Ari Picker felt exhausted and burned out by Lost In The Trees’ A Church That Fits Our Needs. The 2012 album memorialized Picker’s mother, who committed suicide in 2008. The project was deeply personal and deeply ambitious. It made many critics’ 2012 top-10 lists (including the top spot for the Wall Street Journal), and it led the North Carolina band to appear at New York’s Lincoln Center for the American Songbook Series. But the tour that preceded that show was fraught with challenges: Rock clubs weren’t the ideal venues for the band’s delicate dynamics and string arrangements for cellos and violins. After all that, Picker questioned his desire to make another album. But he has made another. Past Life (Anti-) jettisons many of Church’s identifying markers: It’s abstract and impressionistic rather than overtly personal, and it’s minimalist rather than maximalist. Picker will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Lost In The Trees feature.
Picker: Normally, Halloween is just one night of blah and then it’s Thanksgiving, but this past year I started the holiday early. A few weeks before Halloween, I downloaded a lot of Snap Judgment Spooked episodes, and everyday I went jogging through the town. The weather was perfect and all the leaves changed to that bright orange and yellow color. There is nothing better than running through the cool air, all the leaves changing, folks hanging out their skeletons and feeling that excitement that something mysterious is just around the corner. Every night I put on a haunted-house movie. The Changeling is one that has really stuck with me. It is about a classical composer who’s family is killed in an accident, and he moves out to the country into a haunted house to compose. If you’re into the genre, watch it. On Halloween, I saw a Weezer cover band play the Blue Album in its entirety, then one of my buddies got into a fight at the bar and I jumped on the bouncer and rode around on his back for a while. It was the closest I’ve really been to getting into a brawl, so that was satisfying. It was a good October.
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTzgXVosQOU
