily populated by homeless people. I park my car behind West Indian Girl co-founder Francis Ten's classic Land Cruiser as he laughs on the other end of my cell phone, amused by my edginess at the immediate situation. I wait—engine running, headlights on, doors locked—for Ten to get his ass down here to collect me. He and his three-year-old boxer, Tony, appear moments later. This much-welcome welcoming committee of bassist and beast ushers me through an anonymous security door, but not before Ten greets by name a couple of the guys hanging out, asking one of them to keep an eye on my car. The unfortunate circumstances of this desolate area are in razor-sharp contrast to West Indian Girl's lyrically poignant, melodically rich, and often gentle self-titled debut, released late 2004 on Astralwerks. It's a record that's long on continual renewal—Robert James' graceful voice rising and dipping like a dolphin that knows life's most important things, Ten's bass and Mark Lewis' drums pushing the rhythmic currents while Chris Carter's keyboards blissfully bob and weave.
Ten, Tony, and I enter an old boxcar elevator to the band's massive loft, itself a hip sanctuary with a vaguely Middle Eastern vibe and an inspiring view of the city. The main room is dense with vintage amps and instruments. I carefully pick my way through electrical cords and mic stands, as James rises to greet me from command central—a 32-track sound board, a giant flat screen computer monitor and a couple racks of technological marvels. He's working on a club remix of "Hollywood," which the label will release this summer. James plays a sample for me, which is even more spacey than the original, as Ten apologetically resumes his dinner of Korean take-out, mentioning often how much the food sucks and how badly it smells. He cleanses his palate with a chocolate bar, Tony between us on the sofa. James turns his full attention to the three of us.
You're working on a remix of "Hollywood."
James: You just throw a big cake in there.
What flavor?
Ten: Strawberry.
James: You gotta have a lot of flavors.
Ten: It's definitely strawberry.
Are you using Pro-Tools?
James: It's a program called Acid and we're experimenting with it.
Nice double entendre. This is a perfect space for the kind of music you make, but an unlikely area for such a chill band.
James: I live a block away. I feel comfortable down here, but at first it was a little crazy. You never knew if somebody was gonna jump you. It's dark and shadowy, but most of the cats are here every night.
Ten: I know a lot of the people on the street. The homeless guy who watches my car is really cool.
James: At first, it's a dark, foreboding forest, but after you've been in it, you see it's a regular place that's a little darker, and the scary quality about it came from yourself, not from the environment.
One of the first things I noticed about the album—besides the lyrics—is how complex the arrangements are. How do you replicate the nuances on stage?
James: We faced that question when we were putting together the band, because we're never going to be able to create it exactly, unless we were playing sampled tracks. And we didn't want that. So we took the sounds that are the essence of the songs, and recreate those.
Ten: And there's only so many things that five people can play at once. Our keyboard player, Chris, is playing five keyboards, but he's not triggering samples. What you see and what you hear is what you get. But it's still pretty thick; we replicate it well in our shows. It's still got a big wall of sound.
James: Songs evolve, too, from their original state when we recorded them. We're doing things to the songs to make them new and fresh. They're constantly changing, and we're changing.
Is this music indie rock?
Ten: What is indie rock?
James: I'm sure part of it is.
The part where all of you are really broke?
Ten: Mark and I wear Converse lowtops. Are we qualified? It's not emo, that's for sure. [Laughing] We have a little more [Sesame Street character] Elmo. 'What are you?' We're Elmo.
When people ask what you sound like, what do you say?
James: It depends on who's asking.
Ten: That's a tough question and I never answer it properly. I always go for the copout. I'll say what I've heard someone else say, and then I'll mix in what everyone else says, so I name twelve bands. 'Part Jane's-Addiction-meets-Steely-Dan-meets-Pink-Floyd-meets-Mercury-Rev-meets-Elmo.'
That's a big party.
Ten: It is a big party. We kinda have our own little sound.
Very much so. It's trippy. It's ethereal. The music is impossible.
James: The best is yet to come; we're writing new material. It's the same kind of vibe, but more poignant, more emotional, more intimate.
It ought to come with it's own box of tissues. [Laughter] Tell me about the instruments and gear that put the music to the words. That soundboard connected to the giant flat screen monitor is fascinating. Is it the brain of this entire operation? [Laughter]
James: If you were a painter, this would be the canvas. And the paints are the different analog keyboards, and the different colors.
