Charlotte Martin, the voice behind the gorgeous new album “Veins,” was sick. So sick that she had to be led off stage at a show a few days before her appearance on campus mouthing the words, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!” But she has a sense of humor: at her concert at the Chapel last Friday night, her sickness became the center of attention as she made extended light of the incident with a one-woman reenactment. Despite a voice just recovering, Ms. Martin, whose talents have been applauded in such publications as “Details,” “People,” and “Billboard,” found time to sit down with The Argus and talk about the world of music, from lazy critics to the best Cure album. Below are excerpts from her interview.
AG: Say I’m a music critic and my career is to explain somebody’s music using other people’s music. What would you say your music is?
CM: I think a critic does that because it’s lazy. I think it’s a lazy way to explain music. So my favorite critics, and the ones that I’ve actually over the years grown to love their reviews and have a relationship with them, explain music a little more imaginative. I mean, I’m at fault for it, too, when I’m explaining a band to someone, “It’s like this and this,” and that’s the quickest way to sum somebody up, but really it doesn’t sum somebody up, because there’s no way two people can sound alike unless they’re trying really hard, it’s like impossible. It’s really hard because what I think I sound like isn’t what I would think a music critic would think I would sound like, and it depends on the music critic. I think my music sounds like a very massive Pollack painting. Just the approach, I don’t have a method, it’s very scattered.
AG: Tell me a little bit about how you got started.
CM: I’ve been a musician for my whole life, pretty much, since I was a tiny, tiny girl. I started studying classically at the age of 7 and majored in opera in college. And about halfway through my senior year a friend of mine committed suicide, and I wrote my first song for her funeral. So it was a bit traumatic, and it was terrible. But I would never have had the desire to write, it wasn’t a desire, it was all of a sudden need, like a drive. I didn’t know how to say goodbye to her and she was so young, and the whole situation was just so tragic that I didn’t know how to deal with it. I still had a summer and a semester left and I finished my schooling and graduated but all that whole time I was writing and recording and having that desire to compose, which I never had before. And so I, instead of going to get my Master’s—I had been saving money for years to go to a really great grad school—instead of going I took everything I had and moved to LA.
AG: So how did you end up “making it” in LA?
CM: Well, the first year I spent there I kind of holed up in a little apartment and rented a piano and just wrote songs. And the very first show I booked I made sure I was prepared, I had written and written and written and it had already been two years. I got a band together and had my girlfriend book the show at this reggae club that actually closed down. And between her flyering and me flyering somehow we got it to sell out, and I met a person who knew a person and I got my first record deal. But no one remembers that time of a couple years of not doing anything. I wasn’t out pounding the pavement shoving a demo tape in people’s faces. I didn’t have a demo tape. I was just didn’t know what else to do other than play.
AG: What was it like making your first record?
CM: Well, there’s been a lot of first records. There’s the first record I did years ago when my friend died, before I moved to LA. And then there was the first record that I did that never came out on an indie label, Beck’s label. The record was called “One Girl Army.” And then I waited a good year for that not to come out. Then I started to write “On Your Shore” after that got canned.
AG: How did you get into the more electronic music?
CM: Because [my husband] Ken and I have studios in our house, I just found more time at home listening and experimenting and looping. And I got a little bit better at engineering and got a little better with my computer and went to town, pretty much. There weren’t any rules at that point: I’d left my label, and I didn’t have forty people telling me how to make a record at that point. Just myself. Which I think was making way more interesting music. “On Your Shore” is a very important record for me. I had to make it and I’m very proud of that record. With my new direction, it’s just very different. Someone actually talked about that on the DVD, that I’m like a dinosaur pellet. You drop me in water and you never know what I’m going to be.
AG: What are you listening to right now?
