In the aftermath of the dissolution of adored emo / indie rock bands Mineral and The Gloria Record, songwriter Chris Simpson took a step back from making music for the first time since his mid-teens. This period became a critical time of exploration which fueled a longing for simplification, both personally and creatively. It was during this period that a more refined approach to his creative process was born.
“I found myself exploring a lot of music from the 60s and 70s,” says Simpson. “The Van Morrison record, Astral Weeks was a catalyst I think. But it was Van and Leonard Cohen and Harry Nilsson and Bob Dylan and Randy Newman and Syd Barrett and David Bowie and Brian Eno and The Velvet Underground and John Cale. I wanted to write simple songs that I could play alone on a piano or an acoustic guitar. I also fell in love with the freedom and expression of a lot of jazz music from that era—so there was a lot of Thelonious Monk and Nina Simone in there too.” That Simpson was drawn to artists and songwriters who radically followed their own vision is no surprise. More than any single style reference or influence, what comes through in Music For Looking Animals is a really solid, individual artistic voice.
Mountain Time, both a reference to timeliness (or lack thereof) and a childhood amongst the natural beauty of Colorado evolved from Simpson’s previous solo project Zookeeper as the most fitting moniker for the latest project. With the transition, while the process and approach became more autonomous, the drive and ultimate desire to create remained rooted within many of the same wells of inspiration that fueled previous incarnations of Simpson’s songwriting.
For Simpson, much of what Music for Looking Animals is externalizing are larger questions embedded within the natural passing of time. What things do we hold onto? What must we let go? While time has brought certain chapters to a close, new ones have opened. Family. School. Sobriety. Seeking. However, part of this recasting of priorities has involved the shedding of some former skins, and much of this process took place within the cathartic confines of writing Music for Looking Animals. “I think for me, [writing] has always been an expression of seeking. Seeking to know more about myself or the world around me. Seeking to belong or understand. Just expressing myself and communicating who or what I am. What makes me more wholly myself or individual. Or what makes me more human. I think this has been the same throughout my songwriting. For me it’s the way I process being alive.”
Simpson entered the studio with producer/collaborator Doug Walseth to capture the emotion of the songs within the “Leonard Cohen palette” — i.e. songs bolstered with strings, horns, and background singers rather than layers of electric guitars and keyboards. At the start of the recording sessions, Simpson and Walseth committed to capturing everything on an 8-track one inch analog tape machine and forgoing the use of computers; however, as the arrangements, layering, and ideas became more complex, the initial approach became limiting. What began as a very spare folk album became much more lush and dense. Once production and mixing were completed, the album was sent to Howie Weinberg (The Killers, Cass McCombs, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) for mastering.
While Music for Looking Animals is an attempt at simplification, it is hardly minimal in terms of lyrical and musical depth. With inspiration drawn from the arenas of psychology and eastern philosophy, the beauty of the natural world, Simpson’s children and wife, old Time-Life books, and the self-stated immenseness of the universe, Mountain Time has become almost more of a state-of-mind than a moniker. “I am wholly convinced of the paradoxes that exist,” says Simpson. “That love and compassion are the only answers to hate and fear. That vulnerability is the only source of strength. There is so much healing needed both within and without, and that starts at home, in our own hearts and lives. I know it’s tempting to think that that has nothing to do with the state of the world, but I think it might be the only thing that has anything to do with the state of the world.” It is this type of reflective seeking that brought Music for Looking Animals into existence, and it is this type of seeking that the album invites the listener to embark on after hitting play.
Please stay tuned to spartanrecords.com for updates on Mountain Time, as well as the release for the first music video “Rosemary, Etc.” directed by Tim Kasher (Cursive, The Good Life).
