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Poi Dog Pondering sings the body acoustic on seventh CD

Chicago Sun-Times- Mar 27, 2008

BY THOMAS CONNER Online Features Editor

Early in Tom Robbins� acclaimed novel, Still Life With Woodpecker, the narrator frets that mere words won�t be enough to tell his story. His clacking typewriter�s inky letters on parchment won�t convey the real essence of his narrative. He pines instead for a �carved typewriter ... its keys living mushrooms, its ribbon the long iridescent tongue of a lizard. An animal typewriter, silent until touched, then filling the page with growls and squeals and squawks, yowls and bleats and snorts, brayings and chatterings and dry rattlings from the underbrush; a typewriter that could type real kisses, ooze semen and sweat.�

These are Frank Orrall�s same fears and desires. In 20 years of making music, Orrall has struggled to translate the sticky, wet, messy experience of life into living, breathing, bleeding pop music. The earthy songs of his band, Poi Dog Pondering, rock and groove but also hum and throb and sweat and laugh. The tunes have celebrated the human body almost as nakedly as Orrall�s lyrics. World beat or Chicago house music rhythms demand dancing, while Orrall � c�mon, a singing poet named Orrall! � sings about everything else you can do with your skin and eyes and hands and fluids. �You�re a cup that I hold by the cheekbones / I pull you close and I drink you up.� �Muscle and sweat and blood and bones / feel good, feel strong!� �Vim and vigor, full of piss and vinegar / wrapping around, surround and bound by ligaments and skin.� �Living With the Dreaming Body,� �I�ve Got My Body,� �Ta Bouche Est Tabou,� �Collarbone.�

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�There�s so much about the life of our bodies, and the life in our bodies, that we ignore or repress. I just sometimes try to sing that unsung stuff,� says Poi Dog Pondering singer and lyricist Frank Orrall.
(Platetectonic Music)

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Poi Dog history

Poi Dog Pondering

CD-release concert

8 p.m. Saturday

Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield

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(312) 559-1212

That peaty poetry continues on �7,� the seventh and latest Poi Dog Pondering record � out Tuesday, and celebrated at Saturday's sold-out show at the Vic Theatre � with Orrall confessing to a ravenous sexual appetite in �Candy,� demanding that someone �spread your love all over me� in �Super Tarana (little golden deer),� which is definitely in the same spirit of �Sticky,� and, in perhaps his most conservative lyric yet, pondering the thought of making a �Baby Together.�

�There�s so much about the life of our bodies, and the life in our bodies, that we ignore or repress. I just sometimes try to sing that unsung stuff,� says Orrall during a recent conversation at a South Loop tea house. �But music�s about the body and the spirit.�

�Movement music�

That would be the �rock and soul� dichotomy he insists on applying to �7,� the first Poi Dog disc since 2003 and the first in many years to eschew samplers and sequencers and get back to making music with instruments made of wood. They even tracked the whole album using analog tape.

�We�re always a band to follow our instinct,� Orrall says. �When our instinct was interested in electronic music, we followed it. This time, we were in the mood to make a rock and roll record � a rock and soul record. It�s a cyclical thing. Things change. I always like to let Poi Dog change as it does rather than stick to a certain sound. It messes with people. They�re always asking, �What kind of band are you?� �

Really, though, the theoretical simply gave in to the practical.

�A lot of that [electronic] stuff was hard to convey live,� Orrall says, thinking further. �The song �10-28� off [2003�s album] �In Seed Comes Fruit� has this backward harp sample that�s really the defining part of the song. Playing live, you need that harp sample. You can take that loop with you on tour, but you can�t play it faster if you feel like playing the song faster. � A major thing that led to this record was me being out on tour with Thievery Corporation. We were sitting around, and one of the guys said, �Play me one of your new songs.� And I realized I couldn�t play him anything on the guitar. I needed all this gear just to convey my ideas. So I thought, I want to be at a dinner party and be able to play all our new songs with just one acoustic guitar.� He smiles. �I gotta say, it feels nice. This record is very � portable.�

Susan Voelz, the band�s longtime violin player, agrees. �Frank said he wanted to make some music he could play on the bus, you know, without having to set up backing tracks,� Voelz said during a separate interview by phone. �And now we�ve really got some songs under our fingers. I love it. Every incarnation of Poi Dog is a trip, you know.�

Make no mistake, the tunes on �7� are still frequently rhythmic and easily danceable. The only real difference is that the grooves are laid down by congas and body slaps and real drums.