CM: A band called Something Like Silas, I don’t think they’re released yet. They’re a band out of San Diego, my husband is producing and mixing them. I don’t know the title of their next record. Dead Can Dance, I’m stilling listening to it, somebody got me the box set a couple months ago so I’m just going crazy. A lot of Bach for some reason. The road is really a great place to listen to music because when I’m home I don’t really listen anymore. Because it’s just in our house, which is great all day long, but the last thing you want to do after working ten hours is talk about it, we end up talking about it over dinner, and then it’s just like you can’t get away from it. The only time I can get away from it is first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed. So when I’m home I don’t listen to much. I’m also listening to Peter Gabriel, Soul Coughing, Slow Dive, Beck. Listening to a band that didn’t get released, which is the most terrible tragic thing ever, called Chihuahua, that somehow Ken got a hold of, the record’s long been shelved but it’s such a good record! It’s like My Bloody Valentine but more pop. XEO3 is a record someone gave me awhile back that’s just amazing. What else? There’s more? Radiohead!
AG: What’s your favorite Radiohead album?
CM: “The Bends.” But I love “Kid A.”
AG: What do you think about music piracy?
CM: I think it’s helpful and hurtful. I think it’s a fine line because you want people to share your music to a point. I guess, as an artist you have to know that everything’s gonna get pirated at some point. You just have to hope that people have enough of a brain to realize that people spend time making it and there’s artists that make a living at it. But at the same time, piracy helps spread the word about smaller artists, especially myself. I mean, I put up free mp3s on my website when I first started and it got me a lot of fans. So I like it when I can control it, but I know I can’t control it. But I try to have a good attitude about it and hope that it’s helping me. It’s just bound to happen. I know if someone gives me a burned album, if I like it I’ll go buy it. That’s kind of my rule of thumb, if I don’t like it I don’t buy it. That’s how I judge it. I wanna get the artwork, you know?
AG: Who do you think should have won a Grammy this year?
CM: Snow Patrol. Well, that album’s two years old. Did Beck win a Grammy? I think he did. I really thought that last album was great. That’s a hard question because all the stuff I’m listening to is like from 1992. I know one, “Our Endless Numbered Days,” that record should have been nominated and won, all of it. That’s a great record.
AG: What was the best show you’ve been to?
CM: I really think Autoluxe is incredible live. The guitar player in that band was in a band with Ken called Failure. I’ve seen them live five or six times and every time they just blow me a way. And The Cure, they’re amazing, they’re my favorite band.
AG: What’s your favorite Cure record?
CM: “Disintegration,” probably. It’s the record that got me into them, got me obsessed, turned me into a fan.
AG: Do you listen to the radio?
CM: No. I listen to some stations when I’m in town. But the general radio? Not really. I don’t know, cuz I have my iPod, why would I need to listen to the radio?
AG: I think that answer is probably what all radio execs are most terrified of.
CM: Yeah. And I have my friends telling me what they think is good. Between that, who cares? Radio is important, there’s some stations that are rad. KCRW in LA, the ones that aren’t owned by big organizations. XBN, KBCO in Boulder. There are some great stations, and there are some other bigger star stations that play really interesting music. But in general the payola-ed, tricked-out they must play these-only-20-artists-or-40 artists-all-the-time, it’s really hard, I just get tired of it. I like eclectic radio stations, and there are some, a lot of internet eclectic radio stations. They’re coming.
AG: Say the American public got a hold of one of your new songs, and it became a Top 40 hit, how would that make you feel?
CM: I would be really glad that they played “Crazy Blonde Lady” on the radio! I think I’d be really glad. Like, I’m really glad that, what’s a good example, Damien Rice made it on Top 40, that was exciting. Or Beck. Or like Nirvana. But it just depends on your taste. I mean, my good friend Howie Day is all over the radio all of a sudden. I mean, he’s everywhere. And he’s awesome.
AG: Do you have any advice for people who might want to go into the music industry like yourself?
CM: Just don’t give up. Things are hard, but every job’s hard. Try to make music that you can absolutely stand behind, that you’re convicted about. Just make music that you’re convicted about. That seems like it’s so simple, but it’s really hard to do those two things. Quitting is a real easy thing to do. But if you’re meant to do it, you won’t be able to quit.
Leave a Reply