The Fancy-iest Band In Brooklyn
Queerespondence recently caught up with Mississippian gent Seth Garrison, 27, of the danceable and dreamy, chamber music-infused, The Fancy. We didn’t tie him up, but we came close. Fronted by Garrison on keyboards and vocals, The Fancy also features the adorable Clara Latham on guitar, Katherine Young on the badass bassoon and Amy Cimini on viola. Last February, the group released The Fancy EP, for which they produced a video, featured below, for the ethereal and whimsical tune Breadwinners – at once a joyous and dark symphony. In May, the group was featured as part of promoter Earl Dax's week long Queer Conscience festival where they played Joe's Pub. The group is currently working on a full length album and you can catch Seth and Clara in their totally flaming side project: a web-series called Muscle Top.
Queerespondence: You're a classically trained musician? Is this from schooling, private lessons, etc?
Seth Garrison: All four of us studied classically in some form or another. The girls all got fancy degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (where we all met) in performance and composition. I spent most of that time drunk and playing Cat Power covers. But before that, I studied privately for 14 years, and was VERY competitive about it.
Q: Was the initial idea for The Fancy to keep a classical sound and incorporate instruments like viola and bassoon, or was that something
that evolved into your sound by coincidence?
SG: When I first got to New York, Clara mentioned playing with Katie Young (Till by Turning, the Nightingales, Anthony Braxton's Falling River
Quartet) and Amy Cimini (Till by Turning, Starring, Christy & Emily) -a big perk being that the eccentric orchestration could afford us a broader palate. I’m not sure if we were going for a “classical sound” so to speak, but working with such talented players who work evenly in contemporary and pop music gave us an opportunity to experiment and mess with both "classical" and "vernacular" traditions.
Q: How long has the band been together? Is this a reincarnation of a previous band, did you start as a solo artist?
SG: The four of us have been playing together for almost 2 years. Clara and I started a band called Wilde Turkey in 2004 – a synth pop band,
with a lot of beautiful drunk choruses. We moved that band from Seattle to New York and things just started to naturally rearrange. We like to think that we “grew up,” but it's debatable, since we still write drunk choruses. I sometimes write songs under the name Seth Sugar; Clara and Katie both have very active composer lives; and Amy and Katie make some seriously awesome new-music-y improv work as Architeuthis Walks on Land. The Fancy is kind of a collection of all that personal work.
Q: Do you see many other Brooklyn-based bands incorporating strong elements of chamber pop into their music?
SG: Yeah, I guess people say it's in the air–it definitely seems the trend of using classically trained musicians in more diverse ways is becoming more and more present. But maybe it's more that people who play classical instruments and have that training are getting hip to the fact that they can actually do a lot more and play whatever they want.
But some local projects that we feel connected to in terms of their sound are Corey Dargel and Cornelius Dufallo, Final Fantasy, Christy and Emily, Helado Negro, Pearl & the Beard, and the Binary Marketing Show.
Q: What or who are your influences, artists specifically?
SG: Well, I like to think we’re like Magnetic Fields on antidepressants. Other than that, it's hard to be specific, since each member brings such a different collection of musical interests. Clara and I are very devoted to Kate Bush, and try and grab onto her dry, raw orchestration and songwriting. Fleetwood Mac (especially Rumors and Tusk) have also been influential. On the string playing side of things, John Cale (obviously!), The Dirty Three and Tom Cora and Oakley Hall are big influences and inspirations. And in the Fancy Katie kind of bounces between thinking like a bass player and a horn player–so she's
chewing on tight stuff like Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, and 60s girl groups songs. And then we listen to a lot of Joni Mitchell, Queen and Mariah Carey, actually.
Q: What's an element of your music or performance that you think audiences maybe don't catch on their first impression?
SG: I think that when people first see us they may think, “Man, that band is really good-looking.” But they often don’t notice til later that we’re actually DROP DEAD GORGEOUS!
No, but for real, we've worked really hard to be in control of our sound, by amping all our instruments ourselves and whatnot. We spend a lot of time on our arrangements and want that to come across–though we figure, especially in louder, bigger clubs, some of the nuances that we get really attached to when we're practicing might not come across to people who are hearing the band for the first time. Also, although we do work hard, we hope that audiences know that we're having fun! Don't be scared by all the instruments, people, we're having a great time.
