PLAASTIK NEWS (2004)

Current News / 2003 News [Older news is archived at Dave Hall's page.]

12-31-04:

Thank you all for the reactions, positive or negative, to my take here on LOVE recently. I was happy to learn that there are both people with the exact opposite feelings and people who agree with everything I said. Speaking of that, LOVE was named the "worst album of the year" by Spin and the NME, and one of the ten best albums of the year by Rolling Stone. CHILD did not show up in many polls but it was given an amiable writeup in Melody Maker's list of "notable albums of 2004" and was an "honorable mention" record in Rolling Stone. It was the #10 album of the year in Revolver, and was called "one of the best" of the year by Entertainment Weekly.
LOVE entered the charts respectably enough at #5 but has shot back down quickly to #29. It won't last long in the 200, I'm afraid.
The annual ranking of Plaastik's albums and EP's had the following results (the Information EP, as usual, did not get enough votes to be ranked; can't believe more people haven't picked it up at the bargain price of $390 on ebay!):
1. Mr. Evil Breakfast
2. Mr. Ross Verdict, Gadabout
3. On Such a Night
4. Not Unplugged (album/film)
5. Salt
6. Meat: The Best of Plaastik
7. Hear the New Noises
8. Today's Cajun Spice
9. Projection Consistency: Greatest Hits
10. Herd Politics
11. Dinosaur Distribution Fiends
12. Child
13. Fortunate Smiles
14. Fun Goldfish Toys/Super Fun Goldfish Toys
15. Love
16. No Parking Anytime
17. Olives and Such
18. Science Tour EP
19. Sodas in Hell
20. Plaastik: Science (DVD)
21. Pinwheel Blood Box
22. Live in San Francisco EP
23. Plaastik: The Information Tour (VHS/DVD)
24. Playtime (VHS)
25. Cartoons

12-28-04:

In the least surprising turn of events of 2004, LOVE has divided fans sharply between those who believe (quite strongly) that it is the best thing Plaastik has released in eight, ten, even fifteen years and those who feel that it is so artistically uninspired and cynical that it makes FUN and SCIENCE seem like Van Morrison records. Basically no one has taken the "middle ground" approach that David Fricke did here some time ago. You cannot ignore the feelings of either division, and many of Plaastik's harshest critics are embracing the new music as groundwork for a renaissance, including Matthew Klein, who has been displeased with everything the band has released since MR. ROSS VERDICT, GADABOUT and even had reservations about that record and the one immediately preceding it. Since my bias will inevitably color the way I report on the band's activities in the coming months, I must admit that unfortunately, I fall into the other category.
I have been struggling for a way to articulate this for a while. Let me preface my opinions on LOVE by saying that I offer this criticism with apologies to the band members who may be reading this who were so kind and forthcoming to me in this space last week, and that my negativity is hampered somewhat by the fact that unlike many of those who have given the thumbs-up to LOVE, I personally found CHILD to be a brilliant record, and would put it in my top five LPs of the year, and I also find it silly to suspect that LOVE, an album of demos recorded some time ago, has anything to do with Plaastik's future. These qualifications, however, force me at the same time to confront the fact that my opinions on the record are by no means mild. I hate, hate, hate it. I loathe it, every second, and what makes it hurt more is that it contains about eight of the best songs Nick and Janet have ever written, but they are performed and recorded so badly, so unprofessionally and carelessly that I believe the resulting CD has been a complete waste of time.
To begin with, the first and last tracks are mind-numbingly boring. "It's Stupid" is indeed, while "You and Me" passes beyond all barriers of tasteless noodling found previously in a discography full of it. It includes seven minutes (7:13, to be exact) of a single note being held down, with no change or augmentation whatsoever. None of it is done with a sense of fun or coy self-awareness; it's obviously just people meddling about in the studio and is not something that needed to be thrown into a public venue. On the vocal cuts, Nick and Janet sound as if they are excited about the new material but too tired to do much with it yet, and what's infuriating about the record is that ultimately, due as I understand it to arbitrary time constraints, they did nothing with the songs; the screwups are still there, the vocals simply intended as guide tracks and the bare, dull instrumentation (which is the same on almost every track) have not been built upon. And these are now considered the "master recordings" of these songs. This sort of junk would be acceptable on a bootleg or an official release if we had more complete versions of the songs that would allow their charm to come out of hiding, and clearly for some people the charm is there anyway. From a neutral standpoint, in my opinion this is swindling of a fan base that has done very little to deserve it. It's not a finished record or even a "started" record, and it in fact feels like a waste of money even to someone who owns twelve copies of "Daddy's Little Girl" and treasures them all.
As I said, LOVE contains some wonderful songs: "Golden," "Ex," "Rose," "I Thought," "My One and Only," "Hearts," the Janet-centric "Gave It All to You," and "For You" would all be masterful stuff on a finished record, but when they clearly were not even completely written on the recording date, it's hard to get behind them. (Many of the above songs were heard in live performances to promote CHILD and all had additional lyrics or at least were more fully-composed; why don't we get copies of the finished songs?) For the band, this demo may still have a certain quaint beauty, but how can they expect us to enjoy that? And as for the other songs, they are throwaways, pure and simple, basically inoffensive for the most part, notable exceptions being the horrible "Wait Until Darkness," the incredibly annoying "You Can See," and the laughable "World = Round" (which even LOVE fans are not too keen on). Actually, I guess that's not really "for the most part" since the only songs I haven't mentioned are "Someday" and "No," neither of which I remember very clearly after having heard each of them about a dozen times.
The album would have been no better released as a Janet Kieran/Nick Parker CD, but it would have been a bit less disturbing and offensive since it would not be selling itself as a commercial commodity anyway. LOVE is, to my mind, the worst of Plaastik's seventeen albums by a significant margin, beating out CARTOONS easily. The many people who hate the record -- and there are lots of them, mind you -- are saying that it is proof that we will never get the band back, that they have fallen irrevocably down into the sewer. Personally, having loved CHILD, recorded later, I don't agree with that at all. But I also am harsher on the album than anyone I've spoken to yet, and as much as I love the band I refuse to encourage work like this on any level. It is inexcusably bad.
Please, please, please, Nick and Janet, if you are reading this, record these songs properly, if it's the only thing you ever do to try and correct this.
With all that said, I will continue to try and be as neutral as possible when speaking about the news relating to the LOVE project. I may need the help of some of the albums' fans when ultimately compiling the discography page for it. I am glad some of you like the album and I hope you have not been offended by my rant here today. Thank you, all the same, for listening.

12-21-04:

LOVE IS IN STORES TODAY!
Track lengths are as follows; I'm breaking with tradition and holding off on my own review until more people have heard the album:
Total time - 78:47
1. It's Stupid (20:21)
2. My One and Only (3:49)
3. Wait Until Darkness (1:12)
4. I Thought (2:35)
5. Someday (4:56)
6. You Can See (2:15)
7. World = Round (0:49)
8. Hearts (3:22)
9. Gave It All to You (1:37)
10. Rose (5:19)
11. Ex (4:20)
12. For You (1:17)
13. Golden (2:46)
14. No (3:05)
15. You and Me (Is It Childish to Have These Thoughts?) (21:04)

12-20-04:

Reviews of LOVE are in. It's not doing terribly well with most critics, earning a 3/10 from Spin, a 5 from NME, and a scathing pan from Jon Pareles in The New York Times. Positive reviews have surfaced from The Village Voice, Melody Maker, and Entertainment Weekly, and lukewarm ones in Pitchfork Media, Revolver, and Q. The consensus in the media seems to be that this is a self-indulgent, unfinished side project. Many critics return to their labeling of Nick as a misogynist egomaniac. Singled out for a lot of bad blood is the fact that over half of the album's length is occupied by the opening and closing jams, both of which feature pop elements but begin as or degenerate into meandering dirges.
"Ow" enters the charts at #31 this week. Don't expect it to have any legs over the coming months.

12-14-04:

We are pleased to present, with the participation of Capitol Records, our interview with the entire band on the subject of LOVE! Before you ask, yes, I have now heard the record, and no, I don't intend to tell you what I think yet. So without any delay, here is the entire interview with the exception of the traditional song by song commentary which will be offered after the album is released.

All right. This has been quite a turbulent period for you folks. I know that's not a question, but...
JOOCE: I understand. Well, we're still sort of recovering, I would say.
PARKER: If you want the truth, we're just now starting to put everything into perspective. For the first time in about ten years, we can step back and look at the band and speculate a little on what to do next. Because it's been full-time since... I don't know...
KIERAN: '98 or so.

