Photo by Ben Stas
Boston indie rock troupe Tuxis Giant are something of a scene lynchpin at this point. With members that have ran beloved house venues and others who seem to fill in for anyone who needs an extra set of hands, they occupy a particularly utilitarian space within our DIY ecosystem. That’s no slight against their music, which maintains a rich blend of circular and ascendent songwriting that dips into slowcore and post-rock with ease backed by legit chops honed in the many basements that have sprung up (and subsequently disappeared) from these fertile and hallowed streets. On their new EP In Heaven, Tuxis Giant slides a bit of alt country into the mix as well, aided no doubt by the playing and singing of new member Eleanor Elektra, whose excellent solo music is certainly familiar to AP readers. We had a chance to sit down with Tuxis Giant’s principal songwriter Matt O’Connor ahead of In Heaven‘s release and chat with them about how it all came together so smoothly. We also have a stream of the EP a day early, so click play and read along below before their record release show on Saturday night (DM the band for the address).
Allston Pudding: Tuxis Giant has been through a few lineup changes and also kinda differs depending on the gig. Who plays on this EP?
Tuxis Giant: On this new EP the lineup is me [Matt] obviously, our drummer James Steinberg who has been with the band for the last 5-6 years. and Eleanor Elektra who has a really great solo project, but she plays lead guitar, and does some backing vocals as well as piano, keyboards, and that kinda stuff.
AP: How did that lineup flexibility factor into the songwriting on this EP?
TG: Well I wrote all these songs in isolation during the pandemic, or at least the early months of the pandemic I should say. I was living alone in a cabin in Vermont and I was writing these songs on my own and I didn’t really know what I was gonna do with them since we’d been on a little bit of a break after putting out our last record Goldie. It was time for us to sort of regroup and maybe piece some new songs together without feeling rushed and then the pandemic happened so things got a little weird.
So I had these songs and I reached out to James, and him and I just wound up arranging them as just guitar and drums and he was gonna play bass on it, and we thought “ok let’s just do it like this, I guess.” But pretty soon after that I was sharing demos with a bunch of my friends, and James Ikeda [The Michael Character] was away on a trip with Eleanor and they sent me back all these covers of the demos they had recorded and it sounded great! I just though “damn Eleanor’s backing vocals sound amazing, we should see if she wants to be on this record.” She just slotted right in from there. It was all really fluid, the lineup mostly came together in the process of writing and arranging the songs.
AP: Do you find that inspiring in general, having different modes of expression and Tuxis Giant being a more fluid operation?
TG: I think so, with the exception of James and I the lineup has changed a bunch throughout the years and every time we remove an element or introduce a new element it changes the direction and changes the sound, and it winds up feeling really organic and it helps me move forward in terms of pushing myself to be a better writer and try new things that push me out of my comfort zone. In general inviting a new collaborator in and building trust with them is really exciting and scary process, but it winds up changing every for the better in my experience, and that was definitely the case bringing Eleanor in this time around.
AP: What is your creative process like as a unit?
TG: It usually just starts with me writing the song on my own as I’m always just kind of tinkering with ideas and building up a collection of songs and I’ll eventually decide that whatever batch is going to be “the record.” Or at least if it’s not a record, it’s going to be a collection of something that we can work toward. At that point I send the band the demos or I just show them what I have in mind if we’re at practice and we just let each other’s ideas start percolating. In the past that manifests with Eleanor listening to it and messing around with some new guitar parts and harmonies, and James will think about the rhythm section, but also the overall structure. Like on the single we put out there’s this big instrumental break that happens in the middle and it was totally James’ idea to break it up in that way because he correctly thought it would work out really well. Most of the songs start out very personal until I feel like the idea stands up well enough on its own and I then I bring it to the band. I’m not as precious about the structure because I want it to become the best thing it can be and I think the way it can there is by collaborating.
AP: Can you tell me more about the isolation period in Vermont where these songs started taking shape?
TG: It was kind of a wild time! In February 2020 I left my job and I had booked this backpacking trip around Spain and Portugal and then when I got back I was also booking a tour for Goldie and I was gonna do a solo tour through Chicago and Nashville and Upstate New York for a month. So I had all these big plans and then COVID of course happened, I was actually in Portugal when the pandemic hit and I had to find my way home. So when I actually got home I isolated since nobody really knew the rules yet and everyone was just nervous and scared and luckily my parents have this cabin in Vermont so I just went up there and wound up staying for 6 or 7 months. So while I was up there I was unemployed and existentially disturbed by what was going on and was just trying to keep my head on straight by writing all the time and reading a bunch. I can see a lot of those moments being up there feeling really lonely or just walking through the woods, I see that coming out in the songs.
It was obviously a rough time in the world, and I was very lucky to be in this beautiful place, and I was safe and healthy in that respect, but I didn’t really expect to write all these songs. During that time I wrote the entire EP and another full length of songs that is coming later on. Writing weirdly became my job in that moment. My job that I don’t get paid for, and actually probably lose money on.
AP: So what music do you all agree on as Tuxis Giant?
TG: Bill Callahan is an artist we unanimously agree on, and there’s a pretty big love for that kind of alt country thing, but we all also like “weirder” music which basically describes Bill Callahan. It’s funny Eleanor is obviously a very serious songwriter and I can’t even parse out her influences because they’re so varied, but we all love Bill, we all love Pink Navel, I think we all love Pile, I haven’t talked to her about Pile, but I bet she likes them. We don’t talk about it much, obviously we share music we love, but when we’re together making music it’s never about trying to sound like this band or this kind of thing, it’s more like we’ll be laying something down and then Eleanor will have a cool slide part or something and it’s like “nice, that’s sick!” Or James will have this wild drum fill, you know? When I was writing the record I really wanted to lean into like Willie Nelson, at least when I sent the songs to James initially I was listening to a lot of Willie and Jackson Browne and that 70’s songwriter stuff, but the reference points have changed over time. That’s a long way of saying we have varied tastes.
