And then it comes: the familiar chirrup of a cell phone cuts into the scene like a butcher's blade, as out of place in the band's sepia-toned sound as a pair of Nike Shox in a period Western. Given the title of the track, and the timing, it almost seems planned. It wouldn't be completely inappropriate, since Flemmons is moaning on about people living the wrong way, missing the song their heart is singing. The phone ringing? It's called irony, folks. Look it up. But then it becomes frighteningly clear this prop was not in the shooting script.
"Goddammit!" Flemmons screams, dropping his guitar, heading into battle. "Oh, God!"
"Stop the tape," someone says, but no one bothers to. The track isn't quite finished.
"Fuck!" Flemmons continues. "God!" A kick punctuates the short sentence. "Damn!"
Another kick.
"Hey, hey, hey," one of his bandmates says, trying to calm him. "It's okay."
But it rarely is okay when listening to No Silver/No Gold, an album recorded with less fidelity than a celebrity marriage. Set against a bare backdrop of spare strumming and train-a-comin' taps, the disc is a place where "blood satisfies the way it moves to other places / From the inside to the outside to the cold, cold ground" ("500 League Reunion March [in a Plymouth]"). Where dreams are just that ("All your dreams / Though you might want them to be real / Are going south," Flemmons sings on "Diminished"). Where love is "a murder / It's a theft of the blood and breath" ("Burning"). And alcohol covers everything and everyone like the morning dew. Though Flemmons's explosion at the end of "Ay Distress" is the most violent, tinier bombs detonate throughout the album, the kind that break hearts and spirits.
"Doing something live, usually you have one chance to get it right," Flemmons says, explaining why that version of the song ended up on the finished album. "And we did two more recordings of it, within a couple or three weeks of doing that. But when it was all done, we were replaying the tapes, and it was like, 'Man, you know, I really like this version a lot.' And we kinda liked the destruction that takes place at the end of the song." He laughs. "I didn't think the phone was out in the garage when we were recording; I thought I'd left it in the house. And we're all listening in headphones while we're recording. All of us can hear what's going on while we're recording. I just knew that that was the one, you know? And then the damn phone rings. I just lost it."
Things have been looking up for Flemmons since then. Last year, Sub Pop signed the group, giving the Baptist Generals and No Silver/No Gold a stepladder out of obscurity. The label rose to prominence in the early 1990s, and though the luster has dulled somewhat in recent years, it remains a name that opens doors and ears. Sub Pop contacted the band a couple of years ago, not long after the release of its debut EP, 2000's Dog, a disc that found gospel amid the grime, out of step but still ahead of the pack.
"They talked to us for a long time," Flemmons says. "And we didn't know what we thought of Sub Pop at first. You know, just the history that they've had. We told them thanks and 'Let's talk to each other still.' " And that was it.
By the time Flemmons reconnected with Sub Pop, the label's payroll had grown to include a number of bands similar in sound and spirit to the Baptist Generals: Holopaw, the answer to the unasked question "What if Radiohead formed a country band?"; Iron & Wine, Samuel Beam's one-man choir of angels; and the Fruit Bats, whose Sub Pop debut is due later this year. When Sub Pop first reached out to Flemmons, he wasn't sure where he fit in on the label's indie rock roster. After hearing the new additions, he still wasn't sure.
"I wasn't aware that it was so well developed, that they'd been signing all those people," he says. "I had no idea. I mean, it seems like they signed so many people just doing the same type of stuff almost, in such a short time. I was like, Jesus. I couldn't figure it out, you know? I was wondering how it was that we got signed. I'm glad that we're there, but I've got a feeling that they've probably had enough of acoustic whatever." He laughs.
He's joking, but maybe Flemmons is right. Maybe Sub Pop is just throwing anyone who makes rustic and rural records against the wall, seeing which one will stick. Maybe he got lucky, and just happened to have the right sound at the right time. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It's hard to believe any of that after listening to No Silver/No Gold. It pulses with the kind of real heart that most albums lack, breathing and bleeding, crying and cursing, drinking and dying. (You can hear a little bit of everything on "Alcohol [Turn and Fall]," the best -- and, in a way, worst -- song on the disc.) There's melody among the maladies, but it's still a tough listen. Not surprising since Flemmons wrote the songs while recuperating from surgery, and recovering from the loss of his father.
"I started out trying to write something that wasn't so bleak -- and at points, it's not so bleak -- but it's still just emotionally exhausting," he says. "I'm always stunned when people say they've listened to this thing over and over again. I'm like, 'Why would you do that?' " He laughs. "This isn't a repeat listen. How could you do that? I just really don't want to make an album that kinda tears me up just to try and get through. Next album, I'd like for it to be kinda happy." He laughs again. "But it probably won't be."