Ten: Special, hard-to-find paints. But the colors change, because of the equipment we use, which isn't what a lot of normal people would use. Everyone uses ProTools. We don't. That's the standard. We don't use the standard. Right down to our soundcard, which isn't standard. We don't use a Mac, we use a PC. We use everything that everyone else doesn't.
James: We ended up using Sonar [software], because we're a PC world, so there's a set of criteria for the software we use. We like to think that the real difference is the soundcard. It's all in the conversion of analog to digital, and how we do that. People rarely use analog tape machines; they're going straight into ProTools, which goes straight into a soundcard, onto a hard disc. The soundcard we use has a very specific way of converting, that we like. It has a warmer tone, and I think you can hear that.
Do the equipment and instruments break down often?
James: Since we've started playing shows, we've had to get two of everything. Now we have two Moog Prodigies. They're very temperamental, so if one breaks down, we have a spare.
Do you carry around little Moog tools to fix them?
James: We have a schematic. I can open them up and tune them.
Do you have specific people to fix your stuff?
James: Yeah. We have three keyboards in the shop right now. There's always something. Even our computers have broken down many times.
Ten: Although this baby's a workhorse.
James: Yeah, so far. We used to have a Gateway that crashed every three days. This Carillon [computer] is good.
Ten: We have a special way we record the bass. It's a secret, and I don't know if I can reveal it, but we get a nice tone. It's taken many years to correct and perfect.
What else goes on in here besides rehearsing and recording? [Nervous laughter]
Ten: We practice all the time in here. We've had some parties.
What is it like traveling with a female band member?
James: Mariqueen is cool; she's like one of the guys.
Ten: There are guys in the band that are more girls. [Laughter] She's not as high maintenance as you'd think. We're all pretty easy going. This band travels well together, considering other bands we've been in. Our crew guys are more uptight than we are.
Do people think that Mariqueen is the point of reference for the band name?
Ten: I don't know. But if they do, I don't mind it, because she's exotic looking. If we're going to have a girl in the band, it's good that she has this mysterious way about her, and a darker, enigmatic side. She's not in your face as a girl; she carries herself well onstage and she's not all showy, like, 'Hey, I'm the girl in West Indian Girl.'
James: It's pretty obvious that we're a band, and hence, the name.
And the name also connotes a high-grade hallucinogenic. Soooooo, did any recreational pharmaceuticals figure in to the writing and/or recording of the album?
Ten: Yeah, little bits here and there.
James: I wouldn't necessarily say that it's responsible for making the record. It's more responsible for making us who we are as human beings.
Ten: Certain moments call for a certain space of mind. Ninety percent of the time we're clear-headed.
James: Sometimes they can aid in the creative process. Smoking a little pot or drinking—all these vehicles drop inhibitions. And then we sober up and listen to what we've done and say, 'Ninety-eight percent is crap, and two percent is magical that we can draw from.' But we're not dependent on that sort of thing to create.
Ten: It's like another color or a different paintbrush. Like a fan paintbrush for water colors. It's a specialty brush. [Laughter] To paint clouds.
What are some of the lyrics that resonate for you when you're performing?
Ten: I'm lucky if I hear.
James: Each night there's a different energy. With a song that's more down tempo, like 'Northern Sky,' it's really nice to sing the opening line ['On an island off the southern sea / Overlooking a memory you once had / There's a light in a northern sky / And a picture of you that never dies']. I can feel the intimacy. Or we'll hit a line in 'Hollywood,' like 'In Hollywood, rivers fly / In Hollywood, the skies alive,' that feels good. But it depends on the crowd. Every line on the record, we love. To make it that far, we have to love it.
Francis Ten, has anyone ever told you that you're a better Chris Cornell than Chris Cornell?
James: What about Dave Navarro?
Ten: I'll take that as a compliment. I used to get that Chris Cornell thing, but now it's Dave Navarro.
Francis Ten, did [photographer] Mick Rock's name for you, 'The Little Sicilian' stick? [Laughter]
Ten: It's funny, huh? No, it didn't stick. He's the only one who ever called me that.
James: Francis didn't even know who he was.
Ten: But he's a funny fucking guy.
Do you guys see better with hair in your eyes?
Ten: No, but I like having hair in my eyes. It's funny, I was just thinking about that when we were playing our set the other day. I like it, because I can see less of what's out there, and it puts me in my own little world.
James: I don't use my eyes to see at all. [Laughter]
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