Really? It's been basically your quietest period in terms of output.
KIERAN: Well, there was an identity crisis in there, and everything we did would then require as much as a year of looking back and figuring out what we did wrong and noodling until we could satisfy ourselves with the possibilities for the next project. Which was always how we felt, it was never "look at our accomplishments," and the problem there is that we used to be able to say "We did what we set out to do." We're getting older now and it's not so easy and we can very quickly wander down the wrong path.
KEYS: Unfortunately, we built ourselves on being spontaneous and we're now at a point when a roadmap might be very useful.
JOOCE: We have a plan now.
BLANK: Five-year plan, yeah.
PARKER: For the first time ever, we have a five-year plan. That's an entirely new thing for us.

I'm tempted to start by asking about Christina, but I take it you think the story really starts before that?
PARKER: The story starts when ON SUCH A NIGHT is the biggest success we've ever had and it becomes an act to follow, and Capitol expects us to follow it.

Has the move to Capitol been a problem?
JOOCE: In a word... yes.
PARKER: I give them credit, we were excited about going there and they rejuvenated us, but Capitol has interfered more than any label.

Really? Including Epic?
KIERAN: Epic was at least partially our fault. Capitol signed us with almost twenty years of history preceding us and they knew we weren't going to be the commercial bonanza, or we assumed they knew that, but there was a ridiculous amount of meddling from them to ensure that we were "on the right track" with the last few records, and that's not the way we work.
PARKER: We spent '97 dealing with the logistics of the move, recording a lot of supplemental material because we were suddenly in demand, as you know, and this had happened before in '88, but of course then we were hotheaded and we said "we are on hiatus" and didn't make a sound for three years, whereas now we decided we weren't going to miss the opportunities and we were going to make good on our promise and do another record right away. Which didn't work out, of course, and that was partially because of the other big difference from what happened after "This Is Not Here." That was our first single under a new contract with a new label. ON SUCH A NIGHT was our last album under an old contract with an old label that was in trouble.

It occurs to me, you haven't really spoken as a group in a context this, sort of, candid in about eight years, am I right?
JOOCE: No, I've been doing most of the talking I suppose.
KIERAN: The last time we all did an interview we were afraid of Capitol.

Afraid?
KIERAN: No shit, it was literally a feeling of oppression almost. They said "we expect you to deliver."
KEYS: That changed everything...
PARKER: We wanted the next album out in 1997, literally -- what, I guess, six months after the previous one? We said "Let's go in, record it, get it out, guaranteed success. Let's not be Dire Straits." We had good songs, many of which I don't think were ever done properly, stuff like "You Were Gone," remember that one?
RAY: We had to ditch "You Were Gone," yeah.
KIERAN: Why was that again? Because that was...
PARKER: It was a Spector thing, I think. And about Spector... I know he's kind of a hot issue these days and I'd like to tell you a wild story or two about him, but it wasn't his fault that everything fell apart with CARTOONS. That was... it was us, it was me, and it was a little bit of him, but mostly it was goddamned statistics.
KIERAN: We had the compilation coming out, which we'd cooperated with MCA with and done lots of recording for, and then there was a boxed set, a soundtrack single, the EP expansion, all around the same time, and Capitol said "No, no, you're flooding the market. Go on vacation. Write new songs."
RAY: The incredible thing was, they wanted approval on the tracklist before the album was even recorded.
PARKER: We still managed to find ways to piss them off, but it was really at the expense of the album.

Did you go on vacation?
PARKER: We didn't, no. We had, like, thirty or forty singles to remaster for the box, and we were determined to do it all the right way, and that occupied all of our time, then there was some writing. It was a long session, too, and just a hellish project to take on.

Are you satisfied with CARTOONS?
[entire band laughs]
BLANK: It is what it is.

Did Capitol attempt to control the sound of the record?
JOOCE: Yeah, and to be honest... I don't really know how to explain it, but we weren't totally against the idea.
PARKER: No, it was like "Hey, this might be interesting." It wasn't. They wanted it to sound exactly like what was popular on the radio right that second. They didn't even care if it sounded like our recent stuff.
KIERAN: You can tell what suggestions were taken. "When I Was a Boy," the horn on "Inside," some parts of "Last Time," and there were dozens of other things that we trashed, and we weren't really happy with what we did accept, nor was Spector. Spector was proud of the record, I think, but he really resented Capitol.
PARKER: Too bad we're not working with him now or I'm sure we'd get our way.

What happened after that?
RAY: Part of our contract was that we would oversee all the promotional matters, and all of us took a job, and that was a lot of work and it extended to about halfway through the following year.
KEYS: I think I remember that by the time we put out the third single from that record we were aware that we had really screwed up.
PARKER: I couldn't stand it. I was really upset because I thought we'd blown it. Or I'd blown it, rather, since I wrote the songs, and we had just come off such a big success. I ended up wishing we had been like Dire Straits.
KIERAN: So it was really a reactionary thing to go radical and do something "high concept." It was overcompensation. Trying to regain our spark by doing something just as prefab as our sellout record we'd just finished.
PARKER: Some people, I know, don't think we've done anything good since the end of the '80s. And honestly, I don't know how we made those records. But I can just about remember how we made FORTUNATE SMILES and HERD POLITICS and I think I can get that power back. I thought I could. I thought a big part of it was the ability to go out on a limb, to be a little indulgent, because that's what the fucking band was about in the beginning before whatever twist of fate it was that got us the record deal. I sat there listening to FUN GOLDFISH TOYS and I thought "We have to get back to this point." I think our early '90s albums, which I like a lot, were good because of the sideline stuff, SODAS IN HELL and OLIVES & SUCH, you know. I wanted that back but I wanted the "image" behind it. Hence Jesus Killer.

Was Jesus Killer a bad idea?
KIERAN: Yes.
PARKER: Yes.
BLANK: Yes.
JOOCE: Personally, I always enjoyed all that. [everyone laughs]
BLANK: And so did Tina, Tina was a strong advocate of the harsher image.

What had you been up to in the months after the brief 1999 sessions?
PARKER: Deep thinking.
RAY: Deep thinking and legal stuff.
KIERAN: We were demoing a lot, too. Nick and I wrote a lot of new songs during that time and slowly developed them into what's now been released on LOVE.

Was Capitol involved with FUN and SCIENCE much?
PARKER: We ignored them that time. They wanted the image very strongly, but after CARTOONS we agreed with them and we would have been suspicious about the idea if it hadn't been for Tina, who pushed for it. She made it seem like it was so crazy it just might work.

Were you fighting for an audience?
PARKER: Yes.

You didn't think you had one large enough?
PARKER: We did but we wanted to impress them. It really backfired.

Christina Singleton's involvement with the entire FUN/SCIENCE project and the tour has been emphasized over the years, was it as extensive as advertised?
KIERAN: Definitely. We put lots of things on hold for that stuff because Tina had so many ideas. In the meantime, Jay and Kevin and Nick and I were trying to record a conventional album along with the weird one, but that fell apart after a few sessions because there was so much pressure for this "multimedia" idea to work, so many intricate things that had to be worked out for the tour, and one weird album became two weird albums, and ultimately the band's big long-awaited return was not what any of us really wanted.
BLANK: Tina even was disappointed that there wasn't more counterpoint to what she and Nick did on those records.
PARKER: There's precious little warmth to it all, really. We revolted against that finally, at the end of the tour. Especially after the 9/11 attacks it seemed crass to be standing up there doing our big commercial. Tina was really annoyed with the rest of us for being flustered, but it was only natural to resent it all. Especially since she was towering over all of us on that stage with her giant keyboard.
KIERAN: That was scary, yeah. She really turned into a different person during that tour, she got very rock starish.
BLANK: Not only was she basically running the Science tour --
PARKER: So I could preen.
BLANK: Yeah. She was, of course, also the opening act with Crisis, and I think she liked that control very much. The stress of touring never seemed to bother her.

