Star-crossed Quentin Stoltzfus launches Light Heat with a little help from the Walkmen
In 2006, Quentin Stoltzfus was forced to retire Mazarin, the dreamy, strummy Philadelphia-based project he debuted in 1999, due to threats from a litigious Long Island classic-rock band of the same name.
“That destroyed my career, absolutely,” says Stoltzfus. “I lost my name, and I lost my record deal as a result. It basically imploded all the forward momentum that I had going at that point.”
If not for that, the new Light Heat album would be a Mazarin album, and could have come out years ago. After the end of Mazarin, Stoltzfus took some time to recoup and reset (and carefully choose a new band name). He worked for a moving company; he built his own studio and helped others, such as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s Alec Ounsworth, build theirs; he produced and engineered records for several Philly bands. But he was always writing songs and making demos. “I am perpetually making a record,” he says.
The catalyst for Light Heat’s debut came from Stoltzfus’ friends and former tourmates the Walkmen. The Walkmen had covered Mazarin’s “Another One Goes By” on 2006’s A Hundred Miles Off, and three of the guys—Paul Maroon, Pete Bauer and Matt Barrick—lived in Philly.
“Paul had been prodding for me years to get off my ass and get in a studio and start working out stuff with them,” says Stoltzfus. “I was into it, but I was like, ‘Well, I’m still making demos, blah blah blah, still doing this, still doing that,’ making excuses. Finally, he said, ‘I’m moving to New Orleans in a month, this window is closing, so let’s do this.’ That kind of put an expiration date on the possibilities.”
The Walkmen, including Walter Martin but minus singer Hamilton Leithauser, back Stoltzfus on the album, although Light Heat itself, like Mazarin, is essentially Stoltzfus and whomever he plays with. They recorded the basic tracks in a few summer days in 2010, and Stoltzfus and Bauer worked on them afterward. The album was finished and mastered by the end of 2011, but then it sat in limbo while Ribbon Music, the Domino Records imprint of Mazarin’s former manager, Morgan Lebus—whose roster also includes Laura Marling, Django Django and Thao & The Get Down Stay Down—readied its release.
“It’s taken a long time,” says Stoltzfus, understating the case. “I would have these moments of frustration, but after it happened, everything seemed very logical, and if I sat down and thought about it, it was something that made sense to me after awhile.”
Light Heat is a clear extension of what Stoltzfus did in Mazarin. It opens with “Dance The Cosmos Light,” a track whose pounding, repetitive chords would bring to mind the Velvet Underground even if “Light Heat” didn’t itself allude to VU’s second album. “Are We Ever Satisfied” and “LIES” build on dark drones, with swirls of electronics and vocals that drift in and out of the mix, whereas “Brain To Recorder” and “A Loyal Subject To The Status Quo” are compact, propulsive guitar rock songs that recall Mazarin favorites such as “Wheats” (and the work of Stoltzfus’ pal Kurt Heasley of the Lilys). “Elevation” and “And The Birds…” will please fans listening for the shimmering guitars and intricately woven keyboards of the Walkmen, too.
Stoltzfus says he has a lot of other music in the queue: songs that “don’t fit the Light Heat mold”; material for a “weird John Fahey-like folk record”; some “strange electronic experiments,” as well.
“I hope to have another Light Heat album out within the next couple years,” he says. “I’ve already been working on it in earnest, really trying to put it together. I’m always, in my mind, making a record, whether real or imaginary.”
—Steve Klinge