AP: Seems like indie rock tastes are kinda shifting a bit towards the twangier end. Was that a conscious thing on your end? Or just a reflection of your personal taste?
TG: I’ve always loved that music, and like from the jump one of the biggest influences on my music has been Jason Molina, and obviously his music ran the gamut from really sludgy slowcore to hot blooded Americana. So while I’ve always really loved country and Americana I also always want to be improving on my writing and it so happens that a lot of those country singers are some of the best writers. People like Lucinda Williams, Townes Van Zandt, Willie, and Neil Young those have all been big influences of mine. So yeah I guess it was partially conscious to move more in that direction, but I never want this to feel like: now we’re a country band, or this is like a country album now, but it’s definitely something we’ve steadily added into the frame over time. But even then, while’s there are definitely some country moments on the EP, there’s other stuff from that session we recorded that’s further from that, maybe a little more on the slowcore end or something like that.
We started out doing these big, sprawling slowcore songs and over time we’ve wanted to be more judicious with how we employ those moments, trimming things here and there to be more succinct. We still want to have moments where it gets emotional where we can, but I just not as interested in those modes when writing songs these days. But yeah country music is cool.
AP: What influence does Boston have on your music? Both the city itself and the music scene.
Flyer by Sami Martasian
TG: First and foremost it’s the community, so many of my really close friends I’ve made have been through the music scene. It’s how I met everyone I play with. I used to run a house venue called Modesthaus, I believe it shut down in 2018. So there and in places like Trixie’s Palace and Shed Cellar and The E.R., all these places felt like home bases, it was great to play there and see all these great bands, it was so exciting to be a part of that thing, and being surrounded by so much music became extremely inspiring.
Particularly during the pandemic, the Bummer City Historical Society were doing these virtual open mics and friends like James [Ikeda] and Eleanor and Fenn who know plays bass with us, all these people, and also people from across the country would show up in the stream to play songs. It got to the point where people ran out of ideas so it turned into a sort of experimental performance space. Like “I have 5 minutes, so you’re gonna watch me knit for 5 minutes.” Like playing with the medium of a Zoom open mic, stuff like that build community is inspiring. Also literally the bands, I remember seeing Rick from Pile play somewhere right when I moved to Boston in 2014 and I was just like “oh my god, what is this?” I feel very lucky to have been here during this era of Boston music.
AP: There’s a lot of first person POV on the EP, what about that style of narration draws itself to you as a songwriter/the group in general?
TG: It feels natural writing it, I think it’s fun to work from that first person perspective because you get to use yourself as an unreliable narrator. A lot of the writers I like are great at using limited space and using details both included and omitted to tell a fleshed out story, so that’s what I want to emulate, and sort of write story songs. On some level it’s because I have some personal stake in it, but I think it also grounds the writing emotionally and makes it feel a little more intimate. I’ve kinda always done it, can’t think of a song where I haven’t.
AP: Can you tell me a little more about the samples on “Aqua Turf” and “Happiness”?
TG: I found this cassette tape at my grandma’s house, so I listened to it and it was a recording of my parents’ wedding. My dad’s childhood neighbor had gone around with a tape recorder and the idea was like “say hello to the bride and groom.” The recording is all these people wishing my parents a happy life and congratulations and stuff like that. It’s cool because there’s family members who have passed away and other who sounds way younger than how I know them, like a weird artifact about my family, but my parents are not on it, they’re somewhere off in the distance the whole time. “Aqua Turf” is audio from the neighbor showing up at the venue and talking about how awesome it is and I thought it was kind of funny and sort of sweet. The last one in “Happiness” is my grandma on my mom’s side wishing them well.
There’s all these themes in these songs about yearning for something and chasing a heavenly, happy feeling which lends itself to the first person thing too, like who doesn’t want to feel that way? I wanted to bring a little sweetness and some sincerity for that feeling, and while it’s a little hokey I think it’s fun, too. I had never used samples in my music before and I wanted to try.
AP: What do you want listeners to take away from the EP?
TG: I don’t really think about that to be honest. Obviously I want people enjoy it, but I don’t have any big notions of people learning something or anything like that. I hope maybe they see themselves in the songs or they connect to them on some other level. Beyond that I don’t really know. In my heart of hearts I want people to be drawn into the world and find some pockets in the songs that resonate with them. Making the songs is kind of its own end, but it would be nice if people liked them, we want to tour on the EP and promote it, but the making of the music is the real joy. Putting it out is just kinda like “oh, check this out, do you think this is cool?”
AP: What does an ideal Tuxis Giant gig look like to you?
TG: It’s gotta be with buds, gotta be a bud gig, and also a mixed lineup. One time we played a show at Shed Cellar that was Karl, which is like an outsider folk project, just standup bass and singing, us, Pink Navel and another rapper they were touring with. That mix of indie rock, weird singer, and rap was awesome, those are my favorite gigs. Would be cool to have it be with someone who’s playing their first show or something like that too, would feel more special that way.
In Heaven is out on cassette and digital Friday, November 18th via Candlepin Records. You can preorder it right here.
