By Eric DoyleThe first time i witnessed an Extra Life show I, along with the rest of the crowd was speechless. The spiritual and physical power that Charlie and his band projected was unparalleled in the current music scene. I was witnessing a form of perfection that a musician could only dream of reaching. I remember at that first show, preceding the release of the most recent full-length Made Flesh the crowd was timid. No one talked, except a very drunk man who through most of the show screamed “THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!” waving his Pabst can around, flailing his arms like a child at a Barney show.
What kind of music makes people act this way? Music that can hush a crowd yet provoke an over enthusiastic applause from a dude that just happened to be at the bar getting drunk? Music that pierces the listener’s very soul. Extra Life has alot to say about the human Voice. Through brutally honest lyrics and precision vocal technique Charlie boldly states his manifesto. It is not blurred by slurred lyrics or effects. Charlie enunciates. He hits his “t’s” and “k’s” with gusto. He wants to make sure you know what he is saying. He is a riddler, a poet, and though he may not intend, a therapist: displaying his own dark secrets and great triumphs thus relating to the listener.
I questioned Charlie about the new album’s lyrics because i feel that the message is just as transcendent as the music. I had my own interpretation but i wanted to know his; granted art is open to interpretation. Watching the show, the album name becomes fully appropriate in describing the essence of Extra Life: spirit Made Flesh. Not only does Charlie write about the spirit being made flesh but physically proves it through the musical work. Read on and you will see that message fervently emphasized through a most personal account of Charlie’s lyrical process for “Made Flesh”.
Voluptuous Life is fairly self-explanatory. "Pleasure unto death. Extra Life to death." In a way it's Extra Life's theme song. It defines the band's name and perhaps the "message" behind Extra Life. Would you agree?
Yeah I wanted that song to have the quality of a theme song. I wrote it specifically to be the opener for the record and for the live set at the time. I certainly don’t have a single specific “message” I’m trying to convey with Extra Life but this track lays out some lyrical themes which I’m pretty fixated on. The line “pleasure unto death” comes from Marguerite Duras’ The Lover which really touched me a couple of years ago. That book is so insanely erotic, in the most outrageous swooning French way. Also on the topic of French sexual madness, that song is very much inspired by George Bataille, in particular his book Erotism. It lays out the intersection of sexuality, death and religion, psychologically and anthropologically. I’m really inspired by serious thinkers and artists who explore that in a deep timeless way, not just some as a goth fashion show. Anyway Bataille writes about our fear of death as a fear of overflowing Life. Like when our individual little life dissolves back into the seething convulsing abyss of Life with a capital L, the violent indifference of Nature etc. And of course he relates the ecstatic excess of erotic pleasure to the vertigo you get from staring into the void of death. It’s hard to sum up Bataille’s entire worldview briefly in an interview but check out that book! Of course it’s not just philosophical for me. On a super-personal level this song is also a straight up sincere come-on line to a woman (albeit self-aware and preposterous). I’m saying look I don’t want to have a normal mature relationship with you where we have a reasonable dinner, split the check and then tastefully “spend the night”. I want to blow all the money in my pocket buying you oysters and drugs before I even know you and then cry on your excessively huge tits. I can’t go for that cute even-keeled indie rock dating vibe, I want to feel total mania, total excess.
The Ladder is mysterious and disturbing. After a few listens i think i know what the song is about. But after listening back i become mystified. I think "It's a father talking to his son, no no it's God, no it's...," etc. Who is the narrator? Who is he addressing? The line "I gave you your woman, now i want my taste" is especially mysterious to me. Also, is "The Ladder" a reference to Jacob's Ladder as mentioned in the book of Genesis?
I wasn’t referring to Jacob’s Ladder but now I’ll have to go back and check that out. I’m way less familiar with the Bible than you might expect given my ongoing flirtation with Christian imagery. That song isn’t about one specific scenario. It’s inspired by various different situations, some real-life, some fictional. I’m trying to evoke a type of scenario, certain relationship dynamics between men. It has to do with business-like male hierarchy, big-brother-ish familial vibes and generosity and mentor-ship as ways of controlling and even humiliating someone. It’s inspired by being on both sides of that kind of dynamic. Sometimes people who are above you in some way do things to help you out but really they want to control you and be able to take credit for everything in your life. Then they resent it when you surpass them or break away from them. By the same token on the flip-side, often people resent you when you try to help them out because they’re so insecure about that same power dynamic. The phrases “pay up the ladder” and “I want my taste” are both taken directly from the Sopranos. That show had such a realistic and nuanced understanding of power relations between men. The phrase “I gave you your woman” is basically taken from the movie Wall Street. Same vibe. I have very strong personal feelings about respect, dignity/shame and public honor.
Made Flesh empowers the listener. There's a message of reaching full potential and expressing the sacred and innermost part of one's self. It takes the story of Christ: spirit made flesh, and re-introduces it as a personal declaration of independence. We all have a secret that should be fleshed out. In a similar sense, Easter humorously condenses the classic tale of Easter into a weight lifting session. I'm reminded of times in the gym, sweat streaming down my face, gripping the dumb-bell, heart pumping, giving everything i have to pump the last rep. It's a life or death moment. "Easter" documents the metamorphosis of physical exercise via biblical metaphor.
Yeah Made Flesh and Easter are kind of a thematic pair, talking about the same thing. I’m glad you find it empowering but that you also see the humor in there. At the time of writing that record I was really into lifting weights. I gained 15 pounds of pure muscle which is long gone now but it felt incredible and necessary to do at the time. I’m not sure if working out was a spiritual discipline for me or a narcissistic compulsion, or both. I guess that’s the humorous question in those two songs. I love the idea of spirit made flesh. The ineffable sacred spirit of an individuals willpower transformed in something as crude as muscle, and then worn on the surface of the body. Muscles are a superficial fashion statement, but you can’t just put them on you have to MAKE them . They’re proof of the intensity of your spirit and the work you did. They’re something profoundly deep (human willpower, analogous to God), turned by suffering into something superficial. Depth/surface, real/fake, spirit/body…ahhhh… If I had a single completely clear point to make I wouldn’t need to write all these lyrics!
