Openly gay brothers John and Frank Navin, of the Aluminum Group, are fans of Le Tigre; purveyors of controversial promotional album art-;that's Valium laced cotton candy on the poster for their new album PELO ( Hefty Records ) ; chroniclers of a "sad gay life"; fashion and design fanatics; present on cool compilations and movie soundtracks; and two of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. Both single, John and Frank have, over the course of a handful of albums, written some of the most lovely and wonderful songs about loneliness, love, sex, and drugs. Their sound has morphed from gay Bacharach lounge to Future Bible Heroes synth to Thrill Jockey post-pop to the current album's amalgam of all of the above.
Beginning with the slightly Asian-influenced instrumental track and then going into semi-bittersweet chocolate of "If You've Got A Lover, You've Got A Life," PELO is, on the whole, more accessible than last year's excellent PEDALS. The album's dazzling centerpiece, "Good-bye Goldfish, Hi Pirhana," which features Sally Timms' haunting vocals, is the best song ever written about a drug deal gone wrong. "Satellite" and "Cannot Make You Out" ( which features Amy Warren on lead vocals ) deserve to be the Aluminum Group's first two top-40 hits, while the very experimental "Tom Of Finland {an homage} could be very popular with daring college radio DJs.
Gregg Shapiro: I want to talk about your recent record label shift. You went from ...
Frank Navin: Minty Fresh.
GS: Minty Fresh, which is a small, independent label, to what is probably an even smaller label, Hefty Records.
John Navin: Oh, yes and a younger person.
GS: Right. As opposed to going the other way, to a major label.
JN: Frank and I are not interested, at this point in time, in working with mainstream labels, for this project. We are going to do it project-by-project now. In addition to Hefty, ( record labels ) Thrill Jockey, Drag City and Merge were all under major consideration. Matador, as well. Our main thing was to work with friends or to work with people that we know, artists that we listen to that are on their roster.
GS: Merge would have been a good choice because Merge has ...
FN: Magnetic Fields and The 6ths.
JN: Merge would have been perfect.
FN: John Hughes Jr. ( from Hefty Records ) just came to us and we didn't have a label, but we had a finished product ( PELO ) . John and I had been paying for this ourselves. So, John Hughes was like, "You know, I really, really like this CD. I would really like to put it out." We were like, "That's phenomenal."
JN: John Ridenour, Frankie and I ( the core of The Aluminum Group ) , the three of us were there through the whole process. John Ridenour, who also has done some work with John Hughes Jr., has a correspondence apart from The Aluminum Group, in his own solo work and also is interested in electronic music, had said John Hughes Jr. was like, "If the Aluminum Group needs a backup plan, might they consider Hefty?" We said, "It's not a backup plan. It would be something as equally of value to Frank and I as Thrill Jockey or Drag City." John is young, he's 24, but he's super talented and super mature. He's really working hard on Hefty.
GS: Do you think that Minty Fresh didn't get the gay thing?
FN: No, I don't think it was about being gay.
JN: No, they were very supportive.
FN: I think that we weren't top-40 ( enough ) for them. That's what they are looking for. Like ( the band ) Tahiti 80. That's what they want to do. When we sent them a mastered version of PELO, I just think it scared them away. They didn't want do it.
GS: Which is amazing because compared to PEDALS ( the previous disc ) , PELO is much more accessible and commercial.
JN: They also felt that PEDALS was too left-field.
GS: But PELO sort of brings it back.
JN: Right. But they wanted something really straight on. They wanted a radio, if not top-40, hit.
GS: You also have a song in the independent movie Straightman.
FN: "Coversazione." That's an Italian song.
JN: They used the song "Chocolates" in the movie Cleopatra's Second Husband, which is about this guy's descent into insanity.
GS: This record seems to have a few more instrumentals than your previous albums. There's "Pussycat" and "Geraldine." Who is Geraldine?
FN: Geraldine was my old girlfriend from 15 years ago.
JN: We were in a band together.
GS: Was there a reason you included a couple more instrumentals?
FN: Yeah, we wanted to be more musical. We liked the idea of the lyric setting inside the music more—the lyric being even more instrumental. Like on the third track, "Good-bye Goldfish, Hi Pirhana." That was coming from an idea that I had of, wouldn't it be beautiful to have this four-minute sort of instrumental and then this song starts and right as it is starting and you are expecting it go, it just starts to go away.
JN: That's my favorite track.
GS: Yes, it lulls you in. The instrumental introduction. It's so beautiful and then it goes on with the combination of the lyrics. The lyrics are so bizarre.
FN & JN ( together ) : What do you think about that song?
GS: I love it. Is Sally Timms ( vocalist on the track ) becoming the Marianne Faithfull of Chicago?
FN: I think so, totally.
JN: Sally is better than Marianne Faithfull, I'm sorry. She is a national treasure. We are so lucky to even rub shoulders with that woman. Sally is one of the greatest people we know in terms of the people we work with. She is our girl.
FN: If you can just stop her from reading magazines while you are trying to work with her. ( In a British accent ) "I've got it baby. I've got it."