So I take it you're not happy with the 2001 albums.
PARKER: There are things about them I like, but no. I felt pretty shitty about the whole thing and after the tour, we fell apart and Tina hated all of us. She didn't think we had done a good job living up to her hard work. And she had worked very, very hard to make us look good, to make the tour just right, to make the music what we wanted, but it was all supposed to be the background for a capital-M message that was not there.
KIERAN: We knew it was empty when we released it, and we thought we could have fun with that, but everything about the tour rang false.
RAY: How many months did we take off? It was like --
JOOCE: We took two and a half months off and had a meeting in February, this would have been... 2002. And the message was, we are never doing this again, the band is a piece of shit, should we break up?
PARKER: Somebody said we should break up. Somebody... [laughter] Somebody in this room and I don't know if they will speak up and I'm not saying who, but the point is, there was a lot of ambivalence about the future then. We had never seriously considered breaking up until then, and that's the truth.
KIERAN: We were sitting on these songs, these recordings that we'd started making before SCIENCE was really happening, and we knew we couldn't break up until we did something with those. It would just be such a waste. But Tina felt really strange about how much we all openly wished we had gone ahead and recorded a more conventional album. And she felt we were selling out all over again because it was so far from the way she felt we would have reacted to what had happened, you know, ten or fifteen years before.
PARKER: All through 2002 it was like, I remember, Capitol wanted advance warning on everything again and we were trying to determine what the album would "feel" like before we'd even started recording.
JOOCE: We should explain that all along on this one, we knew pretty much what songs we had ready, we didn't have to do a whole lot of writing at that point, although some was done a bit later, six or eight months before the album actually came out.
KEYS: This was our big Plaastik corporate period. It was the shareholders in crisis, you know. Meeting after meeting -- surely a couple dozen meetings -- all about the tone or implications of every interview, every press scrap, every licensing deal. It was obsessive image maintenance, and Tina was still driving forward this pop art thing until about six months after the tour ended, when finally she gave it up.
PARKER: We had something like thirty songs in the running by then and Tina was determined at first that we would basically do another SCIENCE but with better songs, and finally we did some recordings in that format just to prove to her that it wouldn't work, so she relented. Then it became "let's combine SCIENCE and ON SUCH A NIGHT" and I was never clear on how she wanted to do that but she insisted on this incredible level of control over the record. I would give her a memo and she would change every three words.
KIERAN: It's hard to explain this but we literally could not record until Tina was comfortable with what we were going to do, because that was what we had agreed on when it was clear that she still believed in the project we'd just come off that we felt had been such a mistake. You have to be democratic about this.
JOOCE: But it came to a point where... Tina brought in a whole album's worth of songs, right?
PARKER: Well, by this point it was close to Christmas of 2002, we'd had vacations, we'd had endless meetings, we'd been at this horrible standoff, we'd had a million run-ins with the label, we'd had every word submitted to the press analyzed, and we would have given anything to just get into some recording studio, anywhere, and start working again. I had been desperate to correct everything and I had wanted something new as quickly as possible, just like the last time and the time before. But that never seems to work out, at least not as we get into middle age. So Tina comes in with twenty-three songs, no exaggeration, one morning and says -- this was, I believe, our sixtieth straight day of being stranded in this building in New Haven were there's always a foot of snow -- she says "Well, we can go into the studio now." Even though this meant "I want total control over our output now," I said "Yes," just to get the hell out of there.
KIERAN: They were horrible sessions. Tina didn't want Kevin to play on the record, she didn't want Jeff on the record, she had her Crisis guys on there, she had a bunch of session musicians, and whenever Nick took charge she was deeply upset. The strange thing was that Tina let Nick record all of her songs the way he wanted everything to sound. They were all very intimate, very quiet...
PARKER: We looked at our last few years of output and came up with "We Were" and said "that's it, that's our model." Tina didn't go for that.
KIERAN: But that's what her songs sounded like and she did enjoy that because it brought out her singing, the melody, on and on. But when one of our songs came up -- one of the band's or one of the ones Nick and I wrote -- it was time to experiment.
PARKER: Tina also has this thing about mixing. She wants to spend a week recording a track then another week mixing that track. And everyone else gets exhausted while Tina tweaks the knobs away for days. Nine songs were finished, five more were fully recorded, and we had been working for four and half months, five counting rehearsal time. So it was summer now and I said "Let's listen, let's pretend we have to release the album today and let's listen."

What made you decide to do this five months after the sessions began?
KIERAN: Well, it was getting...
JOOCE: Weird, it was getting weird. Tina was making LOVESEXY or something, seriously.
PARKER: She was scaring us because, like, it would be all day, eight hours, she would finish at, you know, one in the morning or something. We'd come in the next day and it would be "Well, I trashed that, I haven't found the right sound yet." Then we were at probably the halfway point, maybe the two-thirds point in this arduous process and we'd spent, I think, three weeks on one song. It was "Look (Time)," actually. So we sat down with this acetate of the whole thing, including the unfinished stuff with the question in mind of "is it good?" We all talked about it, and we agreed with the exception of Tina -- and this was a very respectful meeting, it really was -- we agreed that it wasn't good, it was awful. We elected to basically start over. Tina told us very frankly that it was the sort of music she wanted to be making and that she was leaving, and that was that. But she didn't storm out, we of course salvaged some of our work from those sessions, and we talked to her on the phone about the tracklist and art and all that. It was amicable, I would say.

How has Tina's departure changed the dynamic of the group?
KIERAN: It's changed everything because she, as you know, was one of our two really strong personalities and she's been here since... well, god, since we left Geffen, so it's strange to revert back to that point, and... I don't know, it's been a long time since the band felt like this to me. It feels -- I don't want to make it sound like Tina was trouble because she wasn't -- but it feels more peaceful, in a way.
PARKER: Because we all kind of want the same direction. And some people, I know, think that Tina's influence was a little out of place. I don't agree with that at all...
BLANK: Tina being gone has been hard for me. She was a good friend of mine and I've never known Plaastik without her.
KEYS: We were all rather upset when she left but it was not really something we hadn't expected. We were turning into two bands, really, us and her. The rest of the recording process was pretty uneventful. It was just Nick producing and we all had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to preserve Tina's contributions. So we were able to finish things up and move on, and then work out all the details at a fairly relaxed pace because we wanted to make sure everything was right, which was a luxury we had on ON SUCH A NIGHT.
PARKER: It was nice because we had a set release date of fall 2004 and when they threw that on us, we had a full year to make it what we wanted it to be and also start getting LOVE ready.

There was a lot of confusion in the promotion and release of CHILD and LOVE. Has the relationship with the label become more strained recently?
RAY: No more than usual, I don't think. We kept changing our plans about how to release LOVE and, of course, doing an album is a big deal and Capitol did not want Plaastik to do an album just off-the-cuff, unproduced like that, so it required lots and lots of negotiations, which is why you'll be seeing singles from LOVE this year, much to our chagrin.

How do you all feel about CHILD right now? And how does it compare to what you wanted it to be? I know Nick said at one point that he wanted the band to achieve redemption.
KIERAN: We didn't, but we're closer.
KEYS: I love it, I think it's a really unified, really strong album.
RAY: It's... yeah, it's a step in the right direction. I would say we were more cautious than we've been since, you know, 1996, and that's both a good and bad thing, but compared to the last few, it's an excellent move.
JOOCE: I prefer LOVE, I'm a big stickler for LOVE, but CHILD is the real album and I think it's one of our keepers, absolutely.
BLANK: It's probably my favorite of the ones I've been on. I put it on a lot more than the others, really.
PARKER: I'm satisfied with the record but I have to admit that it had become so familiar to me that I felt it was somewhat limited by the time it came out. You love it at first but there's a little bite to the best stuff we've done that's not there. In addition to that, the important thing about CHILD was it proved, regardless of its shortcomings, that we could still do this and by the time we were able to get it released at a time and configuration the label liked, we didn't want to stop and think, we just wanted to get in there and do more stuff.

Has that worked out to your satisfaction?
PARKER: We noodled around a little in the last few weeks, we can't do it as early as we wanted to because Christmas is coming up now and there's LOVE to worry about, and all the things associated with that, and then we have the tour, then we can finally go in and work on some of our ideas and get some songs written. I'm just thrilled to be in a real band again, and the tour we're doing is a part of that, certainly. But I'm most excited of all about going back in April and working on new stuff.

Now we should talk about LOVE, which is one of your strangest projects to date.
KIERAN: My wedding present for Nick was this really cool four-track recording equipment I found at a pawn shop, crazy, like 1966 shit. He would play with it a little back at the beginning but I think it was just... for him, it was "Let's not bring this home, let's leave the music at the studio or wherever it is." And finally I just said one afternoon, "Let's play some music, let's have fun again, I've never played with you alone, at least not much," and it's become this constant source of entertainment for us.
PARKER: It's a lot of fun and we came up with some really good songs that way, and this was around 1999 or 2000 when this started, but for the first time in our career we had this heady and specific "concept" for the album and very few of our new songs fit and sometimes we just had loops or little ideas that did fit, so the throwaway stuff got released and these really cool songs we were coming up with just sat there.
KIERAN: Jeff heard the tape first, then Kevin and Jay and later Mitch. We were bringing it around because we wanted to do a couple of the songs on the Science tour but it was too soon, really, and the mood around that time was so dark it was hard to get very enthusiastic about anything, but we were all excited about the next record and what we could do with those songs.

