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Tell-tale heart condition >> The Delmarva Scheme scratch their dark underbellies
by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
Mirror: Tell me about some of the stories on your new album. Keith Marchand (drums): Let's see, the most sweeping narratives would be things like "Pontchartrain Funeral," about the bridge that leads into New Orleans. We wrote scenarios about people who end up at the bottom of Pontchartrain Lake; one is a car accident, one guy gets dumped there and one guy commits suicide because he spent the family fortune--badly. Paul Bracegirdle (guitar): There are narratives about motorcycle racers, teddy boys... There's "Teen Love," which is about a teenage boy who becomes obsessed with the "yummy mummy" next door... KM: Then the husband comes after him. So they're pretty much all about the dark underbelly, but we're not necessarily romanticizing. I think there's a tongue-in-cheek feel to what we do, to some degree. PB: For instance, the whole tough-guy stance is supposed to be taken humourously. KM: We don't consider ourselves scrappers or lounge-oids. We just like singing about these things, in the third person. Maybe the way Jim Jarmusch would treat something, rather than the way, say, the Chrome Cranks posture on stage. We don't want to pretend to be something we're not. M: As much as you're telling stories about characters, you've also got a very good sense of place, of environment. To what extent is this simple romanticization of places you've never been to... KM: No, it's places we've seen and want to recreate what we felt when we were there. We've all travelled quite a bit. "Sabretooth," for instance, is about a British character with razors on his lapels who gets into lots of fistfights. Paul's experiences in Britain, seeing some of the crazy people in Scotland, inspired that. I think there's a fascination on the part of our bassist, Gary Brazier, with the Arizona desert. I'm fascinated with the East Coast, decrepit motels and all that... M: Yeah, with Cthulhu hiding under the floorboards... PB: There's your East Coast! H.P. Lovecraft is a definite influence on my writing. M: The kung fu master of adjectives. PB: I love how he can scare you without actually describing anything, ever. KM: "The indescribable, incomprehensible horror...!" PB: And it washes! M: Let's talk about the cover art, a disembodied heart... KM: It's actually ceramics done by Lulu Galway. She used an actual cow heart as the model. We decided we didn't want the band name on the cover, just the single heart. M: What does that represent, the heart laid bare? KM: I think so, yeah. We were gonna call it "You Break Your Own Heart," after the closing track... PB: But that sounded a little too new country. KM: So we decided to just have the heart, and people could figure it out for themselves.
CD launch with guests Quinimine at Jailhouse Rock, Saturday, July 17, 9pm, $5 |
You can think of the tunes on local band the Delmarva Scheme's self-titled debut CD as invisible little movies, cinematic music (spaghetti-western guitar, groaning B-3, melancholy trumpet) supplementing yarns of manly swagger and its attendant pitfalls. How do they do it? Let's find out: