Album Preview: Captain
Album: Captain
Artist: Black Hoodie Ensemble
Release Date: Friday, September 4, 2020
Preview followed by an interview with Jet Jobob Rodel
Texas in late August. After weeks of endlessly sweltering steel blue skies, survival is the highest need you can hope to fulfill. The hostile monotony of the beating sun melts time into stagnation, pooling the days together as your brain bakes inside your skull. The corners of your psyche darken like wax paper in an oven and the heat waves coming off the pavement literally distort reality until it no longer exists. Captain, The 2nd full length release from the Black Hoodie Ensemble, is a dark and beautiful fever dream set in the peak of this late Summer daze.
Captain takes a journey from a heat headache through complete mental detachment and back to post stroke sanity over a lush sonic landscape that spans transcendental psych rock, danceable pop, and symphonic post rock.
Album opener “The Taker” sets off with the warning that, “Trouble’s on the Way.” The heavy foreboding crawl boils into an incendiary guitar solo that gives way to grief stricken trumpets heralding the pain ahead. In “Ode to Summer” the self-aware beginnings of the plunge into the seasonal mania kick off the sinful transformation of the dusk into the night that “Red Lights” takes over in the most upbeat and accessible track of the record, narrating an evening of self-destructive debauchery and the decisions forced in its wake.
Captain reaches its early climax, and most defining minutes in “Bathroom Fight Song” with a maniacal monologue one could imagine coming from Johnny Smith, the cursed clairvoyant, in Stephen King’s The Dead Zone when he is finally able to live out his ultimate question, “If you could go back to 1932, would you kill Hitler?” The driving stereo congas and drums from Pat Devaney and Taylor Barham respectively build to a breaking point over a hair raising bass triad. The result is a spiraling descent into a fiery abyss that makes you question your own decency for enjoying the ride.
“Gnaw Job” follows with a driving psych rock groove; the soundtrack to a final showdown with a forgone conclusion. After all, you can’t beat crazy. The dust settles on “What Goes There” revealing the death rattles of evil incarnated as the frantic guitar work of collaborator Justin Cox.
“May Queen” brings the first light of the morning, the reality of the sins that preceded and a reluctant acceptance of the atonement that must now take place. A chromatically descending guitar line and clear, strong voice step up to address their judge and recount the honest truth of what transpired, no matter the consequence.
“There is a darkness that’s growing
Blacker than I’ve ever known
I long for days when the sun shines
There’s no way to know
which way the wind blows
Until you’re stripped naked and bare
Your only protection
Your perfect complexion
Under the midsummer air
Throw me down into the roses
After we dance to your song”
As a whole, Captain is an ambitious, sonically diverse follow up to The Black Hoodie Ensemble’s debut album, 2am Inferno, that paradoxically is best defined by its focused tone. Black Hoodie Ensemble is the amorphous musical project of songwriter and primary musician Jet Rodel. Inspired by what he calls “moody” albums like Hex by Bark Psychosis and Laughing Stock by Talk Talk, Rodel set the guiding principle of “darkness” before starting any writing for the record which began in early 2019. In an ironic twist of fate, the global pandemic that pressed pause on so much of the world actually fast tracked the completion of this record as the studio work and producing gigs Rodel had lined up all but vanished. Rodel recorded, mixed and mastered the entire record at DUP studios in Burnet, Texas and it’s safe to assume the record wouldn’t have ended up the way it did under “normal” circumstances. Studio time, newly available musician friends who would have otherwise been out touring and a deep well of darkness and loss to pull from during social distancing all brought this album to term faster than Rodel ever expected.
Living in the sleepy highland lakes town of Marble Falls outside of Austin, Texas and working in the ranchette turned home studio that is DUP studios show themselves in the spacious and unhurried pace of the record. Nearly half of the songs are over 5 and a half minutes long and as much care seems to be paid to what isn’t there as what is. Rodel stacks layer on top of layer into a mountain of sound on tracks like“The Taker” and “What GoesThere,” but shows considerable restraint on much of “May Queen” and “Ode to Summer.”
The end result is a contrasting collection of complimentary songs that’s more than the sum of its parts. Captain’s 7 tracks inspire listeners to lean in, listen close and take notice.
I stopped by DUP Studios in Burnet for a first listen and talked with Rodel about the record.
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Quarter Turn Records: Jet, What would you say is your “role” in the Black Hoodie Ensemble?
Jet Rodel: I am the leader… [laughs]
QTR: But there are some songs where you don’t play any instruments on the track?
JR: [laughs] Well… a lot of it is me, but I would say I just try to be an aggregator.
QTR: What would you say is the biggest difference between Captain and 2am Inferno?
Jet Rodel: Hopefully it’s a little more cohesive even though I don’t think there’s 2 songs that have the same genre on it. Like, it’s of a mood. So hopefully it’ll make more sense than [2am Inferno] did cause that record kind of had two sides, it was either folky or rock & roll or kind of folky rock & roll and this one is a lot of different genres. That’s how I planned it out. I made the song names first and some of the names are still around… but I made the names and the genres first and then got to work on it.
