![]() ![]() There’s no greater proof of Defever’s musical and conceptual restlessness than band’s Discogs page, a dizzying place where genre is meaningless and rules are made to be broken. But, as HNIA releases began to proliferate wildly, I quickly realized that there was no such thing as a HNIA “sound.” ![]() I loved the heart-on-sleeve poeticism of those early records, and their collagist aesthetic was deeply appealing, too. (That’s vocalist Karin Oliver with the scissors.) But I’m not saying which ones!” (You can read the entire piece here.) There are two songs on Home Is In Your Head that are older than any of the songs on Livonia. ” “What was it called?” WD: “Doesn’t matter.” “Has any of this stuff reappeared on albums?” WD: “Most of it appeared on Livonia. “You released some cassettes before you got hooked up with with 4AD, right?” WD: “Right, the first cassette was called. And with the release of this trilogy - All the Mirrors, Return to Never and Hope Is a Candle - recorded in Defever family rec rooms, basements, and on dining room tables, the content of our discussion (the Livonia, Michigan, origins of the band) seems newly relevant.īack then, trying to tease out information about the pre-4AD HNIA was tricky. In the ensuing years, Warren’s band - an ever-changing universe of collaborators, vocalists, and styles - has stayed a centerpiece of my musical life. When I met Warren Defever on a dreary, unremarkable night in 1993 to talk about HNIA, little did I know I would be circling back to that same conversation this many years later. It was awesome and transfixing, like staring into deep space. ![]() I just remember this vast, inky black inland sea with no edges, extending as far as the eye could see. But it’s hopeful, too - it reminds me of standing at the edge of Lake Michigan at night for the first time. During the past year that took so many things away from us, including the catharsis of live music, I’ve increasingly relied on listening to LPs in their entirety, rather than my iPod on shuffle.Īll the Mirrors in the House: Early Recordings 1986-1990 (Disciples), the first of 3 volumes revisiting His Name Is Alive’s earliest cassette experiments, hit a perfect chord for me during this bizarre stasis-time we’re all trapped in songs like “Piano Rev” feel unstuck in time and fathomless (a very now feeling). ![]()
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