The question I haven't really seen anyone ask is why these songs were not fleshed out already, for CHILD.
JOOCE: Tina wanted us to rebound with something more... Plaastik. Not Kieran/Parker songs, Plaastik songs.
PARKER: That's a little unfair because it wasn't just Tina, it was almost everybody. Jeff was really fond of the songs on the demo tape and wanted us to work on them, and we did work on them a little in the studio while we did CHILD, but it was really was important for that album, I think, to be a full-group effort on the compositions, and I do feel that way also about, uh, this next album we want to do.
KIERAN: When CHILD was in the can we immediately said "Do we want to wait another two years to record these songs?" We didn't. So first it was a Kieran & Parker solo album and wanted to do a little acoustic tour to promote it. Contrary to what was posted at the time, we did plan to do more fleshed-out recordings on our own and we did a couple, I guess two or three. But then since we were concentrating on that and Jeff and Kev were always around and Kev even came in to do some drumming on one song. And finally they convinced the others that what we were doing was really... what's the word?
KEYS: We loved it and we thought we couldn't live without our names being on it, so we said "Let's postpone this tour, record these songs, then we'll do a promo tour behind two great records."
PARKER: I liked the idea, but it didn't work; there wasn't time to really do the songs the right way and it became too noisy. The spirit of the originals was missing, and by then I suppose it may have been because we had heard the originals so much that we were resistant to any change. But it just didn't work out. I have no doubt that we could have done something great with it by taking the time, but we ended up just feeling frustrated and wishing we'd gone out on the tour.
JOOCE: For a few minutes we even considered dropping CHILD -- this was just before the release date -- and expanding it or even making it a double album but for one thing, Tina vetoed it, it was sort of her last act, and also it wasn't a terribly good idea. The edit of the demo tape that's about to be released now was something I actually did for my own benefit. I kept borrowing Janet's long copy of it and then finally I went to the studio and had a dupe professionally done and then I tweaked it so that there weren't duplicate songs and all that. In a few cases I spliced different takes together. And I made a version with all the new songs, which is what's being released basically, and one with sort of the "b-sides" plus the two long jams, which we decided at the eleventh hour to add to the final tracklist.

Are you all as enthusiastic as Jeff about LOVE?
PARKER: Again, familiarity breeds contempt and I think a lot of the pleasure I get out of it is remembering how much fun it was to record. But I will say that the first 200 times I heard it I loved it.
KIERAN: I'm still very fond of it. I think it's gutsy of us to put it out under Plaastik's name. Whether it's smart or dumb I don't know, but it is gutsy.
BLANK: I like the album because I didn't have to do anything.
PARKER: I wondered if that was why it was so popular with everybody else.
RAY: I really like it, but like Janet said, it's not really us, it's a side project.
KEYS: That's true but it's one of the best things I think we've had our name on in a long time.

Are all plans to rerecord the songs on LOVE now scrapped?
PARKER: No, because Capitol wants singles and we're not going to try to put that stuff on the radio. We just did some sessions last week to amp things up a little now that we've had the chance on the press junket to play around with the songs a little. So we've got a nice backlog of studio versions to choose from, but I think most of us prefer the demos, except maybe "Ex," we really did a good job on that one. Anyway, you'll probably see those versions in the near future.

And the promo tour. You haven't done a small tour since before FUN GOLDFISH TOYS. Everyone is very excited about it.
PARKER: What I really want to do is a longer theater tour but the ideas kept getting scaled back, unfortunately. We're excited to go out and play again. We've got this guy doing keyboards, Jerry Mull, and we've gotten now to a point where the whole gang seems to mesh together reasonably well. Anyway, I hope everybody gets to see a show. They'll be along the lines of the one we did in New York for CHILD.

Your next album after LOVE marks the end of your Capitol contract, assuming that the seventh LP will be another greatest hits album. Do you plan to jump ship after that?
PARKER: I can't talk about that quite yet, I'm afraid, but I believe I am allowed to say that the contract will not be renewed and that the decision about that is already finalized.
KIERAN: [laughs] What else is there to say?
PARKER: Well, I can't tell you what happens after that.

Might Crisis open for you on your next large tour, if there is one?
KIERAN: Sure.
JOOCE: There definitely will be another world tour, don't worry about that.

What is the next step for Plaastik? And how much longer will the band be around?
KIERAN: New album, renewed commercial viability. I hope. I want to make the fans happy again, honestly.
PARKER: I give it six, seven more years. I know this next album, I know we won't stop after that, but I don't know, some of us are starting to get a little tired and the others are starting to get a little less talented. [laughter] I don't see us doing this in ten years. Not as a six-man group, anyway.
BLANK: Yeah, I'm getting close to retirement myself.

This website, of course, was previously maintained by Dave Hall, who was famously irked by the Science Tour and left the whole thing to me, and in the previous interviews he traditionally asked you this following question and I'm not one to mess with tradition.
PARKER: Oh, that's good to hear.

What is the status of the following songs? [collective groans from band members; vague cry of "Oh, THAT one"] Since the last time you discussed this with him you released his all-time favorite, "And When the Seconds Feel Like Years," and he emailed me to say he wanted me to thank you. That's the first time I've heard from him in about three years, so thank you.
KIERAN: You're welcome, Dave! We miss you! [to me] Not that we don't like you, of course.

"The Blowoff System."
PARKER: We brought it back a few times but it didn't feel right anymore. It's kind of a dated song, don't you think?
JOOCE: That one's pretty much over now. You can count on that from us. We have released it anyway, on the EP we did.

The EP is impossible to find, though, Capitol never rereleased it.
BLANK: That's what Napster's for, kid! Burn yourself a "Blowoff System" right now!

A studio recording of "Good Vibrations."
PARKER/KIERAN/JOOCE/KEYS: Next question.

"Dreams of Old News."
[Nick just laughs]
JOOCE: The fuck is that again?
KIERAN: Half of us don't even know that song anymore, man.
KEYS: I remember it, but don't hold your breath.

"Exhausted."
PARKER: [long pause] Okay, I'm drawing a blank.
KIERAN: Isn't that the one you wrote when you were, like, sitting on the rock? And you were pissed off at your parents. [Jeff sings a little]
PARKER: Don't remember it.
JOOCE: Next?

"Don't Snort Cocaine and Drive (If You Want to Be My Girl)"
JOOCE: Oh, god.
PARKER: Usually these all seem so far away, but actually we had a fight about this one when we were doing CHILD. Tina thought it would be a good addition to the record; she'd never heard it because we dropped it before Playtime but she read about it on, of all places, your website!
JOOCE: Where it says, quite correctly, that I hate it.
PARKER: So we didn't even take a stab at recording it because Jeff blocked it. It was hilarious.

This year I have a couple of new ones. "Laboratory." I don't know if you're aware of this but everybody loved it.
PARKER: I think we'll bring that one back, it was pretty good.
RAY: That one's not dead yet, I won't let it die.

Also, one that people have been very curious about, "Dawn - Love."
PARKER: They liked that one? Really?
KIERAN: I'm surprised you'd ask about that. We recorded the version we did live and I bet we will never play it that well again, so maybe we'll release that.

Thank you all for doing this again.
PARKER: Anytime! See you next year, I hope.

My thanks to Jeff for setting up the interview. I enjoyed talking to the band again and I thank them all for agreeing to the whole thing and being patient with me. And I hope I asked all the right questions.

12-10-04:

Various articles have been popping up about the upcoming promotional tour, the most significant one being in Rolling Stone, which has a wealth of information about Plaastik's rather surprising decision to start work on yet another new album immediately after a break in the early spring. However, Nick stresses that there isn't a lot of material written yet and that most of the forthcoming sessions will concentrate on jamming out new songs. Nick does not even mention CHILD and says little about LOVE or any current band project except the brief tour, which is a first for the band, notoriously touchy about live performances.
Plaastik will be offering a performance of "Ow" and an interview on the cable network VH1 Classic, which is to devote an hour-long special to the band; many videos, including the new one, are expected to pad out the hour. It's on at numerous times over the next few weeks, so watch for it.
The "Ow" single is unanimously and ethusiastically recommend by fans, for the A-side alone. This is, shockingly enough, the first thing we've all agreed on in a long long time.
Though it won't show up until the next issue, RS has posted their rather early Love review on their website, giving it another 4.5 stars out of 5 and labeling it "a record that will be remembered as a masterpiece long after the hype and lust have faded." This is by far the most positive reaction the album has had to date.

