Zach Tillman likes to mess with the media, but when it comes to the music, he's as straight-talking as they come. The rebel with a cause chats to SINÉAD GLEESON
ASK ANY MUSIC journalist about the pitfalls of interviewing a new act, and you’ll get eyerolls and a story about the hipster band who answered all questions with monosyllabic grunts. The flipside to this is the boundless enthusiasm musical newcomers have for talking about what they do.
They’re gauche, gushy, friendly. They want to talk to journalists about music in a way that is diametrically opposed to how bands that have been around for 20 years don’t want to be asked about their “influences”. Sometimes they’re on their best behaviour, not wanting to mouth off because their record company has warned them a) not to say anything that is “bad” controversial as opposed to profile-raising “good” controversial or b) to remember that this will all show up in a publication somewhere.
Fifteen minutes in to talking to Zach Tillman, aka Pearly Gate Music, he makes a casual remark that immediately has me rewinding the recorder in my head to see if he's been making up the whole interview. "Playing music and making records is great, but it's also fun to have the ability to fuck with the media."
Thankfully, he’s not talking about me, but a recent interview he did with a US website. Asked about how his music career began, he told an elaborate story about nearly dying as a child in a fire at his family home. When he came to, according to his tale, he could “sight read any piano sheet music” he was given. “Oh, I was just having fun with that,” laughs Tillman. “I wanted to make a point about the cut-and-paste internet blog culture where music is concerned. You can illustrate a lie so easily these days. Anyone with half a brain knows that you shouldn’t believe everything you read about a musician.”
Tillman as interviewee is a breath of fresh air. Initially shy, he soon gets into his stride, spouting opinions. After a childhood spent in Maryland, he migrated to the west coast, towards Seattle. For many, the city was, and still is, a musical Mecca thanks to the holy trinity of Sub Pop, grunge and Nirvana, but the singer hasn’t been caught up in the hype. So, has the hangover worn off?
“It’s funny that you say hangover, because it’s a term my friends and I frequently throw around about Seattle. I gripe about this a lot, but realistically, it’s a good thing, because there’s a vast amount of music – of all styles and genres – in this city, but a very tiny percentage of it gets out of the city and is heard nationally or internationally.
“Where the grunge hangover comes into play is in the over-styled, hipster clique who live in Seattle and came here because it was a thriving, relevant place in the 1990s – and now it’s not, because grunge is over. People make such a big deal about it, but Seattle has had its turn in the spotlight and now it’s just another city that’s trying to be relevant, but with the handicap of having this weird self-importance based on something that happened years ago.”
It's not hard to see his point, especially when grunge seems anathema to the kind of music popular these days. But he is adamant that music is in the blood of the city and that it's "so easy" to get involved in bands (he currently plays in four bands there, when he's not working on Pearly Gate Music).
Unlike his story about sight-reading piano concertos, Tillman’s entry into music was a relatively conventional one. After playing bass and percussion in his high school band, he decided he wanted to be a guitarist. So did everyone else, it seems, and he soon realised that playing bass would be a faster way to land band membership. Various bands beckoned and he played on and off, taking a break for university, until he got an interesting phone call.
“My brother Josh called and asked if I wanted to play bass in a band called Saxon Shore. That was it really. I dropped out of college in 2002 and started touring with them.”
“Josh” is J Tillman, who has released six fine albums of his own. Most of these albums were under-the-radar releases, until he began playing drums for Fleet Foxes. Curiosity about his brother and his very famous band are an inevitable question, but it must be difficult for Zach Tillman not to be wearied by the connection.
“To me, it’s just cursory biographical information, which is really boring, but I can understand that we all want to know where something comes from. It’s very different for Josh, because he had made all those records before he joined them. This is my first record and I feel lucky to be doing this. It only bothers me when people start saying I sound like Fleet Foxes.”
The umbrage is understandable. You invest everything you’ve got, emotionally, musically in an album, and then the media glibly say you sound like the band your brother happens to drum for.
Pearly Gate Musicsounds nothing like them. The album rolls through styles and decades, the conflicting moods a little disconcerting at first. Take opener The Golden Funeral. If iTunes hadn't given the game away, you'd swear it was Adrian Crowley. Before you get a chance for chin to rest pensively on knuckle, he's off with The Big Escape, a strummy, shiny bauble of pop.
All the vocals are Tillman's (except some oohing and aahing from brother Josh on I Woke Upand Rejoice) and the harmonies have a peculiarly old-school charm. Not quite Everly Brothers or Simon and Garfunkel, although he admits that a lot of what he listened to growing up was "older" music. Even though the songs sound modern, they also sound slickly retro and quaintly oldfashioned.
"I think I picked that up from listening to way too much Leonard Cohen. He's a master of that idea that it isn't about what it sounds like. One of my favourite records of his is Various Positions. It's full of midi and all that John Cage stuff that now sounds kinda cheesy. But the songs are so powerful that it doesn't matter."
Before we part ways, he talks a little about his teen years; about how his strict Christian parents didn’t approve of his musical choices and the irony of his Pearly Gate moniker. He also mentions how much he loved Pavement in his teens. The legendary band are due to play an upcoming local festival but the singer says he’s torn about seeing them reunited.
Zach Tillman: non-sufferer of fools, religious rebel, knocker of Seattle and maker of one hell of a debut.
Pearly Gate Musicis out on April 26th
