Shplang, the duo of Peter Marston and John Krause, make music that is loaded with good, quirky humor that never curdles into whimsy. There is nothing dark or disturbing about it, just fun, that I had a great time listening to.
Peter was kind enough to answer a few questions for me.
Andrea Weiss: For those who don’t know you, could you give a short history of the band?
Peter Marston: After playing in a handful of power-pop and punk bands in the 1980s, I met John Krause in 1994 through a mutual friend, and John told me he dabbled in music and so I invited him to goof around in my project studio to see what would happen, and what happened was Shplang. Those early experimental recording sessions resulted in our first album, Journey to the Center of Mirth. It was (surprisingly to us) well-received, so we kept on recording. The next two albums, Self Made Monk and American Cream, were efforts to be a little less experimental and a little more accessible, and this led to us being warmly embraced by the power pop community, most notably by stalwart supporters like David Bash, Jeremy Morris, Stefan Johansson, and, of course, the fine folks at Big Stir Records. Still, we missed the more absurd/surreal lyrics and the more psychedelic arrangements. So our fourth album, My Big Three Wheeler, was sort of a balance between psychedelic absurdism and a very pop sensibility. Our new album, Thank You, Valued Customer, continues our exploration of the strange and beautiful.
AW: Who were you listening to when you were making the album?
PM: Oh my goodness—that’s a tough one. I listen to all sorts of music, but the main touchstones are late 60s British psych-pop, late 70s punk and power pop, and 60s deep southern soul. My music diet and/or influences didn’t change during the recording of this album.
AW: Some of these songs are sung in other languages, like German and French. Did these songs just lend themselves to that?
PM: “Das Diddley” was originally conceived in German, but the demo consisted of made-up German-sounding words peppered with an occasional word I actually knew ("Farfegnugen!”). When it came to recording the song for the album, a friend of mine helped me cobble together some intelligible German doggerel. “À Son Son” was originally a song called “Sandwich Bag” that I thought was just too ridiculous to foist upon the public. I really liked the sound of the track and wrote the French lyrics to keep the groove and feel of the track without connecting it to some specific idea or theme (at least for English-speaking listeners who are the vast majority of our audience). “À Son Son” is our fourth song in French, by the way, and they all have the same etiology—that is, they began as a song in English that we liked, but couldn’t stomach the lyrics. There is also a song on our last album in Japanese, so I suppose we have an affinity for the sound of other languages.
AW: Where did the title come from?
PM: I had a list of titles that I shared with John and the working title for a while was Satellites and Butterflies, but as we were wrapping up the narration on “She, the Fair Bag Girl,” Thank You, Valued Customer presented itself (it’s the very last phrase in the song and the last thing you hear on the album).
AW: There is a lot of wry, dry humor in these lyrics, which I like a lot. Was it also supposed to be subtle?
PM: I write lyrics that appeal to me and I am especially interested in songs with interesting titles—one of my favorite things about Shplang, in fact. None of the lyrics are intended as jokes per se, so yes, I suppose they would be rejected if they weren’t subtle. I know Shplang treads dangerously close to recording what might be called novelty songs, but I don’t think we have crossed that line yet. Hope not, anyway.
AW: What is “Look Me Over” about?
PM: Well, all the songs are just “made up” in that we never set out to write a song about something. It’s just whatever comes out of my mouth at the time. That may be what introduces humor and absurdism into our songs. That said, what I get from “Look Me Over” is that the character singing the song has sought to escape his troubles with alcohol, but when called out for being loaded, seeks to escape that through isolation. That’s just a guess, though!
AW: Is there anyone who played on the album that you want to give a shout out to?
PM: Lee Thornburg did the horns on “Understood” and really elevated the track. Thanks. Lee!
AW: Are you planning to tour?
PM: We do not have any plans to tour. We are almost entirely a recording project and, as you can tell from listening to the album, nearly all these songs would be very hard to realize in a live setting. But you never know . . .