In the early 90s, bands from all over the world answered the sounds erupting from the UK and it’s “shoegazer” scene (so named because the bands rarely looked up or moved during their performances - but it became a better qualifier for those sonically exploring the guitar sounds of the day.) DC even had it’s own poptastic take on the sound hit the bigtime via Velocity Girl. However, it was a lesser-known group from this fair city that would be the one to make one of the all-time shoegazer classic records. Lorelei was (and is) a volatile cast of characters and instrumentation. Playing rarely, the times that I caught them were forever locked into my mind. Live, I still need a moment to make sense of it all in my mind before I lock in by the midpoint of the first song. On record, they seemed from another world entirely: certainly not from here in DC.

When Slumberland released “Everyone Must Touch the Stove” in 1994 it was as a labor of love for all involved. The band and the label were all just happy to have documented the songs. The record became a hard to find treat mere months later. Put out by a label mostly known for it’s twee roster and unknown in large parts of its hometown, much less its home country, it was destined as such. As time has gone by, many of the records from this movement have fallen by the wayside, but not so for “Everyone.” Now as innovative as it is unique, every song continues to enthrall. The disc has never left my rotation and I can honestly say that I still hear something new in-between it’s textures with every listen.

Doing justice to the lost classic feel of the album, the band broke up not long after. Working on various projects in the interim, after nearly a decade, they decided to reconvene to finish off some tracks they had started for the follow-up. The result was the “Informed by the Future” EP that then led to some local appearances. I had the good fortune to catch a memorable night of the band performing to candlelight and was even more fortunate to sit down to a meal with guitarist/vocalist Matt Dingee, bassist Stephen Gardner and the power drumming Davis White to chat (with I the only one eating meat of course.) Here are some highlights:

In the beginning there were different line-ups with Davis even playing Mandolin.
DW: That was basically how I became the drummer, as our current drummer wouldn’t make practices and soon our practices began to sound better than our actual shows. Then our guitarist left for college.

So how did Matt come in?
DW: It wasn’t even a conversation – it was just sort of Stephen telling me that this guy that I had seen play a set with Wally (Lilys and later Poole) wanted to play with us and I was like lets go for it.

MD: We had played, Lilys, with the five-piece version of Lorelei. Wally was living in my closet basically in college and we played together and I was sort of unceremoniously removed unbeknownst to me. He was actually the one that suggested I call up the Lorelei guys. Archie Moore (Velocity Girl among others) replaced me I think.

You were on board for the show opening for The Wedding Present right?
MD: Yeah – that’s the one where David Gedge told me “I like your guitar sounds and everything but for me it’s about writing songs.” I was like, “but we have songs.”

They are in there. You just have to listen a little harder.
MD: Right. I sort of wish he wasn’t so into the song per se as I feel like he lost the plot a little bit.

So you guys congealed as a three piece out of necessity?
SG: We played as a five-piece with Matt. Matt was replacing Dave on guitar, who had formed the band along with Davis and I. The tensions became overwhelming though around artistic… shall we say, intentions. It wasn’t a big fight or anything. It just wasn’t working out.

DW: There was a van ride.

SG: Back from CMJ.

DW. Where it was just obvious that this group of people were never going to play together again. We’re all musicians but there is just no way to sort this out to work.

SG: After that we had some people try out but we were basically a three-piece. It made the most sense and was the most manageable and economic in terms of songwriting. We always wrote collaboratively. So in fact, given that model three was really the max we could handle.

To me your sound expanded as the band got smaller. You were never like a power trio. Instead you were playing as if there were eight people in the band and I was sure you couldn’t replicate it live but in some ways it was more massive.
MD: I have friends who always say they think there is more than one guitar. Like one is hiding behind the amp.

We can debate what “songs” are but to me you always have underlying melodies and counter melodies in the playing so whatever you lacked in traditional songwriting you more than made up for in dynamics.
DW: What you’re hearing is really the main fault of the band. As a drummer, I need to come up with a part and Stephen and Matt are coming up with parts and in some ways I don’t know who to listen to and it will have an incongruent quality to it where I throw a part here and there to each of them. Now in version 2.0 I’m not as concerned about making the biggest racket possible.

MD: I would say we are just a little bit quieter now.

DW: Right but what we are playing is sort of two different songs and in the early days you could have faulted us for playing three different songs at once.

To me, that was really the strength of the band. There was so much more to appreciate and you rewarded attention to the details.
MD: We are trying to be more nuanced now and have the details come out live where in the past they might have been a little buried in the noise. We still had complex songs structures in the past but now it is a little more in the forefront.

