by Jane McCarthy
After depriving Silver Lake of his presence on stage for far too long, local indie favorite Frankel (aka Michael Orendy) is back, and he’s got a fantastic new LP under his arm too. On a recent afternoon at The Casbah, I got to sit down with Orendy to talk about this latest album, Sugar Twists Like Hurricane, the trouble with second-guessing, and the funny thing about focus-grouping demos….
JM: You got started as a bass player, is that right?
MO: Yeah, that was my first instrument. And actually, it’s still probably my favorite. But there’s something about playing bass that doesn’t go with singing very well. It’s a little hard to do both. It’s not as intuitive as playing guitar and singing or playing piano and singing. It’s a little too rhythmic or something. I’m not quite sure what it is, but that’s why you don’t see too many singing bass players. Except for like Sting.
JM: At what point when you were in bands playing bass did you decide, ‘I want to try my own stuff?’
MO: I was playing my own stuff for a long time as a very reclusive four-tracker. I had a little four-track recording device, and I was always doing that stuff. It wasn’t so much fleshed-out songs. Just fun ideas. But when I started singing and started messing around with harmonies and writing lyrics- it was so expressive, you know, that soon playing bass in somebody else’s band, with somebody else’s melody and lyrics, started to not be as fulfilling.
So I wanted to do my own stuff, but (and I still struggle with this actually) I’m not the alpha dog front guy, if you haven’t noticed. I’m not like Diamond Dave where I swing in on cables with a power drill and start spitting on people. So Frankel has kind of evolved into a quieter experience and still a little bit of a reclusive one. I’ve developed a pretty solid reputation now as the Howard Hughes of Silverlake.
JM: You do have a reputation for being elusive. Though you’re here, and you’re real.
MO: Or so you think. That’s what this hologram would have you think.
JM: I actually got to see you live at Bordello. I thought you played a great set. But is playing live painful for you on some level? Or do you feel you don’t get the sound you’re looking for?
MO: I actually really love playing live.
JM: Oh you do?!
MO: I do. But I think what I’ve struggled with is the solo aspect of it. It’s a little bit opposite of my character to have a band, because a bandleader- he’s real up and optimistic.
JM: He’s galvanizing the team.
MO: Yeah, he does. And I’m not that guy. I struggle to be even. I’m definitely not optimistic. Sometimes I’ll have friends play with me. It’s fun to do it, but because I don’t want to kind of drive that train, I end up playing solo a lot. And sometimes I really like that. I like just being a classic troubadour in that sense where it’s just acoustic or just the piano and singing. And other times, it has a little bit of the guy-in-the-coffee shop feel to me that I don’t like. That’s when I’ll usually switch it up and do some looping. I have some little pedal gadgets where I’ll loop a guitar part or I’ll sing a bunch of harmonies, and it’ll be taping….that stuff is really fun for me. It’s so nice to hear more than just one instrument or one voice, and then I think, ‘Well, why don’t I just have a band?’
JM: My favorite track on the new album is "Think Carefully." As far as performing that live goes, it seems like that would be kind of difficult to create with just one person.
MO: Yeah, it is. I always start with demos where it’s just acoustic guitar, and it’s just piano. And like most musicians, I have a little inner focus group where I’ll give them a demo or whatever and invariably, everybody likes the demos better. And they say, ‘You should just put this out.’
JM: They like things simpler.
MO: Just the voice and guitar and that’s it. But I always think, ‘No. You make a record- you’re supposed to produce it. You’re supposed to have drums and crazy noises or whatever on it.’ So I do that. And then I end up with a song like "Think Carefully" which has a strong beat to it that you sort of rely on, and then it’s got mandolin and then I don’t know, a whole bunch of stuff on it.
This is the first time I’ve had someone produce an album with me. My friend Kirk Hellie co-produced it, and he plays anything with strings. So he played the mandolin and banjo, ukulele, and wrote a string part or two. I really love the shoe-gazey little sounds where you don’t really know what it is- it’s just textures.
JM: "No Man’s Land" did that so beautifully. It’s very spooky- the different sound textures.
MO: Yeah, that one has some wind and whistling and it’s got a baritone guitar, you know it’s strung a little bit lower so it almost sounds like David Lynch.
JM: What made you want to work with another producer, rather than work independently on this one?
MO: I really do enjoy just doing the whole thing, but it can be a little bit of a claustrophobic experience. And at the end of the whole process doing it on my own, it doesn’t sound as three-dimensional to me. It sounds like one brain, you know?
And I’ve known Kirk for so long. We’ve played in bands together. He is so good. And he has the same sensibilities as me where he likes toe-tappin’ 1920’s Django Reinhardt stuff. And he likes noisy, really abrasive sounds. He’s just fun to be around.
JM: You mentioned in an interview that you saw the record as another step toward being real. When you’re writing, do you have to filter? Do you have to hold something up to the light and go, ‘Yeah, this feels really true. Or no, this doesn’t ring true.’ Or do you feel like you’re naturally coming out with stuff that feels real?
MO: It’s pretty natural, actually. The initial expression is always natural. And I always trust that. There have been times when I’ve done a song in the past, and it feels too simple or lyrically it’s very straightforward, and I think, ‘Ah, it would be kind of cooler to hide behind some metaphor or something a little more abstract.’ And that’s the kind of thing I’m really resisting. That second-guessing.
Whatever I’ve felt the first instinct was, I just go with that. I don’t really doubt any of the process when it’s happening. It’s just once it’s recorded or once the lyrics are written, I start to think, ‘God, is that too straightforward or is it too abstract? Am I not really getting the expression part of it that I want?’ You know, I guess it has to be a little bit painful for it to be real.
JM: Do you feel like you have common themes in your work? Do things keep coming back that resonate with you, that pop up through the records?
MO: Yeah, I think so. One theme on the last record (Anonymity is the New Fame), and this was pointed out to me by a couple of people, is I seem to have a lot of stuff about teeth.
JM: Well, the band is called Frankel for the strange orthodontic device. I’d never heard of that until I looked it up because of your name.
MO: They’re probably illegal now- in every state except Texas. In Texas, Rick Perry is still using them.
So I wrote a lot about teeth and tooth decay. This one I think there’s a bit more about not wanting to go outside. I almost titled this album, The Great Indoors. And it’s actually a lyric on that "Think Carefully" song. For the last couple of years, I almost always choose to be inside.
JM: A real homebody.
MO: Yeah, but with this new album, I think I’m going to play some shows again.
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