PHANTOGRAM

The lyrics on Phantogram’s debut album, Eyelid Movies, are an amalgam of darkness, agony, and torturous self-pity. From unreciprocated love and running from the law to drug-related problems and, heck, even a terrorist plot, death and hate seem to be the only indisputable issues on the agenda for founding members Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel. Phantogram is anguish and gloom and inspiration, or as one fan fitfully called it: nightmare fuel.

Fortunately the uplifting, electronic beat and mesmerizing vocals are capable of softening each blow of melodrama. At times, the beat is supported by heavy sampling and sounds close to low-key hip hop. And yet the music can slide into an eerie guitar drone, then become swept up by hypnotizing high notes. They call it “street beat” or “psych pop,” danceable music with the sentiment of an underground after-party gone wrong.

So why the long faces? “I tend to pick up the guitar when I’m feeling blue,” admits Carter. “Creating music is very cathartic for me. I’ve always written darker music, at least lyrically. It seems to be what comes out of me the easiest.”

But according to Barthel, the lyrics can be interpreted both ways. “We usually work with ideas that are able to have double meanings. For instance, an addiction to cocaine could induce the same kind of emotion as one would get from an addiction to love,” she explains. “Mostly the songs are about love and loss, and life and death, and the different experiences and emotions you get from life.”

Or is it perhaps the fact that they wrote and recorded their album in the dead of winter, in a barn in the woods forty-five minutes outside of Saratoga Springs, New York? “Being in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of cold, was very inspiring for our darkness,” recalls Barthel. “You have more time to reflect. Emotions become very colorful and bright. They kind of pop out at you.”

Being so far removed from city life also implicates musical isolation. Even though their list of influences seems endless—OH NO, Talking Heads, Why?, Flying Lotus, Guided By Voices, Mogwai, Françoise Hardy, Flaming Lips, the Beatles, My Bloody Valentine, Pink Floyd, J Dilla, Slowdive, the Deftones—none of the more contemporary music actually hits their small town. “We’ve managed to become inspired by bands that we’re able to find online and on old family records. We mash it all together and make up our own sound with it,” reveals Barthel.

After a successful headlining tour last fall, accompanied for the first time by a drummer, Phantogram has returned to Saratoga Springs to record a few new songs, coming out on an EP in March. Whether this album will carry a resurgence of happiness and light is primarily left up to Carter’s personal evolvement. He has been working on some beats at his apartment and can’t wait to get back to the barn, “where you can really make some noise.” He is confident that even though the new EP will keep the old darkness, “there will also be sparkles and sunshine. It will have a glimmer of hope to it. It might sound like driving through a dark tunnel, but you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Originally published in the Spring 2011 issue.

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