Durand Jones & the Indications’ freshly minted sophomore album, American Love Call, opens with a one-two punch that nicely encapsulates the band’s thematic and musical versatility.
“Morning in America” is a classic tone-setting opener, a visceral snapshot of a country struggling to cope with the current moment as the group’s penetrating ’60s- and ’70s-style Soul sways in the background. The song’s narrative moves from one corner of America to another (“Congressman in Washington/Receive their brief and brew/While lead, it fills the pipelines/In a Detroit county school”) before culminating with this poignant refrain, all delivered by way of frontman Jones’ rich, expressive vocals: “It’s morning in America/But I can’t see the dawn.”
The next track, “Don’t You Know,” is the flip side of the Indications’ coin, a relationship song that opens with this pleading earworm of a chorus: “Don’t you know that’s how I really feel?/Gonna love you, baby, yes I will.” The lead vocals on the song are handled by drummer Aaron Frazer, whose affecting falsetto is a nice counterpoint to Jones’ deeper, more versatile delivery.
Those familiar with Durand Jones & The Indications’ 2016 self-titled debut won’t necessarily be surprised to hear Frazer center stage — he handled vocals on one of that album’s signature songs, “Is It Any Wonder” — but the fact that his voice leads multiple tracks on American Love Call might be an unexpected development, especially given that Jones’ voice is such a prominent component of the band’s sound.
“Durand and the rest of the band have welcomed a second voice,” Frazer says by cell phone while en route to the band’s next tour stop. “It creates something that other groups aren’t really doing today, which is to defuse the idea a singular frontperson and harken back to an older style. Our reference points on American Love Call are these ’70s vocal groups where any one of those singers could have been solo but they chose to stay in a group and create something bigger than just their voice.”
Jones, speaking by phone in a separate conversation, confirms that he was eager to incorporate more of Frazer’s vocals, going as far as to name-check an iconic vocal duo in the process.
“It’s a lot more fun and a lot more engaging,” Jones says. “It was definitely a challenge that I was up for, and I feel like that was the reason a song like ‘Don’t You Know’ came into being, because we realized there was this void that wasn’t being filled in our current Soul world. We’re missing that vocal group dynamic like (The Temptations’) Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin.”
For the uninitiated, the Durand Jones & the Indications formed in 2012 when Jones, Frazer and the band’s other main songwriter, guitarist Blake Rhein, met as students at Indiana University. Rhein and Frazer were audio engineering majors. Jones, a native of rural Louisiana, was studying Classical saxophone and writing horn parts for the IU Soul Revue. The three bonded over old-school Soul and R&B records and eventually began writing their own songs. The trio’s 2016 self-recorded debut fell into the hands of Terry Cole, whose Loveland, Ohio-based label Colemine Records put out the record soon thereafter; Bloomington, Indiana-spawned label Dead Oceans (home to Indie stars like Mitski and Bleached) reissued it in conjunction with Colemine in early 2018. The labels co-released American Love Call in March.
“We sent Terry the first recordings that we did with Durand and he was super into it and he encouraged us to keep doing it,” Frazer says of Cole’s integral part in the band’s existence. “He encouraged us to put out a record. We didn’t think we had enough to put out an LP — it was only eight songs — but he was all about it. I really can’t say enough about Terry and that Colemine family. They’re just amazing people who love music like we do. They conduct business with such warmth and compassion. It’s a cool crew to be a part of.”
While Frazer doesn’t deny the band’s devotion to old-school genres, he’s also quick to dispel the notion that Durand Jones & the Indications are just a retro outfit.
“We’re definitely influenced by these heritage styles of music but I don’t see us as just a revivalist band,” Frazer says. “One of our other big influences is Hip Hop. I think some people could argue that the Hip Hop influence is bigger on the first record or that it’s more overt, but we are still trying to create a kind of source material for Hip Hop, create these moments within these Soul songs that a producer might find and sample.”
Jones and Frazier juggle the band’s lyrical duties; in fact, each has sung songs the other has written. Such was the case with “Morning in America” and “Don’t You Know,” the former of which was Frazer’s attempt at socially conscious songwriting.
“I do think that this is a time where people have to be pretty overt about where they stand,” Frazer says. “For us it was a statement about the traveling that we’ve done over these past couple years and just trying to take a snapshot of the country at a moment in time. I was imaging all these places that we’ve been to and what people were doing but also recognizing that the common factor in all those people is that they are all broke. Seventy-eight percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That’s a crazy statistic.
“We certainly don’t mean to be preachy but it feels like it’s time to just say what you feel, and for us that’s a statement about class unity in a time when race is being used to divide us over and over again.”
Jones, whose vocal delivery gives the song an added layer of emotional resonance, agrees that it’s not a time to stand on the sidelines.
“When it comes to writing for the social or political consciousness, you really have to feel what’s going on around you,” Jones says. “I think that Aaron really captured that beautifully. During the time that he was writing that tune, we were traveling a bunch. We got to see a lot of the country during a lot of important times. We were traveling when (the high-profile white nationalist rally in) Charlottesville happened. We got to talk to people all around the country about Trump and how they felt about him. It’s so important whenever you’re writing these things to really reflect the emotions that are all around you, because then it’s empathetic. It’s not just about you.”
While Jones is eager to see where the Indications head into the future, he’s already gratified with where they are at this particular moment.
“It’s so crazy to be singing out on the stage and look out into the audience and see people sing every word to every song,” Jones says of the strong reception to American Love Call and the current tour behind it. “That’s something totally new for us, and it’s a really cool experience to witness.”
Durand Jones & The Indications perform April 24 at The Woodward Theater. Tickets/more show info: woodwardtheater.com.
This article appears in Apr 17-24, 2019.