Joan Of Arc frontman Tim Kinsella may get more attention for his forays into the avant-garde, but former JOA members Bobby Burg and Melina Ausikaitis bring a bit more humor and entertainment value to their experimental hijinks as Aitis Band. First, there’s the setup, which includes a Roland EG-101 music workstation, a microKorg and other goodies. Visual artist and musician Ray Borchers presides over three keyboards, producing sounds with her hands and feet. When that’s not enough, she uses weights. Ausikaitis sings and plays a stringless guitar outfitted with a contact mic and various pedals. Burg plays it relatively conventional on bass.
But rest assured, there’s nothing conventional about IV, out today via Ernest Jenning Recording Co. The latest Aitis Band LP is an uneasy but weirdly appropriate balance of haunting theatrics and absurd fun that revels in the loud-and-soft dynamic. Amid all the atmospheric chaos, the lyrics often provide a key grounding element.
Ausikaitis takes us track by track through IV.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Screenplay”
“About a wannabe killer in a horror movie who’s completely unremarkable with absolutely nothing to complain about. After a few murders, he’ll finally have a cool story to tell.”
2) “Apt Pupil”
“This opens with an otherworldly cry sampled from the opening sequence of the TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The song is a tribute to storytelling masters who plant the most terrible imagery in our minds. There’s also a nod to a Joan Of Arc song I wrote called ‘Tiny Baby’ that also references fictional characters.”
3) “Dan”
“Part dreams, part memories, ‘Dan’ depicts a collection of interactions … random moments that get caught and stuck in your mind and come and go as they please. It follows the ebb and flow of emotions the images conjure while the sampling voice assures itself, ‘Yeah, that happened,’ and, ‘Yeah, stop thinking about it.’”
4) “Pity A Killer”
“With tripping heartbeats and mournful tones, the song portrays the conflicting emotions our small town experienced as they struggled to understand a senseless crime. Not long ago, we performed this song with my parents at the front of the stage, and all these memories came back. The whole community went crazy for a second.”
5) “He’s Great”
“Girls are wacko. Being on the receiving end of teenage laser eyes has got to be scary. Although, by the end of the song, it turns out he was a jerk. I think I dodged a bullet there, but I’m really glad I kept my journal—and that this banger of a song came out of it.”
6) “The Thirteenth”
“Ever stayed somewhere and thought to yourself, ‘Holy crap, I might get murdered tonight’? Then you look at yourself in the mirror and say out loud, ‘Why are you whispering?’ And ticks are trying to give you Lyme disease everywhere? Us, too.”
7) “Knoxville Girl”
“In his article ‘Unprepared To Die: Knoxville Girl,’ Paul Slade writes about the history of the ‘Knoxville Girl’ murder ballad and its origins in late 17th-century England. We decided to focus on the evolution the song has taken over time and write from the point of view of the victim’s son instead.”
8) “Trouble Tonight IV”
“This is a darker, meaner version of our original ‘Trouble Tonight,’ released on II in 2020. We took Robert Mitchum’s character in The Night Of The Hunter and mixed him with some Sleepy Hollow headless-horsemen vibes. This is all-out Aitis Band—and so much fun to play.”