12-7-04:

"Ow" is in stores today. The b-sides (and the reactions to them so far) are about what you would expect. "Sex" is a song we met late in the Science Tour and this version sounds exactly the same. "On the Telly" leaked some time ago to a turgid reception, and nothing has changed. However, most fans have reversed their position on "Ow" in light of the new recording, which is being received with great enthusiasm.
David Fricke says: "LOVE is a fun little record, but it's also something of a non-event and it isn't really a Plaastik album. I don't know how much new hope it will give to people who are disillusioned with the band. It probably really should have been rerecorded, and there are some lengthy tracks that just waste space." Though I can't say yay or nay just yet, I must confess that this sounds about right to me. I hated "It's Stupid" and found the other tidbits I've heard rather tiresome. The early comments from the band about the record indicated that it was "the best material we've ever recorded," and you'll notice, as David points out, "in recent months, it's become 'just a throwaway release,' 'for the fans,' etc." Fricke's guess is that the band's confidence may be shot after the positive but somewhat hollow reception of CHILD. I do wish CHILD had done better, but after something as outlandish as the Science project, they can't expect every follower to come crawling back at once. In any case, we thank David Fricke for sending us his impression.

11-30-04:

Fans continue to give high marks to the "Ow" single, and I am happy to join them; it may, in fact, be Plaastik's most fun single since the MCA days and it has a lot of the liveliness that the SCIENCE material shot for and missed. The video won't get much airplay, though; it's just surveillance footage of a playground.
David Fricke has an article about Plaastik in the next Rolling Stone and he tells us that Nick is already very excited about the next Plaastik album, about a third of which has been written already, with the band returning to the all-stops-out "jam" approach to songwriting that they began to creep toward again while working on CHILD. A few of the songs come from the Nick/Janet demo, a few more from Science rehearsals, and several from late in the recording of CHILD and the recent rehearsals. He says it is very funk and reggae-influenced and that "LowRYDE" will be on the record. He also says Jerry Mull is working out fine but may be questioning his long-term status with the band (which is one reason why we haven't put him on our "about" page and will not until he actually records an album with the group). Official work on Plaastik's seventeenth album begins in April.
Fricke will be hearing LOVE in the next few days and promises to give us his thoughts, because he won't be writing the review for RS (of course).

11-24-04:

Finally, finally, finally, LOVE has a release date: December 21, 2004. It is being released with no advertisements, no videos, and very little fanfare, so don't expect a lot of press about it. Capitol's low-key press release does confirm a twelve-date theater tour for February and March. Jeff told us it was not feasible to move the tour up any earlier, "as much as we would like to."
Some people are hearing "Ow" on the radio and they report that it is a significant improvement on the album version, the arrangement similar to what we've seen in stage performances in the last few weeks and with a great processed vocal from Nick. A quick (and in my view, painless) dirge becomes a fast-paced rocker. You can't argue with that. Keep an eye out for the video for "Ow," which will be showing up on M2 around the 29th.

11-15-04:

Well, today's artwork day! First, the "Ow" single:
And the bigger deal, the cover of LOVE:
Don't shoot the messenger.
This information comes to us directly from Capitol, who tell us they still are not sure whether LOVE will be released on the 14th, 21st, or 28th of December, which is rather ridiculous for a release that is just a month away, but who are we to judge? They also tell us that singles from LOVE will be released after the third single from CHILD, and they claim no one knows yet what that single will be.
CHILD has dropped out of the top-fifty albums chart at distressing speed. It is expected to go gold early in 2005, however. The band has said very little in recent interviews about sales for the album, which are all the more dismal overseas, where the band's audience has never been particularly large. How this will affect LOVE and the chances for an upcoming tour remains to be seen.

11-9-04:

LOVE- out sometime in December; COMPLETE tracklist:
The artwork is not yet available. All of the information to follow comes directly from Jeff.
The songs all have vocals, mostly by Nick and Janet or just Janet, only two ("Someday" and "Gave It All to You") with just Nick, except the first and last, which both go on for over twenty minutes, plus "Golden," which has wordless murmuring in the live shows. The songs are generally otherwise short but sweet and ultra-melodic. "It's Stupid" is a slow, meandering jam set to drum machine, but by Jeff's account "You and Me" is a truly bumpy road, rising and falling with a wall of acoustic guitars and piano and eventually climaxing with an explosion of sound that lasts for for several minutes.
The song played on SNL is called "LowRYDE" and it was cut from the album because Nick is not yet happy with the lyrics. It will be rereleased at some point, because the band clearly likes it (though of course, we've heard that before).
The other songs played at live performances (besides "Ex" and "Golden") are "I Thought" and "Hearts." That last one was actually demoed for the band during the Science Tour, and two others -- "Someday" and "Gave It All to You" -- graduated from the demo tape to become very early contenders for CHILD. "My One and Only," while it has escaped the ears of most fans, was played during rehearsals at every Plaastik show on the SCIENCE tour and at a few soundchecks.
The following songs were cut from the demo tape, in this order:
As you can see, parts of this tape predate FUN and SCIENCE as well as CHILD; it seems to have been recorded in two lengthy sessions in 2000 and 2002. "Nightroad" is just Nick reading the lyrics, which he had just written, and bears little resemblance to the actual song. And how can "Suite" have a demo? Jeff explains that it is Nick and Janet excitedly discussing how such a track would sound. "And then we just bring everything back in the left channel" etc., with random clips from Nick's PC to illustrate his points, all of this interrupting a version of "Cut." Aside from these edits, LOVE is presented in the order in which it was recorded, with "You and Me" recorded late in 2003.
On the selection process: "No covers were allowed. The run of 'Crazy' covers was really amusing (it started because Nick was pointing out the similarity in the chords of our song 'Crazy' to a cover they did) and they may be released at some point. A couple of songs aren't finished yet. 'Rape of Loss' is being left off because the band wants to record it. And then there are, of course, the demos of songs that were subsequently released. We've been having major battles at the eleventh hour because Nick did not want 'LowRYDE' on the record and everyone else did, whereas 'My One and Only' was the opposite situation because we have been hoping to record it as well. Nick basically used his power as lead singer to have it his way, and I understand that, but I really wish we could release the 'LowRYDE' demo regardless. Also, I wanted to put on the versions of 'Window to the World' and 'My Field' but the recording of another twenty-minute jam prevented that. Anyway, it's not really Plaastik's album, it's theirs."
Every song included on the CD, and some not, had more than one and sometimes as many as 12-13 takes recorded. If singles are released from LOVE -- Jeff says he doesn't see that happening -- they may use alternate takes as b-sides. The remainder of the tape is intact save for a ten-minute-or-so silence following the creation of "You and Me" in which the two artists accidentally left the tape on when they went out of the room and had dinner.
My big question was, if so many of these (supposedly) beautiful songs were demoed as long ago as 2000, why didn't we hear them on the tour? "The Science project was considered separate, and the early sessions were really a break from that. The only song aside from the obvious ones that probably was considered as something to bring to the table for FUN or SCIENCE was 'It's Stupid.'" He concludes with "Hope you like the record!" Thanks, Jeff!

11-6-04:

Well, we have one concrete release date, anyway! The "Ow" single will be issued on December 7. Nick Parker complained to the NME in a short discussion that Capitol did not use the proper b-sides for "Walking Distance" and that those tracks were "not finished yet" because the band assumed they would have time to work on them when they returned to the studio. This time, the songs intended for "Distance" are used. Meanwhile, this version of "Ow" is an entirely different band performance, recorded (says Nick) at the abortive LOVE sessions with "a different lead vocalist" (but with Mitch's blessing). And it was this performance that led to the band's decision to make this the next single. Let's hope it's similar to the crazier recent live versions! Here's the tracklist:
I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that Nick believes "On the Telly" is more polished than the Sly & the Family Stone cover, but whatever.
CHILD is now #21, according to Billboard.

10-29-04:

"Nelson St." b-sides are "6x9 Stockholm" and a cover of "Wet." Yes, the Plaastik song.
Speaking of which, Christina Singleton gives her impression of CHILD: "I'm pleased with it, I was fortunate enough to be involved in the final track selection and mixing and while I have some reservations about the presentation (and I guess that now I can say I don't care for a couple of Nick's newer songs on there), it's a good farewell to Plaastik for me."
LOVE is set in stone for December. We still don't have an exact date.
CHILD rests at #16, and "Walking Distance" is out of the top 40.

10-22-04:

Interviews with band members are everywhere at the moment. Nick Parker is in Spin, Kevin Keys is in Newsweek, Jeff Jooce is in Melody Maker, and Jay Kay Ray is in The New York Times, and none of them reveal anything we didn't already know about the record. The band has promised they will go song by song for us at some point. All four talk about how much they loved doing the Bowery show, so maybe they won't take seven years to go back out on tour this time.
The Crisis single, previously announced for December, has been pushed up to November 17, presumably in order to prevent a conflict with "Ow." The new song is called "Nelson St." and it will not be on the next Crisis album, which is just now being written.
We understand that LOVE is nearly finished. It will carry a "produced by Jeff Jooce" credit, although he really just mixed it. The release date is still to be announced but we are told to expect it very soon. Meanwhile, a twenty-minute Plaastik song called "It's Stupid" has leaked from somewhere or another. We don't know what exactly it is but it's definitely Nick and Janet and definitely a demo, so it may well be for LOVE, which, frankly, does not bode well.
CHILD opened on the charts at #3 and dropped the following week to #9. 200,000+ units sold so far. "Waking Distance is currently #36 on the hot 100.

