String Machine got off to smashing start in 2020, with a 7.1 Pitchfork review that compared the Butler-area band to the Elephant 6 Collective that propelled the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel, of Montreal and the Olivia Tremor Control, and referred to scruffy frontman David Beck as the “community leader” of an outfit whose “restrained maximalism defies expectations.”
The next step was to pack all seven members in a van and take “Death of the Neon” on the road with the momentum of that review written by one of Pitchfork’s finest, Ian Cohen.
Of course, the universe had other plans for String Machine, which went into lockdown and back to the drawing board.
Two years later, String Machine re-emerges with an album, exuberantly titled “Hallelujah Hell Yeah,” that seems like an even better representation of what the band can be.
This musical trip all started when the Saxonburg singer-songwriter was eight years old and getting into punk and emo, from Blink-182 to My Chemical Romance, and all the way back to the Sex Pistols.
“I just picked up a guitar,” Beck says, “and I think my motive was always the creative aspects of it. I never wanted to become a virtuoso, by any means. It was how I naturally expressed myself because of just being so young and being introduced to all this really cool, creative music that didn't really take much technical expertise. So, it was really liberating that I could pick up a guitar, not know how to play it and make a song out of it.”
Eventually, he did learn to play it enough to form punk/emo bands with friends, while also expanding his horizons to the indie-rock of Neutral Milk Hotel, Arcade Fire, etc., that clearly color the bohemian style of String Machine.
He was in bands with members of String Machine as early as 2011, but they all dissolved, he says, “So, I just kind of sat down and started making a solo kind of record and it just kind of happened, organically, where I'd ask the players in my immediate collective if they wanted to play on it and, naturally, it just became a band from there.”
They would grow to seven members — Beck, singer Laurel Wain, keyboardist Dylan Kersten, bassist Mike Law, drummer Nic Temple, trumpeter Ian Compton and cellist Katie Morrow — and release “Threads from the Youth Fossil,” a now primitive-sounding 2016 debut showcasing its alt-folk, off-kilter harmonies.
The most striking aspect of String Machine is the magic created between Beck’s warbly vocals and the soaring soprano of Wain, Compton’s partner who studied at AMDA (the American Musical and Dramatic Academy) in New York.
“Ian and I were always in bands together,” Beck says, “so she was always in our ecosystem of creatives. She was kind of like the ace of spades that we weren't utilizing. I, myself, don’t have the best voice, so I think the theory there is, if I want to be the expressionist voice — the person who doesn't need to be in tune — she’s kind of the backbone that holds the melody together.”
Just before String Machine released “Death of the Neon” in August 2019, they played a house show attended by Pittsburgh rock writer Eli Enis, who tweeted, “I somehow just saw String Machine for the 1st time last night, which, as a PGH resident of two years, is insane and dumb and irresponsible of me because holy [expletive] this band is spectacular.”
It caught the attention of Pitchfork’s Cohen, who reviewed the album six months later, waxing eloquently about the songs managing to “capture barren Western Pennsylvania in the summer.”
“It definitely gave us a push and got our name out there,” Beck says. “The most valuable thing it did for us was it gave us confidence, it got rid of the little bit of that imposter syndrome that we had as creatives. It was validating to be recognized to that degree and definitely put a little oomph in our step.”
In place of touring in 2020, Beck began working on the new batch of songs that would become “Hallelujah Hell Yeah.”
“I was going through some stuff in my personal life,” he says. “In the past I would be going through things, but I was so attached to the idea of my lyrics being poetic that it sometimes felt like my songwriting was deflective and not very direct, and my truth was buried in metaphor to a certain degree. With this new record, I was journaling a lot, so I think that confessional kind of songwriting came out just due to trying to make sense out of my emotions.
“A big part of it, too,” he adds, “was I was starting to get uncomfortable with the fact that I could play a show and kind of go on autopilot and not really feel what I was saying. I wanted this record to be a tad bit more plain-spoken, so when I perform it, it has the aura, the spirit of what I was going through, and hopefully it translates.”
After demoing the album, they recorded in their practice space, in Beck’s bedroom, Morrow’s bedroom and a proper studio for the piano with Jake Hanner (Donora) who mixed it.
Self-producing an album with seven members is a tricky proposition, to say the least.
“People are always wondering how we make that work,” Beck says. “It's probably more reducing than it is being deliberate about it, because seven people will write a song’s worth of parts and then we kind of carve it out from this big block of sound.”
String Machine has never sounded better than it does on these nine songs that embrace the soaring pop elements and highlight that lovely chemistry between Beck and Wain. Overall, they sound less beholden to the obvious influences and more like String Machine.
“In the past we have really teetered on that edge,” Beck says. “That was some of the constructive criticism we've gotten on our past work. In the past, there was a huge barrier for me to break because if it didn't sound like my favorite bands, I wasn't confident in it. I think with this new record, we unashamedly brought in new influences that we used to brush off in the past.”
As a result, ’22 could be the year for a band that’s been building toward a breakout.
The release show is at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Thunderbird Music Hall with Rave Ami, Brightside and Merce Lemon at 8 p.m. 18+; $12-$15; etix.com.
First Published: February 22, 2022, 11:30 a.m.