QTR: So you picked the direction before you even started writing?
JR: Yeah, which is not how I’ve done it before, but yeah, that’s how I did it on this record.
QTR: I mean, Captain is dark as fuck, dude.
JR: It’s pretty twisty. [laughs] ...It’s moody. And some parts are kinda fucked up, but mostly just moody.
QTR: I would say the prevailing emotions are like... anger, sadness and ultimately… Insanity?
JR: Unhinged [Laughs]
QTR: It’s like self aware supervillain. Resolute in the fact that what they’re doing is pure evil.
JR: Yeah, it’s like sinful, I guess.
QTR: What role would you say the pandemic had to play in the record?
JR: Well, this album would have taken twice as long if the pandemic hadn’t started. Cause it’s basically all I do now. I used to have this job working at the studio of the music campus of ACC (Austin Community College). So with all this free time on my hands it’s all I’ve been doing.
QTR: Would you say it’s been a cathartic process?
JR: Mostly a way to pass the time without going crazy, you know? Cause it’s like I have a job. I come out here everyday around like 11:30 and stay out here for a about 6 hours and head home. It’s just been like trying to keep a job mindset
QTR: Sounds like you’ve kept your nose to the grindstone.
JR: Yeah, and when I realized I could get it done by Summer it was even more of a grind cause as dark as it is, it’s definitely a summertime record.
QTR: There are definitely some Summer jams in here. The dark side of Summer. “Red Lights” and “Barefoot Boogie (Gnaw Job)” both hit that spot, but they’re definitely still moody.
JR: Yeah, or like intimidating, I guess is the word I’d use for [Gnaw Job].
QTR: Yeah, not welcoming. Forboding maybe?
JR: Well… kind of… I don’t know, there’s mixed messages going on in that song [Laughs]. But I think it all makes sense. ...I don’t know [Laughs]
QTR: What the fuck is going on in “Bathroom Fight Song”? Where did that come from and how did it end up the crazy trip it has become?
JR: So I wrote out a monologue that was very violent and, like… not funny [Laughs]
QTR: So did you always imagine that being the song?
JR: Well, no. It wasn’t really for anything. And then I had the idea for the song or at least the drums cause I wanted to do the drums that way. Once I had the drum beat I had no idea what I was gonna put over it so I decided a monologue. So I pulled that one out and kind of rewrote it and made it situational. Took it from kind of just a violent thing and turned it into more of a story of some kind of altercation in a bathroom, over what, who knows? Then seemingly he might kind of turn out to be the devil…? [laughs] Very crossroadsy [laughs]. homie just happened to be in the wrong bathroom at the wrong time clearly.
QTR: it’s confrontational from the beginning, but it could be kind of broey to start…?
JR: it’s intrusive from the beginning
QTR: Yeah! And then when it turns… it’s like, this is not a normal interaction is it?
JR:Yeah, it starts seeming more and more off as the song goes on then it switches.
QTR: Is that Taylor on the drums?
JR: Yeah, that’s Taylor [Barham] on the kit and he’s on both sides of the headphones. One with more tom work, one with more snare work
QTR: So it’s multiple overdubbed drum takes?
JR: Yeah, it’s just an overhead and then a kick, I think, separate. Just in case the kicks didn’t line up. Then we had Pat [Devaney] play all the auxiliary percussion on it. I think I played a couple things too, but he played most of the auxiliary percussion. I don’t know, It came together very naturally. It was actually the first song done. I didn’t think it was gonna be on the record cause it was just very strange. I thought it could like stand alone, maybe release it as a single, but It kinda fits in the middle of this record I think.
QTR: Yeah… I don’t know what would happen if you released that thing as a single.
JR: [laughs] I think people would think something is very wrong.
QTR: Which track took the longest or came around last?
JR: the last one I started working on was “What Goes There”, cause I had to build that song a lot and figure out, over a while, how long it was gonna be. Cause I knew it was gonna do something like Swans or God Speed You Black Emperor and it ended up kinda sounding like “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic more than the other two. I had Taylor just play the shit out of it. Got the bass and guitar going and they (Justin Cox and Unknown) played the shit outta that. I barely played on it. It’s mostly them. The bass and the guitar were solid 1 takes and the drums I had to chop up and figure out cause Taylor was the first one on it and I didn’t really know what exactly I was looking for.
QTR: Did you just give him a tempo and tell him to play?
JR: No, I didn’t give him a tempo I just told him to go off and I would figure it out. [Laughs] And so I kinda chopped it up and moved things around. ...Yeah, I chopped him up good!
QTR: So you’ve never done a Black Hoodie Ensemble Live show.
JR: No
QTR: Do you ever plan on taking it out of the studio?
JR: Yeah, I think once live shows are a thing again. Maybe play like quarterly shows… maybe 3 a year? I think that would be chill. And then the legend would grow [laughs]. I’m kidding, it’s more because I’m lazy and it’s a lot of effort to be in a live band. I like hanging out in the studio and being by myself and watching movies and listening to music [laughs]. But I do love playing live shows so I think I want to get a few in
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