10-11-04:

Plaastik's one-off show at the Bowery Ballroom, played to fill a contractual obligation, was last night and I was there. And WHAT a night. The band was in top form and this was my favorite appearance of theirs I've caught since I saw them in '94, and I was at the 11/19/01 and 11/20/01 shows! The stage was designed by the people who did technical work for the Science Tour, but it was much more subdued, if colorful, and Nick explained that the same setup will be used on the promotional tour next year. Plaastik was magical; Nick and Janet talked A LOT and were unusually open with the crowd. The late timeslot made it feel that much more intimate. I'm amazed at how much effort was put into this one show, yet the band looked so relaxed. BUT THE BIG FREAKING DEAL IS THAT THEY PLAYED "CABINET"!!! The setlist (about 2/3 acoustic, with band members coming on and off stage rapidly):
No, I'm not kidding about "Peterson's Ranch." Jerry Mull did a good job but looked slightly uncomfortable. Nick explained at one point that they could not do a medley tonight because that's something "you can't really do on your first night with a new keyboard player."
Nick and Janet introduced themselves and the band right before "Quietly Square" and talked a bit about recording CHILD. "Pay Me" was a new and loud arrangement completely different from any version we've heard to date, the folk-rock influence gone (which is amusing considering what happened later in the setlist). During "I Do," dancers came out and did some very outdated moves in the background of the stage while a very amused Nick looked on. The arrangement of "People Magazine Wants to Know" was new and Nick did not seem to remember the words; he mumbled his way through it. Nick left the stage for a stark "Me" and a STUNNING quiet, tense new variation on "Upstairs." "The Playground" and "Idol" were both quieter than ever before.
Just before the first new song, Nick and Janet explained a bit about the LOVE project but neglected to mention the name of this tune. I considered trying to ask but was distracted when they played the long-neglected "Child Actor," then went absolutely nuts when they launched into "Cabinet," which they dedicated to Christina. Nick remarked "I sincerely hope we can pull this off." They did! It was amazing, and I was stunned that they managed this percussion-driven song without Kevin behind the set.
Encores: "My Field" made me appreciate the complaints about overproduction because it sounded even better in the unadorned acoustic setting. "Heal Me Heal Me Witchdoctor" was another surprise, a very FULL version without many lyrics. Then came the "country" interlude... "Peterson's Ranch" was audacious. It has not been performed since 1983 but they did it with real gusto tonight. And "So Bright" was, for the first time ever, a really really impressive song with the band going wild on it, which they also did on the equally unlikely "Swim." Wow. Fantastic show.
Of course, the night before I saw them, Plaastik played SNL and was rather excellent. The songs performed were "My Field" (again in a stripped-down arangement), the new song mentioned above, and "Ow."

10-8-04:

Fan reaction has been generally more positive than for any album Plaastik has released since moving to Capitol, though not as ecstatic as I have been. The opening and closing numbers are being very heavily criticized, and there have been scattered accusations of pretension hurled at "Tired," "My Friend," and surprisingly, "My Field," which has been called "overproduced." Anger about the album version of "The Rooms," as I predicted, is more widespread, and there is also some dissatisfaction about "Boy + Girl?" Having said all that, several songs are being universally embraced, aside from "Walking Distance": "Scarlett," "Me," "Lost," "Little," and ironically, "Look (Time)." "Ow" is the only song that is being universally drubbed, though "Make" comes rather close (in that case there seems to be a lot of anger less about the song and more about its length and placement as the opening track). The absence of "Laboratory" is being lamented, generally by people who find the "concept" behind the LP rather weak. Anyway, on the whole, CHILD is acknowledged by almost everyone as either "the best album we could have from Plaastik at this point" or, from the more optimistic, "a return to form."
On Conan last night, Plaastik offered a killer performance of the quiet "Scarlett" and a new rockout introduced as "Golden" from the LOVE album; chorus: "Silence is golden," along with the raunchiest riff on a Plaastik tune since around TODAY'S CAJUN SPICE or HERD POLITICS.
Jeff Jooce writes to tell us that the mystery Letterman song is called "Ex" and will be on LOVE.
I am attending the Bowery show Sunday night (it starts at 11:30pm), and I may try to get in to the SNL performance, though I doubt I will make it.
"Walking Distance" is up to #30 on the charts and #4 on modern rock.

10-5-04:

First things first... Buy CHILD as soon as possible! IT IS WORTH IT!! More opinions below.
Personally, I agree very strongly with almost everyone that this is Plaastik's best LP since ON SUCH A NIGHT, and I would wager that the two will enjoy a similar audience.
- 14. Did She Know What I Felt? (0:39) - Nick sings a haunting little piece to the tune of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" accompanied only by his guitar and, near the end, light bass before a larger instrumental section begins and ends the album with a drifting, wonderful jazz chord.
We are told that Plaastik's promotional tour, now ten dates, will take place in February.
You may notice that we still don't know what the first song performed on Letterman was. We will try to find out as soon as possible.

10-4-04:

ALBUM IN STORES TOMORROW! This is a major major major day for us, the first serious release since May 2001's 1-2 punch of FUN and SCIENCE, and it looks like we may walk away a good deal happier this time out. Buy a copy for every room of your house, and don't forget to grab the "Walking Distance" single if you haven't already.
Strangely enough, we hear from Capitol that the second single from CHILD will be "Ow." That must be a hell of a new version...
Plaastik taped its David Letterman appearance earlier today. We have a digital copy sent to us by Capitol; the band looks great. Nick sat in a stool with no instrument and appeared cheerful while Mitch played (!) accordion and Jerry, in his first public appearance as a Plaastik member, played bass. The band played a song we're scrambling to identify. It has a single loud guitar but is mostly quiet and wandering; a moving and dramatic melody, with the chorus "I can't let go / I won't let go." (Excellent backing vox from Janet.) Plaastik returned after the commercial break, now with everyone clutching a guitar, and played what we can probably infer to be "Lost," as that word reappeared at the start of each line. Jay sang lead on that last song with Nick and Janet harmonizing. It's a soulful, rocking song; I'm surprised it's on the album since we've been told to expect such a stripped-down approach. The lyrics were a startlingly mature diatribe about growing pains. Jerry blended reasonably well with the band but he looked a little rigid, which I can understand. It's interesting that, in their first major appearance after their keyboardist left, Plaastik appeared without so much as a keyboard.
Kevin has posted on my message board and e-mailed me saying that Plaastik has agreed that he will be the band spokesman in relation to LOVE; Nick and Janet do not wish to address direct questions and will not talk about the album. Nick replied to Kevin's post with an explanation that the decision to release the demos as they were was not easy, but she eventually came to the conclusion that "they are rather private and that's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's also not something we'd like to talk to reporters about, know what I mean?"

9-30-04:

CHILD is just around the corner, and fans are getting antsy. A few of them have heard the album but we haven't had many definitive reports yet. There are quite a few press reviews out and the impression seems generally to be very positive, about on a level with HERD POLITICS and TODAY'S CAJUN SPICE, certainly leagues above the last three LPS.
The latest press release from Plaastik came out today; it's a strange piece. Much of it is about CHILD, and much of that we already have heard, but it does have one interesting tidbit. It's said that the inclusion of "Look (Time)" was hotly debated between Tina Singleton and Nick Parker just before Tina left; she gave permission days before the album was mastered to have it included.
And here's the big deal: "Plaastik recently cancelled plans to rerecord the demos made last year by Nick Parker and Janet Kieran alone and instead has just spent a week mastering them and will release them unedited as a new Plaastik album within three months. No singles from LOVE, as the new album is called, will be released, in order to prevent interference with promotion of the larger-scale project CHILD, but LOVE itself will be in stores before the end of 2004."
God almighty... I'm not sure what to think. We most certainly had no reason to expect there would be *two* new albums before the end of the year. I can't believe they've decided to issue the demos themselves, but I understand that they're amazing. I find "unedited" hard to believe; haven't "personal moments" been mentioned?
Also, Plaastik IS STILL PLAYING AT THE BOWERY BALLROOM ON OCTOBER 10TH for an MTV concert recording planned initially as part of the promo tour. This will be Plaastik's first public performance since the Science Tour and their first ever with Jerry Mull. We would have mentioned this more but it has barely been announced, perhaps intentionally and tickets are still on sale.
Lots of reviews out today! The excitement is building. Rolling Stone's review of CHILD was, natch, not written by David Fricke, who gave the record a mixed notice. The album gets 4.5 out of 5 stars (compare 4 for SCIENCE, 3.5 for FUN, a rather surprising 4 for CARTOONS, and even more surprisingly, only 4 for OSAN), making it the highest rated Plaastik album since TODAY'S CAJUN SPICE, though none of their albums has been received negatively by the magazine since NO PARKING ANYTIME. Critic Anthony DeCurtis calls CHILD "long, difficult, beautiful, cleansing, and more than anything, a resonance of what every one of us feels as a child and, moreover, an adult." Q gives it 4/5 stars. Entertainment Weekly offers a B+. NME and Spin give it 8/10, Melody Maker 9/10. These and the other, less visible reviews have been uniformly positive so far.
We learned a lot about the album from the reviews; here's a gathering of info:

