The Earth Is a Man takes their experimentation pretty seriously. This Northwestern student band describes their sound as instrumental/progressive/post rock/experimental.
If you haven’t heard of them yet, you may start to in the near future. Since they only performed a few times last year, this year they said they want to “hit the ground running” and establish themselves more in the local band scene. They have plans to perform more frequently at shows around the area, as well as to record their music.
The Earth is a Man consists of Northwestern juniors Max Allison, Doug Kaplan, Will Crouse and sophomore Zach Robinson. The band premiered at Battle of the Bands for Dillo Day ’09, after forming the previous fall due to a variety of circumstances — Facebook threads, Doug Kaplan’s close resemblance to Jonah Hill, and a party at which Kaplan said he picked up his guitar and “a love was born.”
According to guitarist Zach Robinson, the band hit it off right away. Though he had not met Crouse or Allison previously, “something we all found in common at the first practice is that we all really like building up and being epic,” he said.
Though they wrote their first song within their first six weeks as a band, they took substantially longer to decide on a name for their group. Initially they went by King’s Arms, inspired by the armor near their practice space, until they discovered they were intruding on an already established Christian rock band. Instead, they decided on the name of a painting by surrealist Roberto Matta, based on a post apocalyptic screenplay.
As an instrumental band, they frequently receive questions about whether or not they’ll add lyrics, but they aren’t looking to get a vocalist just yet. Though they said they would reconsider if they found the perfect singer, for now they are content with their lineup.
As Kaplan put it, “lyrical music is too much of the norm.” They don’t have anything to say that they don’t say through the music itself.
Each of them has played their instrument since middle school, and “we all have lived enough in the musical lifestyle to know when something is generic,” Allison said. Instead, “we want to make [our music] something we want to listen to. We want to make music that’s different, daring.”
Though they might be “experimental,” Crouse, the band’s drummer, stresses that “it’s not about being clinical math or being weird for the sake of being weird.” Among their influences, they list Brian Eno, Tortoise and Explosion in the Sky.
“It’s experimental in form, but we try to have a concise melody,” Robinson said. “It’s equally experimental and accessible. In our music, we don’t know exactly all the time where we’re going but it always ends up working out really well. We have really high standards of quality.”
The band, whose EP is titled Having Fun in the Car with Friends, is actively pursuing their music and, now that they have a full set of songs, trying to book shows in small venues around Chicago. They are in the process of planning a show for late November at Bill’s Blues. “Playing live is an unstoppable rush,” Allison said. “It’s so much fun.”
Kaplan, who is “aggressive on the fretboard,” is said to break a guitar string almost every practice, and Robinson gets so animated on stage that he threw his back out twice this summer while performing. Despite all their fun, the band members place a lot of importance on their music, and they plan to take it as far as possible while they have the opportunity.
The band has trouble discussing their music because it is so different from most other bands out there, Kaplan said. “There aren’t a lot of bands that play just the kind of stuff we do, especially around campus — instrumental rock that doesn’t bore people.”
Check out some of their music for yourself by visiting their Web site here.