Even a cursory listen to The Happy Maladies’ slim but impressive Chamber Folk-meets-Indie-in-Jazztown catalog reveals a certain thoughtful deliberation. But the question of sonic intent regarding the imminent new self-titled album by the Cincinnati band sparks an answer nearly as contemplative as the group’s sound.
“I wouldn’t say we’re going for something,” violinist/vocalist Eddy Kwon says. “Probably what you’ve heard is the result of playing together for seven years and being so comfortable with each other in writing that each of us is free to bring our own musical histories and experiences. We all do different things, but we don’t let the instrumentation dictate the style that we’re playing in.”
“At the same time, the instruments are the one parameter that we do have, just being acoustic,” guitarist/banjoist/vocalist Benjamin Thomas adds. “On the record you might hear certain effects with reverb, like on the last track, which is kind of funky. Otherwise, writing, recording and performance is all acoustic.”
From their 2008 start, The Happy Maladies have exhibited a casual intensity, giving the sense that the quartet creates from a combination of diligence and offhandedness. While their Indie Rock approach to structured music is largely intact, the new album’s process was slightly different.
“I think we felt more intentional than (on the previous recordings),” Kwon says. “The other ones were like, ‘OK, let’s make a recording and then use everything we have right now,’ whereas with this one, we knew it was coming, so seven months before, we started working toward it, both in writing the songs and figuring out the feel of the album.”
The band credits engineer Ed Spear, who recorded the Maladies at Nashville, Tenn.’s renowned Sputnik Sound studio, as a major component of the new album’s success. They met Spear five years ago after a Nashville show, and his enthusiasm for the band and its music led the group to seek him out for the latest project.
“At the time, he was interning at a studio that did recording to tape, and that struck all of our fancies because that’s such a novel thing,” Thomas says. “I kept his number and when it came time to figure out who was going to engineer the record, I gave him a call on a whim. He had moved up in the world of Nashville recording, and he was four more years seasoned after working with different professionals. He had tons of ideas, and he truly made the week of recording something special. The best line of the week was, ‘This is gonna sound crazy, just trust me.’ Every time, it was a good idea and made it sound better.”
For all the deliberation the Maladies exercised on the new album, the one intention that may not have been present was the actual stated goal to make an album.
“I don’t know if we ever set out to write a record,” Kwon says. “I think the past six years we explored different paths and we made it a priority to try different projects. This record came out after many years of these songs living on the road or in our heads. Even after setting and putting them on the album, we changed them.”
And that’s where the Maladies’ deliberate tendencies get them in trouble. The band of musical obsessives, who met and coalesced as friends and bandmates while students at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, can sometimes disappear up their own … creative processes.
“We’re notorious for spending way too long on five seconds of music and then half a year later deciding it’s total shit,” Kwon says with a laugh. “Our recording experiences have been fantastic, but I can speak personally — I hate recording. I come from a partly Classical background, and recording in that context is stressful because it’s all about perfection.”
“This one (16-minute) song is all we wrote in one year,” bassist Peter Gemus says. “And then we were like, ‘This is awful.’ It was called ‘Peter’s Sweet Sixteen.’ I was the only one not around when they were like, ‘We have to come up with a name for this,’ so I got the royal treatment.”
Given that the Maladies weren’t consciously working toward an album early on (it was a little clearer once they launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise studio money), it begs the question of when the band recognized the album-ness of what they were doing.
“Probably when we finished it,” Kwon says. “Just going to the studio, working with Ed and spending that week, it just kind of happened. The meaning and the statement didn’t really exist before, we just had this collection of songs and disparate ideas, and this feeling like, ‘We have to do something great.’ ”
In the six years since Sun Shines the Little Children, The Happy Maladies’ full-length debut, they’ve been anything but idle. They released the new again EP in 2012 and they’ve remained a regularly active live presence around and beyond the area. They also recently released the collaborative Must Love Cats, a recording featuring original works by a broad spectrum of musical composers.
“A couple years ago, we launched a competition call (for composers) and released the record in March,” Kwon says of the Cats release. “That was a really involved project that called for collaborations with composers all over the country and a really dedicated amount of time set to learning other people’s music.”
Fans have surely noticed the graphic thread connecting The Happy Maladies’ endeavors and they gratefully acknowledge the work of illustrator/designer Lizzy DuQuette, whose work has helped define the band’s identity nearly from the start.
“Lizzy has been our visual other half for the past few years,” Kwon says. “She designed and fabricated all the Must Love Cats CD booklets, and it’s amazing. And she’s done T-shirt and poster design for us. She’s awesome.”
In addition, Kwon, Thomas, Gemus and guitarist/mandolinist/vocalist Stephen Patota (absent from our interview due to work duties) are almost pathologically busy with non-Maladies pursuits. Kwon is assistant program director for MYCincinnati, a youth orchestra project. Thomas teaches guitar, does freelance Jazz gigs and works his Folk/Rock/Jazz side project Whitfield Crocker (Kwon and Thomas play regular gigs as a duo). Gemus is an in-demand live/studio session player (working with John Von Ohlen, Brad Myers, Dave McDonnell and others) and Patota teaches while devoting time to AltRock collective SHADOWRAPTR and his side project Meth Girlfriend.
THE HAPPY MALADIES play Woodward Theater on Friday. Tickets/more info: woodwardtheater.com.
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2015.