Feral Children

When I met with members of the Seattle band Feral Children at The Redwood on Capital Hill, they were an unsigned musical entity. A few days later, this was no longer the case. The band has spent the last month, not in their practice space, as you would expect, but with lawyers, negotiating terms for a record label. The nearly 10 years of perseverance has finally paid off.

The band members, each quirky and unique in their own way, were eager to tell their story. Jim Cotton, Josh Gamble, Jeff Keenan and Sergey Posrednikov comprise the rowdy bunch which grew up in rural Maple Valley. In their free time they would emulate their local favorite, Modest Mouse, while rehearsing in a backwoods trailer. The group’s first incarnation, Blood Alley Accident, broke up for two years and then regrouped under the moniker of Feral Children in 2005. With the recent addition of drummer Bill Cole in July 2007, their sound is complete.

With a sound as versatile as theirs, change was inevitable. Jim Cotton’s (lead vocals, bass) days of paying his bills by working as a cook at The Redwood are numbered, though he still took the opportunity to shamelessly recommend the meatloaf sandwich (solid advice). The rest of the band, I’m sure, are tally marking their walls as they countdown to the kickoff of their 10-stop west coast tour on New Year’s Eve at The Comet Tavern.

The Noise
Picking up their full-length CD Second to the Last Frontier (Buffalo Shoe, 2007), I was relieved to hear music I had never really heard before. Their sound has been compared to Modest Mouse, Animal Collective and The Arcade Fire, but the band insists the latter two are only because they have all shared Scott Colburn (Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, Mudhoney, Transmissionary Six) as their producer. Instead, Feral Children chooses to list Animal, The Raincoats, Lightning Bolt, 764 Hero and the Murder City Devils as their influences, insisting their sound is original because “conventional music does not work for [them].” Nothing could be closer to the truth. Second to the Last Frontier provides even the meticulous listener a buffet of interesting sounds to feast their hungry ears upon.

Feedback noise, falsetto “who whoo’s,” surprise screams, mid-song de-tunings and guitar crunches/crackles all add to the distinctively unique sound of Feral Children. As a musician myself, the art of making these sounds is what interested me the most.

Take their first single, “Jaundice Giraffe,” for example. The song begins with a single synth sound that can most likely be credited to keyboard whiz Sergey Posrednikov’s ability to find the perfect noise for just about anything. The keys hold and we’re still left waiting … then the drumbeat: boom-chick, boom-chick, bass, snare, bass, snare. The segment can be easily diagnosed as simple, and therefore the whole song disregarded, but listen again and it may start to haunt you—just as it did me. The beat does not change, and with this eerie foundation laid it is now time for the fun part. Proving to the listener that you never quite know what to expect from this band, the next five minutes of “Jaundice Giraffe” reveal a free-for-all of musical outbursts that are flawlessly mixed together. The end product is a smoothly captured, gripping, ethereal chant. The only interruption is the occasional strained outburst of Cotton’s brash, but entirely appropriate, vocals.

The song is also an example of Feral Children’s ability to be vague and yet still thought provoking with their bizarre lyrics. These undoubtedly add to the mystique that keeps you coming back for more. “They love your skin, they love your yellow skin,” is the song’s only obvious repeating mantra, but other lines (which I have yet to find published anywhere) hint on the same satirical social criticism that can be found in most of their work on this album. Cotton sings, “Getting each other sick. I wish we were lawyers. We’d be getting each other rich.” I doubt I’ll be the only one listening and watching closely when I get the chance to see them play these songs live.

With a credible list of generous praise on their My Space page proving support from most of Seattle’s major music publications, as well as full support from KEXP, they can only go up from here.