You all seem to have focused on the negatives in a way of the past where as to me you were a bit of a success story in a way that you made the best American shoegazer record possibly ever and a top five, top ten of all-time. Was doing that on Slumberland versus on Creation a hindrance?
SG: Not at all. Without Slumberland there wouldn’t have been a record.

MD: We certainly wouldn’t have made it back from our tour of the UK as they basically paid for us to come home.

Did you feel like this was going to be a big release?
SG: We always understood that for whatever reason we were facing limited attention and appreciation in DC. That was our plight. While it was easier to get shows you had to really seek out music then whereas now it can be more of a passive experience. Our expectations were appropriately limited.

MD: We were making the best record we possibly could. At GNS on “Crimelab” we had ever light in the rack blinking at one point - which we encouraged.

My memory at the time was that there were bands being signed that no one would have dreamed of before and DC was never going to fully embrace the group but you still should have been the biggest band in the Netherlands or something like that.
SG: We had a flirtation with major labels but at the time you had the grunge explosion and people wanted us to do something for them and not something for us.

MD: And we were insanely stubborn.

SG: It was clear what their intentions were and we wanted to record for someone we had respect for and also for someone that wanted us to make records for us.

MD: We couldn’t really tour behind it and we didn’t get out of DC.

SG: Slumberland didn’t have a booking agent and there was no bigger band we could naturally go on the road with. None of the bands in our sort of scene went further west than Pittsburgh.

MD: The Simple Machines bands had something built in but we couldn’t follow the DC punk tour because people would ask what we sounded like and we would give them a few bands and get noting on the other end of the receiver and if there isn’t any frame of reference it is hard to have the conversation.

How did you get involved with the “If You Don’t Try, Nothing Ever Happens” documentary of your UK tour?
SG: It was a friend of ours, Robert Salsbury working at Evil Genius studio with Ian Jones. I think he could see things were going to be volatile and interesting on the trip. He knew it would be dramatic. The tour sort of came about as I had become friends with this writer for NME who was actually the second singer for the first iteration of Stereolab; She saw us at my high school as my senior year we did a show with The Ropers and Unrest and they came to see Unrest who had signed to 4AD. They were nice enough to write us up and said that we should really come over for some shows. We ended up having some disasters on the tour but it wasn’t a disaster as an experience. We had finished the EP and came out of that to make the record and our ideas were strengthened a bit I think.

MD: But our ideas of touring were forever diminished. It made me happy that we made a document with the record rather than playing those songs into the ground touring.

SG: After that experience, we knew we couldn’t manage a major tour without all the things (booking, a release, management) you need. I was 17 at the time and doing those things.

So Matt moves to California and basically ends version 1.0 of the band?
MD: I moved to help run Dropbeat, which was the record store owned by the same person that ran Slumberland but I didn’t end up being much help and he didn’t end up relinquishing much control. I ended up falling into the tech industry and stayed for 10 more years.

SG: But we had started the basics for a couple of tracks.

MD: I recorded overdubs at my house – a long time later.

DW: I think it took me 6 years to send you the tapes.

SG: I also went to college before Matt left and we still played for a year and a half but when Matt left it just seemed untenable as a band. I think that was how we were able to come back together. We didn’t have some explosive end. We needed a break maybe but we hadn’t run out of ideas.

MD: We were still friends.

SG: It didn’t seem functional and we had other things to explore musically. I had started Chessie (his instrumental duo.)

MD: And I started LU as a recording project.

So what ultimately brought you back together?
MD: I moved back to the area.

SG: Davis and I had stayed good friends. All of us had stayed friends. I was in New England until 01 and Davis helped me on the Chessie records. We kept working together in bits and pieces. On the third Chessie disc he became more of the process. And when we worked on the Lorelei EP we all felt good about it. And there is something un…

MD: …finished

SG: Un-comparable to playing with people you have known for so long.

MD: I tried playing with people in California and they could never understand me and vice versa. Why are there so many parts? Why is it so complicated?

You have a really unique way of interlocking with one another musically that I would think would be near impossible to duplicate.
SG: There is just a report. I think Davis described it best as three rival ideas competing for space in a sense. But there is a way to make it work.

The record to me still sounds fresh after all these years.
MD: I do feel like we got cut off at the wrong time.

Come and see Lorelei along with Mahogany at the friendly Black Cat on July 3rd

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