9-22-04:

Word from Jeff came early this morning concerning the LOVE project. It was a rather cryptic message; Plaastik is making "a formal announcement" in a few days but he says "not to worry" and that no matter what we hear, LOVE will be released in the timeframe previously worked out. I don't know what the implication here is.
Tina news: Crisis is currently recording a new single "somewhere in Philadelphia." The single "will not be on the new Crisis album or on any Crisis album." The intention is apparently to keep new material in the marketplace for the time being.
Nick tells the NME that Plaastik is taking time off starting in April to write new material!? Do they need any!?? Anyway, I'm not complaining!

9-20-04:

We have an exclusive on the first reaction to the complete album, offered to us by professional critic and Plaastik freak David Fricke. He says "You're going to hear a lot of people say this is a major comeback and a huge stride forward, but I think that's just a gut reaction to the fact that it's different from the last few. It's good, no doubt, and better than anything since MEAT, but I think it deserves praise less as a definitive recording than as a step in the right direction." Very level headed. He goes on: "I think fans will really eat it up, but is this MR. EVIL BREAKFAST or ON SUCH A NIGHT or even TODAY'S CAJUN SPICE? No. But HERD POLITICS? By all means, in the sense that like that one, it has clearly been designed to please a certain contingent, which means it's good but perhaps not as good as it initially seems." I can accept that without thinking that I will be disappointed, and David assures me that we won't be. "If you've been left cold by FUN, SCIENCE, and of course CARTOONS, you have nothing to worry about as far as this being Plaastik again."
On specific songs, our pal Fricke says: "About half of CHILD is positively dazzling. I know how you guys are and I don't want to spoil too much, but there are some things that seem out of place and will shock you -- the first and last songs in particular. My only other specific remarks are: don't worry about 'Look (Time)', I saw eleven Science Tour performances and hated the song all nine times I heard it but it's been massively improved. And 'Ow''s childishness, which came off as mean-spirited sarcasm on stage, plays out better without the irony." Very interesting! We thank you, David.
"Walking Distance" is a top-40 hit, topping out so far at #37. Airplay has already calmed down a bit, though.

9-19-04:

I seem to be in a minority about the video for "Walking Distance." A thread on the official message board has dozens of people slamming it. On a forum post from a month ago, Nick expressed some dissatisfaction with it but said "Capitol's not waiting any longer." Oh well.

9-17-04:

Since more people have heard the single now, I can say that there's a consensus on "Walking Distance," which has been very well-received among fans and critics. Fans are less enthusiastic about the two b-sides, many echoing the sentiment I expressed here: Will there be any new outtakes?

9-14-04:

The new single is in stores today! I have mine, and regarding the b-sides, "Don't Call Me Nigger" is an insane speed-metal version recorded at a SCIENCE tour soundcheck and then there's a studio recording (from 2001) of "Get Down with This." We've all heard it, it's cool and quick (well, 6:43) but it's the same as "This Is the Shit" and all that. I could do without it, honestly. But "Walking Distance" is amazing! And very quiet. Anyway, I wonder if we'll get any, er, new b-sides later? I don't think "Sex" existed during the SCIENCE sessions, but it doesn't seem to fit in with the new material either...
Supposedly the band is working on the first batch of stuff for the new record right now, but I don't know where. They are not in their Detroit, London, or L.A. studios.
In a blurb published in the New York Times today, Kevin Keys says that at the earliest demo sessions for CHILD (in 2002), the band was still in electronic mode and attempted a full-out electro "haunted house" version of "The Rooms" before Nick threw up his hands and said "This is ridiculous" and walked out! (This was around the time the "Jesus Killer" era ended, incidentally.)

9-10-04:

For those who missed the premiere of the "Walking Distance" video last night, it was KILLER! You can watch it here. The video is in black and white and it essentially involves a young boy wandering streets, jumping in a puddle of water, climbing trees, riding a bicycle, writing on pavement with chalk, and playing around at a watertower. Eventually, he enters a park where there are other children catching butterflies, picking flowers, playing on a swingset, etc. After the song ends, the boy runs up a slide and down again, then looks around and realizes he's alone. A shot of the street follows and we see the boy, who is now an old man, walking out of the park looking utterly alone. The final shot is of the picture he drew on the sidewalk, still there. It fits the song brilliantly! Kudos to all involved.

9-7-04:

The press has learned about LOVE and it, oddly enough, seems to be getting more exposure than CHILD. Nick Parker echoes Jeff's comments in the latest SPIN, saying that LOVE will be "the band's best album to date."
Capitol tells us that the band will be appearing on Letterman, Conan, and SNL the first week of October, while Nick will give his thoughts on the election on The Daily Show!

9-5-04:

Lots and lots to cover today...
Fan reaction to "Walking Distance" has been cautiously positive, the only caveat to the pleasure being that CARTOONS had an excellent debut single as well. In his KROQ interview in August, however, Nick named "We Were" as the "starting point" for the new songs, so hopefully we will stay this course. "My Field" certainly was an indication!
Here's what we've been waiting for. Jeff Jooce has broken the silence at last. Plaastik is "working on a new album." I asked some specific questions and he answered them all earnestly. So get ready, because this might knock you out.
The full story: While many had thought the band really was a bit more screwed over by Tina's departure than they wanted us to believe and that the promo-tour cancellation proved this, Tina had nothing to do with the last two weeks. When the masters for CHILD were handed in, Capitol started asking about Nick and Janet's solo album (when it could be expected, etc.). The couple mentioned a target date of sometime in the winter but also noted that they were not yet sure about the final tracklisting. The rest, straight from the horse's mouth:
- "We all wanted to do 'My One and Only' together after they played it for us last year but we kept putting it off, so they said it would probably be on the next Plaastik album and that because of that they didn't want to include it. They also had demos of 'Nightroad' and 'Cut' and a couple of other old songs on the tape and they didn't want those on there either. And then there were some kind of personal moments on it for them that they understandably weren't sure they wanted everybody to hear. This was, after all, something they did at home, know what I mean? We discussed it for a long time and then they finally played the whole thing for us all the way through a couple of weeks ago and we were taken aback. I mean, these are fucking incredible songs. Probably the best they've ever done, and that's saying a lot as you know. We decided immediately to record the songs together as Plaastik for another album as soon as possible and have it out by the end of the year. Tina's gone now and we love Tina and we feel like our best recovery is to make our best music ever because music is medicine both for those who listen and those who create it. So we got some studio time in September and had a promo tour scheduled for October, but one night when we were sitting in a circle in one of our hotel rooms eating and playing along to the tape, learning the songs, we realized that we needed more than just a month to make this new stuff work. That's when we had additional time prepared for us after the tour. The more we played the songs and thought about it the more we wanted the new music out there as soon as possible, so we then elected to postpone our promo tour until after the second album gets out there. We scheduled time in Detroit to get everything ready and start talking about ideas about art and all that, start getting things together to finish up recording, then decided to do that sooner so we wouldn't have to take time away from our recording with it. That's why the others met immediately in Detroit; the rest of us have been cooperating from a distance. The new Plaastik album after CHILD will be called LOVE because that's what created those demos, that's what keeps us all as a band no matter what happens, and that's what will be in these recordings. It's going to be our best album, and I'm excited about CHILD, but CHILD will be nothing compared to this."
With one break to head for two weeks to NYC as said before, Plaastik will record for two months and want the album out in February, with a longer promotional tour ("only in theaters") to run through spring. Pretty big deal, eh?