One Of Your Whores is the story of 2 people. One is a man the other a woman. The woman feels "lucky" to be one of his whores. The lyrics narrate the psychology of a woman who "doesn't think very much" of herself; someone who is willing to be used. Where did this story come from?
From being on both sides of that dynamic. Ways I’ve treated lovers and ways they’ve treated me. This song is obviously less humorous and less thinky than the others. It’s sad and serious. The lines are from a couple of different points of view. We all know what it’s like to cling to someone because we hate ourselves. We also know the sadistic pleasure of having someone cling to you like that. Or maybe I should just speak for myself. Sorry.
Black Hoodie: The ongoing theme in this album is perhaps epitomized in this song: Material and physical themes translated through Biblical and spiritual tongue. Taken you aren't a Christian, what brought about the Christian influence in the lyrics? Is it tied to the Medieval Chant aspect of the music?
I’m not sure what it is about the tales and imagery of Christianity which compel me. I’m half Jewish and was raised non-religiously Christian (atheist but with Santa Claus). And no I’m certainly not Christian now. My ongoing love for Medieval and Renaissance music has brought some of it into my life. Aesthetically I love churches. Now I actually teach music at a Catholic school! I think I love the paradox of Jesus as both a man and a god. But that same paradox is included in a million other religions so Christians don’t own it. Anyway I certainly need something in my life to make me a better person. I don’t think Christianity itself is the thing for me. But being around Christians more and more in my adult life I can really see how a lot of people are clearly getting something deep and truly moral from their religion.
Head Shrinker: I understand your parents are psychiatrists. Is this song related to your parents practice? Who is the "fancy lad"?
My interest in psychoanalysis and therapy must be motivated by my parents, sure. And also by my on-and-off experiences with it. But this song and video are way more humorous and way less literally autobiographical than people might think. I didn’t actually blow some trust fund on coke or anything. But it is partly making fun of myself and making fun of therapy as a bourgeois artifact and the hilarious idea of “high class problems”; the vibe of cultivating this sophisticated refined taste for the subtleties of one’s own issues. It’s somewhat influenced by Oscar Wilde who I was reading at the time and by the Christian Death song “The Luxury of Tears”. All that being said though, I don’t think psychoanalytic thought is indulgent or superficial at its core. The basic idea of an unconscious with repressed psychic contents is absolutely true and profound.
The Body Is True: The beginning lines are peculiar: "Proper and thin as the letter 'I'/They coddled my precious mind. Told me I'd never die. That was a lie. The body is true because it dies." Who is they? Granted the lyrics can be interpreted many different ways, what did you mean by "the body is true because it dies"?
This is about growing up as a smart, non-athletic kid which I bet a lot of Extra Life listeners can relate to. You sit out gym but you think you’re superior because you’re in all the advanced classes, getting A’s and your parents and teachers are helping you develop a sense that your mind is your self. And the mind points to abstractions, to infinity. And when you identify yourself as a mind, you lose touch with the vibe of death. But eventually the crude reality of the body and that basic fact that you’re going to die catches up with you. To be whole you have to be physical. I guess on this record I was feeling a real new found respect (well, obsession maybe) for the body.
In a 2005 Wire interview Anthony Braxton stated,"We are moving towards a new Dark Ages." You said a similar kind of thing in an online interview. Being that you were a pupil of Braxton's, did his idea have any influence on your musical or life philosophy? Could you explain what you and Braxton are talking about?
Ah, I wish I had more for you there.. I can’t remember what I was talking about back then. I was probably thinking about the culture of the Bush era (which obviously isn’t over just because Obama’s in office) and the rabid anti-intellectual, anti-science, religious fundamentalist thing. But I’m definitely not the guy to make broad prognostications about where we’re heading as a culture! Braxton would be a much better guy for that.
Why did you choose to cover R. Kelly's "Your Body's Calling" and what was the process like of getting the copyrights to record and reproduce that song? Do you know if R. Kelly has heard the cover?
I've always loved Kellz's voice, although I've only recently really stopped to lend a serious ear to his music and to contemporary R&B in general. As for that particular song, it's actually not necessarily my favorite song of his, but I thought it fit the Extra Life vibe really well and that we could do something very different and personal with it. It doesn't have a crafted pop chord progression, it's just a repetitive vamp. And I love the lyrics and the title. It can be a confident come on, but it can be creepy and desperate. Getting the rights to it was easy and cost barely anything, since we were pressing so few copies of it. I would bet my left arm that R Kelly has not heard our version, or any of Extra Life's recordings.
Melisma is a big Extra Life theme. Could you elaborate on why you use melisma?
I actually wrote a whole pseudo-academic essay about melisma this year, which was completely lost when some kids broke into my house and stole my computer. Sucks. Anyway I could go on and on about melisma. I probably picked up that vocal style from Early Music and from Morrissey. But it's all over R&B of course, Kellz especially. I think I'm naturally attracted to singing that way because it uses the voice like an instrument. Since I was primarily a guitarist and pianist before becoming a singer, melisma is probably a bridge for me back to the world of instrumental music. With melisma, the voice is playing a role somewhere between declaiming text and making pure sound. It's like suspending the text for moment, opening it up to the purity of sound itself. The essay I wrote explored that kind of in-between character of melisma, and how that functioned in early Christian liturgical music, and also in my own music. I would love to re-write that essay, but I'm already wrapped up in more current things, I may just let it die at death.
