Songs marked “by odd wisdom and surreal images,” was how we described Way Out West, the 2021 album by Bozeman, Montana‘s King Ropes. “All cloaked in a psych-inflected air that only accentuates the strangeness.” Coupled with significant inspiration from the rural landscape and the lives lived upon it, the release introduced the band’s distinctive ability to combine mystical and banal imagery, a style of rock looking to capture an elusive truth by injecting weirdness into everyday living.
The title of the latest King Ropes record therefore feels fitting. Super Natural. A manifestation or event “attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature,” is how the dictionary defines supernatural, but the title isn’t quite that. Perhaps it instead refers to the opposite. Something perfectly in line with scientific understanding and the laws of nature. Something especially natural.
With equal parts realism and oddness, the album does not fall on one side or the other, instead embracing both simultaneously. Be it the unexplained symptoms of ‘Breathing’ or ideas of reincarnation on ‘My Brother’s a Bear Now’, or the very human sense of loss and worry which ghosts across both. The mood is typified by single ‘Greedy‘, what we described as “a deadpan stream of consciousness which captures the vibe of an album that is a ramshackle ode to both the grace and difficulty of our strange world.” A slacker rock track about a trip to Coney Island, but also so much more than that. As though the garish lights of the tilt a whirl and the made-up faces of mermaids on parade are not some departure from reality but rather its essence distilled. “Kinda trippy,” as the lyrics go. “Kinda dreamy.”
We took the opportunity to speak with the band to dig a little deeper into the ideas and stories behind the record:
Hi Dave and everyone at King Ropes, thanks for speaking with us and congratulations on the release of Super Natural. How’s it feel to put another record into the world?
Hi, great speaking with you too! And thanks, we always appreciate what you do at Various Small Flames. It always feels good releasing a record, but this one feels (laughing) extra special to us somehow. We recorded this in our spot in Bozeman (Montana) in a way that somehow felt more relaxed, and at the same time more focussed and direct than anything we’ve done before. Ben (Roth) brought his gear out from Seattle and we set up in our spot for about 8 or 10 days, and dove in without any real outside distractions. I had written the songs, and worked them out with Jeff (Jensen) pretty well, but we’d never played them before. We’d work on a song for a while until it felt like something was gelling, then Jeff and I would go get coffees while Ben set up mic’s, and we’d hit record. It kept feeling like we were capturing lightening in a bottle. Pretty great feeling!
There’s a directness to many of the songs which feels different to your previous work, with tracks like ‘Breathing’ facing things in a pretty unflinching manner. Was this something you set out to achieve with the new record, or did the songs just happen to emerge this way?
I think you’re right. And yeah, it was something we were all trying to do. I wrote these songs as the lockdown stuff was really settling in, and we were all, the whole world, realizing it was going to go on and on, who knew how long. Somehow that helped me approach the songwriting in a more focussed way, I guess. Like with the recording, it felt both more focussed and more relaxed. I can’t really explain why. Maybe something to do with some of the distractions of normal life being put on the back burner? The more I got into that mode the more I was conscious of what was happening, and I kept leaning into it. ‘Breathing’ for sure is a good example. And ‘Blind Eye’. Maybe even more, ’Drunk Donny’ and ‘Sure’ which both have hardly any lyrics at all. They just say the thing, and I leave it at that. I’d never written so sparely before, and it felt like a bit of a revelation.
I’m also interested in the wry humour of your work, and how this relates to the painful and personal aspects of the songs. Does the playful side of your style let you push deeper than you perhaps otherwise might?
For sure! I mean life can be brutal and painful and unrelenting, but it’s also bizarre and hilarious, right? I guess in the broadest sense I’m trying to address, to express, some of the ways that we all have very particular experiences that relate to the human experience broadly, universally, you know? It’s what bonds us all. It wouldn’t feel honest to just give a voice to one side or the other, tragedy or comedy. They really are inseparable.
That said, there’s a weird, inscrutable side to the music too. Be it on ‘Real Live Tiger’ or the appropriately titled closer ‘Mystery’. Not to ask a magician to reveal his tricks, but do you have a good handle on what these more cryptic elements refer too? Or are you just working with what feels interesting or right, a conduit for something none of us can quite pin down?
(Laughing) It’s true, there’s some stuff in these that might leave you thinking “what this f*** is this about, anyway?” There’s always a touchstone to real experiences for me, but I like the way leaving things a bit obscure can give the listener a chance to fill in the blanks in a way that might make it feel more directly relevant to their own life, right? I was a painter before I dove so deep into making music, and I was always interested in the line between figurative art and abstract art. What makes some paint on a canvas look like a smear of paint, and a human face at the same time? Or not! I guess I’m doing something like that with songwriting.
Anyway, yes, almost all these cryptic obscure things I sing about come from some specific thing in my life, or that I’ve seen up close. I won’t pull back the curtain, so to speak, and get into a ton of detail here. But we could sit down and have a beer sometime and I’ll tell some stories.
It’s fair to say the record is a melting pot of sounds. There’s the Americana influence, there’s psych and stoner sensibilities, there are synths, noise-based tracks, all sort of things bouncing around. Could you talk a little about how this range evolved?
Sure! I think I’m speaking for all of us when I say we’re fans of music first. And we love all kinds of music. (Which is different from saying we like everything!). But we’ve all been influenced by, and moved by and fallen in love with, a lot of music. So it feels limiting, and honestly, boring, to try to fit ourselves into one genre or another. The challenge is to allow all these different influences to come into play without having it sound like total chaos, or worse, just random, like it’s some kind of party trick. So we’re always trying to stay between the lines of being boring and predictable on one side, and just random chaotic nonsense on the other. I guess that’s another way of saying we’re always trying to figure out how to make songs that on the surface can sound wildly diverse, but feel viscerally related to each other, and identifiable as King Ropes songs. Makes for a fun little puzzle to solve sometimes.
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Could we talk about influences? I think most writers feel they’re working in some kind of lineage, and not always that which seems most apparent from the outside. Which artists, songwriters or otherwise, would you align your work with?
Hm. There are so many songwriters I admire, and who I try to learn something from where I can. I’ll just throw some out and feel bad tomorrow about some of the one’s I should have mentioned. Willie Nelson is way up there. Tom Petty. Lucinda Williams. Frank Black from Pixies. I mean, Kurt Cobain. Bowie. Sharon Van Etten, Elton John, (with Bernie Taupin of course, but damn some of those songs are great), Phoebe Bridgers. Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish. Beck. Al Green. Elliott Smith. Ok. I’ll stop now….
What does the future hold for King Ropes?
Ha! More of the same, without being the same! The real goal is to figure out how to keep doing exactly what we’re doing. Writing songs, recording, and playing music that feels fresh and new to us, and hopefully resonates with the people who hear it. In order to do that we’re working at building a bit broader audience, and a little more exposure in the “industry”, or whatever. But the reason for us to do that is to be able to keep doing what we’re already doing.
And touring! We’re so happy to be back at it. We’ve been out a couple times this year and have a fair amount of shows lined up for the rest of the year. Keep your ears open. Come see us if we make it to your town!
Super Natural is out now via Big and Just Little and available from the King Ropes Bandcamp page.
Portrait photo by Courtney Fitzpatrick