Poi Dog shows are usually writhing affairs, with the audience in near-constant motion. Orrall dances, too. He started as a drummer in his native Hawaii, and he confesses to some songs (�Natural Thing,� even the languid �Catacombs�) being born not out of lyrical or purely musical ideas but from ways he wanted to move his body on stage. He says he likes going out dancing and never misses �Brazilian night� at Chicago�s Sonotheque nightclub.

Part of what attracted Orrall and his band (then based in Austin, Texas) to settle in Chicago early in the �90s was that love of dance and dance music. Arriving in 1992 on the swell of Chicago�s most creative house music years, Orrall says the local DJs he encountered furthered his love of �movement music.�

�It was a beautiful, free period back then,� Orral remarks on what became a transformative time for his band. �We�d heard the Happy Mondays� first record while on tour in England, and we knew something was happening. �Get Me On� [from Poi Dog�s 1990 album �Volo Volo�] was clearly a Manchester-inspired song. Then you had Naughty by Nature and Deee-Lite, in we came here to Chicago with all this great dance music. It was rock and dance together. The exuberance carried through in a way it hadn�t before. It was great.�

�The ego of words�

The core of Poi Dog followed Orrall to Chicago. But Orrall�s music changed. That is, the lyrics almost fell away completely. The �Volo Volo� album originally was completed as an all-instrumental record, which the band�s major label at the time politely declined to release; much of that music became the debut of Orrall�s first of many side projects, the Palm Fabric Orchestra. Poi Dog released another fairly traditional acoustic-based record, �Pomegranate,� in 1995, but Orrall showed his new hand by immediately following it with �Electrique Plummagram,� a collection of �Pomegranate� remixes and other electronically derived songs, including some Chicago house music covers.

�I liked the vibe of the electronic stuff a lot,� said violin-player Voelez. Her role as a wooden instrument player was not diminished, she said. �I love trip-hop. I�ve played with a trip-hop DJ for a while. Instrumentally, the rules changed and the music was different. It wasn�t all eight-bar phrases. The melodies took over sometimes as opposed to the lyrics. � I was at South by Southwest [the annual music festival in Austin] last week, and I didn�t see Lou Reed, but I read about him saying that emotional music with intelligent lyrics is what you�re going for. The emotion of the music has to be there. It melds with the lyrics, but the music can communicate by itself if it has to. Or if it wants to.�

This is the direction Orrall says he took his music during the last several years here in Chicago. He stopped writing lyrics. He and Poi Dog dabbled in arranging for orchestra, presenting two acclaimed concerts with the Chicago Sinfonietta, each of which included an electronically buttressed �remix� of first Dvorak�s New World Symphony and then �Carmen.� He toyed with ambient video creations in relation to music. He collected a lot of plug-in gear.

�I was experimenting with long instrumental passages, feeling that there�s so much you can say with music � why clutter it with the ego of words?� he says, hunching up his arms. �Plus, I was getting into this pattern of trying to write songs as opposed to perfunctorily going about writing them. They felt too ego-driven. I basically lost the point for a while. Then, more recently, I just started writing, without expectations, without trying to cram what came to me into four lines, then a chorus, then four more lines. I found I really liked writing long prosaic things rather than in meter. That�s when I started getting the material I wanted to get.�

And that�s when the new album took shape, as well as its musical direction or return to form.

�I found myself wanting to be more confessional. Every song we�ve done was written from my actual experience; I�ve never made anything up. I just felt like peeling the skin back more for this record. You get into that frame of being, and you sometimes feel more acoustic than electronic, too,� Orrall says. �The process really took off, too. We went into the studio with 35 songs, and eight more were written in there.�

Poi Dog unveils the new songs at the Saturday show. After that, the large ensemble � Orrall has to think for a moment about how many players make up the current incarnation of the revolving-door band (it�s 10) � hits the road for a rare cross-country tour. When that�s done, they return to play at Ravinia, a venue they haven�t graced in a decade.

�We had a record crowd there last time we played,� Orrall says. (The show in August 1997 may have been a record for the band, but it wasn�t for Ravinia.) �And there wound up being problems with Ravinia�s neighbors. It was really a peak time for us, and huge crowds came, and then there were town meetings about it. So we just kind of stayed away.� He thinks another moment, sips his tea. �But it felt like time to go back. I guess a lot of this record is about going back.