Castanets

Greg Locke: For starters, thank you, Ray, for taking the time to do this interview. I listen to your albums regularly and do what I can to put my friends onto your stuff when it seems fitting - sometimes when it doesn’t. Ray Raposa: Hi.

GL: I’m not going to call your first album, Cathedral, an underrated record because I recall it get its share of glowing reviews. But I will absolutely call it an overlooked album. I know one other person who owns it … how the hell did this happen? Why do people have every instrumental Bonnie “Prince” Billy EP and not Cathedral?

RR: It’s not really my place to speculate on that. Lord knows I’d maybe be wracked with bitterness and all kinds of unwelcome feelings if I did. Came too early? Or too late? More than enough people have it to make me happy. I mean, when I made the thing I figured maybe a thousand would get pressed. I didn’t really know what putting out a record entailed and I certainly didn’t know what a “Pitchfork Best New Music” selection was. I was reading tide charts and crazy sprawled letters from my speeding lady. Different times.

GL: I like to pair albums up. For example, First Lights Freeze, your second album, sounds like a cousin to Palace’s Arise Therefore and In the Vines sounds perfect when played before or after The Silver Jews Bright Flight. I can’t come up with anything for Cathedral. My knee-jerk urge is to mention Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Phosphorescent’s Pride, but I don’t feel like either are accurate - and those are certainly two very different records. Tell me about the identity of Cathedral. Its sound.

RR: Well certainly one of the talking points for reviewers on that record was the cabin. A few of the songs were recorded up near Point Arena at a friend’s place. Just he, his brother and I. Bringing those tracks back down to San Diego and working with Rafter was when it started to take a far more certain shape though. I think we did maybe two days a week in the studio over the course of a couple months, with my downtime spent obsessively and painstakingly worrying over arrangements and mixes. In a very satisfying way though. There was a good amount of gear in the studio to play around with and a good amount of co-conspirators to bring certain passages and songs to better lives.

GL: Yeah, that’s interesting for me, a major fan of the album, to hear you say. Do you remember much about the time leading up to that album or the conditions surrounding it?

RR: Well like I said, I had no expectations or concerns for it other than meeting my own standards for the work. I’d done a couple CDRs prior to this - homemade tiny run things - and I had a pretty good handle on how and in what ways I wanted to improve my game. Rafter was crucial in helping that get realized. My lifestyle at the time was pretty gnarly too. A run of good women in awful shape, trying to keep up with them. Writing a lot - novel, since abandoned - and working. There was a venue running out of the front room of my house, keeping me up on nights that I didn’t want to be kept up. I was working a job, taking a lot of emergency trips down the Baja coast. Everything was running at all times and the regular schedule of working on these songs was a good, ritualistic presence in all that.

GL: Sounds like, I don’t know. Sounds like a life. I won’t assume to know anything about you or your lifestyle or actual history, but I do know other musicians who are working at or around your level of exposure and they all pretty much still have to work regular jobs and have many of the same problems I - here as the common lower-class 20-something - deal with day to day. What’s life like for you? Are you still in Brooklyn? Seems like I heard you moved to Cali or the Pacific Northwest area …

RR: Mobile. Displaced. House-sitting in Indiana now. It’s anyone’s guess what comes next.

GL: Getting back to the reason I started bugging your PR folks about you: Cathedral. I just can’t get over it. This should be an album everyone has. I mentioned Yankee Hotel Foxtrot earlier - an album that probably already has some sort of classic status. Does Cathedral at least sell well outside of the U.S.?

RR: I have no sales figures at hand. Maybe? I’m kinda the wrong person to ask about that. People come to the shows in Europe. That’s about all I have to go on.

GL: I think I recall reading that much of the content in Cathedral is based on a novel you were working on and maybe just references a moment ago. True? What can you tell me about this novel and, more importantly to this interview, how it relates to the album.

RR: I was really fixated for a while on the idea of peoples houses or rooms being almost the most holy of places for them if observed properly and the idea of domestic partnerships and the exchanges therein functioning as sort of a surrogate spirituality. That was sort of the bigger shape … but, structurally, it was sort of a jumble - a lot of letters back and forth between fictional couples and songs by fictional characters. I felt way out of my league in even attempting it, but I’d wrestled it into a pretty good shape by the time I left San Diego when it went into a storage space with the rest of my belongings. Over the next year and a half I grew progressively less interested in seeing that thing or any of my other things ever again and just let the fees stack up until all was auctioned off. Fin.

GL: These things you’re saying, they resonate with the common theme of freeing yourself. I think this is something artists go through - maybe I‘m just stating the obvious. Leaving your hard work behind is sad, but, you know, there’s the album, which I guess is a more than excellent document of that time and what you were going through and working towards. I have to wonder if someone bought your book at the auction. Wow. So, back to the theme of overlooked art: do you have any albums you’d mention as notably “overlooked” from, say, the current decade?

RR: Viking Moses’ Jahiliyah and The Parts That Showed. Tragically. Also, discs by Woods.

GL: The folks at Asthmatic Kitty seem to be - judging from my limited experiences with them - a great crew. Any thoughts about working with them?

RR: They’re the best people I can imagine. Just insanely helpful and insanely supportive.

GL: Yeah, and I should mention that they’re going to release some new stuff for you soon. There’s a new studio album, City of Refuge, on October 7, as well as an upcoming Hank Williams covers album and a City of Refuge remix album. You’ve toured as a part of Matthew Houck’s band, Phosphorescent, right?

RR: I get a lot from playing with friends. Matthew’s played drums and bass on ‘Nets tours and it seems only fair to return in kind. But you know, it’s a natural thing too. Touring is as much about spending time with the people you want to spend time with as it is the hour or so on stage at night. I think a lot gets picked up as far as the structure of these kinds of flexible band things too when you take it in from a different position. Getting to follow along instead of leading.

GL: Yeah, that’s good stuff. And that latest Phosphorescent album, Pride, which I mentioned earlier, is just amazing. It’s good to know that you guys are out there, friends, doing great things and working together. Thanks again, Ray, for taking the time to talk to me. Good luck with the new records and upcoming tours.

RR: Thanks.