9-1-04:

Yesterday Capitol promised me that Plaastik would be quiet on the day "Walking Distance" was released and on the days following; they are deeply nervous about how the reception of new material will be affected by recent events (Tina leaving, cancellation of the promo tour). A hushed silence fell over a nation of fans this morning as the track began to show itself on radio around the country. It includes some subtle looping but overall is an entirely new sensation for us. The melodic backing vocals, the acoustic guitar, the slow tempo, and the happy, introspective tone of the vocals and lyrics prove we're in an entirely new universe. At the moment, airplay seems pretty steady.

8-31-04:

We have discovered that the band is going back into the Detroit studio in October. Capitol tells us that this has something to do with the rumored "second album."

8-27-04:

Rough, rough news. Not only is CHILD delayed, the entire promo tour is cancelled ("postponed," says Capitol's website). Plaastik will indeed meet in New York in about a month for the TV/magazine blitz announced before, but immediately afterwards they're heading to L.A. for undisclosed purposes.
I didn't catch this, but I'm told that Plaastik's website was updated early in the month with a blurb about the album of Nick and Janet's demo songs rerecorded on the "coming soon" page. That has now been removed, suggesting that perhaps the recent sessions did not go as well as planned.
In happier news, a few lucky people have managed to hear "Walking Distance," previewed on a couple of radio stations, and their impressions seem similar to my own of "My Field." Melodic and delicate, and a complete turnaround from SCIENCE. This could be a big one! Let's hope. I've been trying to get a copy of the song all day but it's not happening.
Finally, I have the artwork for the new single. Enjoy!

8-20-04:

Famous radio station KROQ tracked down Nick Parker in L.A. yesterday and asked him to come down for an interview, which he obligingly did. Nick was happy and open to the press and fans on the trip down the block to the station, signing autographs and speaking openly about Plaastik's current work. The same went for the interview. Nick spoke candidly about Tina leaving and how it affected the band, according to those lucky enough to hear the interview (which the station should have on their site in a month or so). Nothing was said about his scrapped solo album with Janet, though an allusion was made to "two Plaastik albums coming out." Parker said he is enjoying this "unusually hectic" period because he's "rushing around to create music, not rushing around to play it." Though he mentioned loving to play live, he conceded that right now, he's "sick of the road, venues, our old songs, you name it." As with radio appearances in the past, Parker had no problem giving listeners a sample of the new material. The album track "My Friend" (not to be confused, said Parker, with "My Field") was played and sounds positively lovely, like nothing from the Plaastik catalog before. The only remote comparison I can find would be the second half of ON SUCH A NIGHT. Very pretty and melodic, simple even. You can find it quite easily on the internet. This is all quite exciting, to say the least. Also interesting was the Sly Stone cover, but of course it wasn't as big of a surprise. Nick said Jerry Mull is "a nice guy" but didn't seem too interested in discussing his involvement with Plaastik, which I can understand since he had nothing to do with the work Nick was promoting.
Jay Kay Ray emailed me to say that CHILD is being delayed a week. He gave no reason other than a "scheduling decision being reevaltuated." So the new release date is OCTOBER 5TH.

8-9-04:

The WALKING DISTANCE single will be on sale September 14th! B-sides are the Sly & the Family Stone cover revealed here recently as well as, praise ye the lord, the immortal "Get Down with This."
We hear that Mitchell Blank, who remains a close friend of Christina Singleton's, may be producing the next Crisis album.

8-2-04:

This broke a couple of days ago but we didn't say anything because we thought it may be a false rumor. In fact, this is the album artwork:Fans have been scratching their heads over this one for a few days, but Capitol informs us that the case is a foldout which reveals this: Much better, no?

7-31-04:

From both Capitol and Jeff this morning comes the full tracklist for CHILD! Jeff adds some interesting remarks, summarized below. The tracklist is:
1. Make
2. Walking Distance
3. Tired
4. Scarlett
5. Me
6. Look (Time)
7. Lost
8. The Rooms
9. My Friend
10. Little
11. Boy + Girl?
12. My Field
13. Ow
14. Did She Know What I Felt?
In case you're keeping score, this leaves just one original composition that didn't make the cut, "Sex."
Fans were stunned at the inclusion of "Ow" and some still haven't gotten over the fact that "Look (Time)" is on there even though Tina is gone, but Jeff seems to have anticipated all this. He assures us that both songs have been "extensively reworked." Asked about the song "Laboratory" that became a fan favorite on the last tour, Jeff said it was not attempted at the sessions but that "you haven't heard the last of it."
According to Jeff, Jerry Mull was not involved at all in the sessions for CHILD, though he has been working with them on the new songs this month. Jeff said that "Make," "Look (Time)," and "Boy + Girl?" were the songs from Singleton's time with the band that Nick saved for the LP, and that eventually a fourth, "Did She Know What I Felt?" was added. The inner sleeve includes a photo of the "classic" lineup and this will be considered a Plaastik-with-Singleton LP.

7-17-04:

The biggest news of all first: Plaastik has confirmed the fall promotional tour! They will be hitting NYC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with perhaps a few more dates to be added in the future. This will be Plaastik's first small-scale tour since... 1981!
Yesterday came the long-awaited press release announcing Plaastik's first album in three years and what Capitol claims is their most heartfelt attempt at coming "back with a bang" since ON SUCH A NIGHT. The album will be called CHILD and it will be in stores September 29th.
In comments within the release, Nick Parker explains that Christina Singleton did indeed depart from the band shortly after Nick scrapped most of the masters from the new album, which was halfway finished, in August of last year. Nevertheless, the record was finished by the end of the fall, with extensive redubbing and a few new songs added in March, just after Nick and Janet engaged in rejuvenation with their now-cancelled demo album.
Capitol eagerly describes this as a return to "conservative" form for the band. There is very little information about specific songs, something that will hopefully be remedied in the days to come. Nick's most interesting comment is "There are a lot of things I have done in the last seven years that I wish didn't count." He claims "We haven't done anything good since 1996." You can take that however you must.

7-8-04:

The first single from the still-unnamed album will be "Walking Distance." It will show up on the radio in the early fall, with the album following in October or possibly November.
The lowdown on the Nick/Janet album, courtesy Kevin Keys: "It was planned but has now been scrapped. It was an album of demos and they initially wanted to just release it as-is, but we have decided that the songs have great potential and we will be going into the studio next week to do full-band versions." Great news!
A complete press release about the new album is expected in the next week or so.

6-29-04:

The newsmedia has its hands on a complete list of tracks that will be included either on the album or on the accompanying singles. The ones new to us (i.e., not mentioned by Kevin below) are:
- Did She Know What I Felt?
- Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey (Sly & the Family Stone cover)
- Get Down with This (we kid you not)
- Holding Back the Years (Simply Red cover)
- Little
- Lost
- My Field
- My Friend
- Scarlett
- This I Promise You (NSync cover)
It's really not difficult to guess which of those will be b-sides, but anyway, we definitely know now that the original songs in the new batch that will be completely new to us (since "On the Telly," a song that has really led many to cast doomsday predictions on the new record despite the fact that it may well be a throwaway, was already leaked) are:
- Make
- Walking Distance
- Me
- Tired
- Did She Know What I Felt?
- Little
- Lost
- My Field
- My Friend
- Scarlett
Those who are curious can find out in our LIVE-ONLY section what current opinions are on Look (Time), The Rooms, Boy + Girl?, Ow, Sex, and Get Down with This.
In a recent email to us, Jeff mentioned the songs "Gave It All to You," "I Thought," "LowRYDE," and "Bear," all of which have apparently been excised completely.
We have word from Capitol Records that the band, including Jerry Mull, will be going on a short promotional blitz around the U.S., a first for the band that generally tours very rarely. Plaastik has made no comment on this.
Also, the previously unsubstantiated rumors that Nick and Janet are recording an album alone appears to be true, based on hints from Jeff and Kevin.

6-15-04:

We have word from Kevin Keys that the new album will definitely contain, among others, the following tracks: "Walking Distance," "Me," "Tired," "Make," and a few we already know -- "The Rooms," "Boy + Girl?" and -- brace yourself -- "Look (Time)." We know, we know. It was Christina's last recording with the band and will be her only contribution to the record (and we feel that's the only reason it's been included). Some songs that may or may not make it but have been recorded are "Ow," "Sex," "Get Down with This," and one called "On the Telly" which has been leaked. Kevin was also kind enough to prove us, finally, with the lyrics to the heavily distorted track "Common Prompt."
The new album is still set for a fall release.

4-30-04:

Finally some (vague) information about the new album and the reasons for all the delays! Click here for a revealing Associated Press artcle. (Note the erroneous Crisis information.) As most of you know by now, Christina Singleton has been replaced by one Jerry Mull. More information about Mull will be added as it becomes available. Right now the only release date we have for the album is -- straight from Jeff Jooce -- "sometime in October."

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