Other Lives finds inspiration in the prairie of its native Oklahoma and in the pursuit of the clarity and peace one can find there. At last month's headlining show at the Gramophone, the five-piece filled the room with its powerful swells and patient arrangements. Before the show, we brought the band to the future home of Work/Play a block away on Manchester to perform the title track from last year's excellent Tamer Animals. Jacob Berkowitz and Benjamin Koenig shot the video, Liz Deichmann acted as producer, Carroll Keane directed and Native Sound Studios recorded and edited sound. Berkowitz edited the video. View some behind-the-scenes photos here.
Tomorrow night, the band will have a much, much larger room to capture when it opens for Radiohead at the sold-out Scottrade Center. Below, read an excerpt of our conversation with Other Lives.
Kiernan Maletsky: What do you role do you think art plays in achieving some sort of collective consciousness, in commenting on what happens in society?
Jesse Tabish: It's kind of a great remembrance of the times. You can look back throughout history and it's captured through its wars and its kings and its music and its art. [Art] reflects that. It reflects all the good and bad.
It transcends that, too, and is able to live throughout time. I do think it's an important way to document what's going on but also hopefully to take people out of the physical a little bit, to inspire them.
Do you think that certain works of art take on more salient meanings depending on their current context? Do you find yourself going to different art now than you did ten years ago?
Jonathan Mooney: Absolutely. It's a complete reflection of the time. Art can definitely have an effect on humanity. I think art is an acknowledgement of what's happening.
Tabish: The beauty of it is you listen to a piece of music by Beethoven or something, and you don't even think about the eighteenth century, and you don't think about what it was written for. You go someplace in your mind..it's the best we are as humans. That place, that clarity and that peace. Not all pieces of music are like that but there are some that, it doesn't matter about history or any of those things, it touches something far deeper.
