MURDER BY DEATH with SONGS FROM A ROOM and GENTLEMEN HUSBANDS at the Horseshoe (370 Queen West), Thursday (April 16). $15. 416-870-8000.
Attempting to describe the musical style of Indiana-based quartet Murder by Death is like playing darts with a blindfold and a moving board: you might get close from time to time, but you’ll never get a bull’s eye.
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I’ve tried out all the pretentious amalgams – “apocalyptic lit rock meets Americana,” “gothic country post-punk” – hell, even “brooding cinematic indie chamber Tex-Mex.” Catch-alls for the band they are not.
On the phone from New Hampshire, whisky-voiced frontman Adam Turla laughs when I reach out for clarification. He’s heard them all before. “Nobody ever knows what to call us. There’s no identity we want to have that’s why I don’t think we fit into any scene right now.
“We’re like a dark rock band with a cello, but there are also the literate moments and the slow, sombre moments. I like to have chameleonic phases, to have each album stand out from the others. It’s more satisfying for us creatively to mix it up.
“We’ve written tangos and sambas and four-on-the-floor rock songs and slow piano numbers. We’re trying to be a little bit of everything.”
Rough-and-tumble blood-soaked, dirt-caked narratives echoing Cash, Haggard and Kristofferson run through the band’s four albums. Turla, a former religious studies major, considers his songs stories, and says his albums can be broken up like chapters. The latest, Red Of Tooth And Claw, is a kind of re-envisioned Odyssey minus the likeable hero.
“It’s the story of this bad-news dude heading home to kill his wife. Along the way, he starts to realize he’s a self-righteous dirtbag. He’s running with this bad crew, and they’re raping and pillaging, and he realizes that these men are wild animals and he doesn’t want to be like that, so it’s kind of an album about redemption.”
And although he sometimes goes nine months without putting pen to paper, Turla’s already got his eye on his next opus. He just needs the right kind of stimulation.
“I’m going to go out into the woods with a fishing pole and a tent and spend as long as it takes to write the record. I think the extreme isolation will bring up something interesting.”
Interview Clips
Adam Turla discusses the story behind the band’s latest:
He explains his writing process:
On whether Murder By Death will ever fit into any particular scene:
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