THE ALBUM: STARS ON ESP
HNIA's Karen Oliver (she of the child-like voice that haunys HNIA's recordings) agrees that Stars on ESP is the their most approachable album to date. "I think its a lot more accessible to just general listening than the other albums. The other ones you have to be in a very specific mind-set and mood for them to really click when your listening to it, but this one I could hear it on the radio and it wouldn't throw me for a loop."
Stars on ESP moulds influences that run from folk and gospel, to dub, the evidence of someone who spends his every available moment immersed in music. Which isn't to say that HNIA merely replicate the sounds other people have made parrot fashion. Rather they absorb influences like some sort of mutant musical amoeba, digesting them and making them a part of their own unique sound. Warren's junk-rock working methods shine through. "Most of the songs are written while they are being recorded," he tells us. "We don't write them first, sit down, figure them out, and then record them. We've got a studio at my house, we just kinda screw around. So it you've been listening to a lot of dub lately, you sit down your more likely to dub out. It's not like we're trying really hard, because we're really just doing it for fun... There's no big campaign, no mission." No campaign, no mission, seems to be Warren's main work ethic, later when I timidly ask whether he has any idea why he does what he does, he simply says: "I enjoy it, I've been playing guitar since I was 10, it's just something that I like doing better than anything else." Karin laughs: "speaking as someone whose been on tour with him for a month, back in 93, when he didn't have any access to recording equipment, I think if he couldn't write music he'd either kill someone or die." Warren shrugs: "it's just what I do, I was doing it before we put out records. Releasing records and doing press, and all that junk is really just a small part of it. I think a lot of bands forget that. They try to write songs that are more blah-blah-blah, and fit on different formats. Who cares, that's bad news. They might as well be selling stuff at the mall."
ESP
If your a real His Name is Alive trainspotter, you'll recognise the ESP in the albums title as a continuation of what appears to be a minor obsession for Warren. Warren's side projects have gone under names like: ESP Beetles, ESP Family, ESP DOLPHINS, ESP Summer, and ESP Continent. What gives? "I'm not sure. There was a single in the US in the early eighties called Stars on 45, which was a great thing, this big medley. I thought that kinda described our album, short songs that kinda went in to the next song, it's all kinda poppy. For a while there last summer I got really into ESP, teach your dog ESP, all kinds of stuff. And there was a label back in the sixties called ESP, but for them it stood for Esperanto, the universal language that never really caught on too big. And you mixed all those together, I just got really excited about it, for a while every song had ESP in the title, and I formed a couple of bands with ESP in the name. Right around the same time I got really into acronyms, JFK, UFO, CIA, FBI, HNIA (laughs). It's one of those things you can't explain it, it's like your obsessed, your confused (laughs). One of those deals." Um, right.
KARIN
In case who haven't worked it out yet HNIA is basically a vehicle for Warren Defever and his personal obsessions. So how does Karin fit into the picture? "(Warren) writes the lyrics. He writes everything. I just sing them, I'm the interpreter, that's about all I do," she says. "A lot of times I'll read these lyrics, and I have absolutely no idea what they mean. No clue. When I sing them I have to make them mean something, because otherwise there would be absolutely nothing behind the vocals at all... I flip that slant on it, and when people listen to it they think it means something, and it might be something totally different than what (Warren) was thinking when he wrote it, probably is. I feel like I'm the middle step. That's as far as my creative input into this band goes pretty much."
I ask Karen what she does outside of HNIA. "Currently I'm working with asbestos." What?! She laughs at the dumbfounded expression on my face. "I've got a job with an environmental firm in Chicago. And I paint and draw, I've been working on this little project for a long time. But I'm not go with it when it comes to writing, I can't write stuff like Warren does. Some day I'm going to find some other people to work with, and then I can do both His Name is Alive and this other thing.
MICHIGAN
Throwing Muses David Narcizzo said in an interview once, that a lot of the best bands come from nowhere. What he meant was that geographical isolation, also means being isolated from the music industry, free of the stifling influence of fads and scenes. This is certainly true of Warren who has lived in the same house in Livonia Michigan for 27 years, where he also has his studio. "Things are a little different there", he laughs. "It's a little more backwoods. You come to London and everything's pretty fancy. Everybody's cool. Nobody drives a tractor. Nobody wears overalls. When you live in Livonia Michigan there's no music from there at all, and any music is just as relevant as any other, dub is just as relevant as Jungle, as 60's pop music, as Frank Sinatra, as anything. Your parents are listening to one thing, your brothers listening to something else, your friends listening to something else, no one in particular seems more important than any other. So the whole trend thing just doesn't really apply, it's just pick the best of what's good." This distance from the fad obsessed mainstream of what is (laughably) called alternative music, is something Warren seems keen to preserve. "I don't want to have anything to do with that. That's not why I do music, and if I wasn't putting out records I'd still be doing music. And that's what happened over the last three years. I said when we make a record that we like, that's fine with us, that's like a no compromise type deal, then we'll put it out. Using that system (Stars on ESP) should have been our most obscure record. Saying we don't care what anyone else thinks, we're going to give the record company a finished record, from beginning to end, and say to the record company "here's our new album, put it out, if you don't want to put it out that's fine to." Because we enjoy doing it, we're not doing it so it will sell, we're not doing so blah-blah-blah. So it's sort of strange, but it's a good feeling as well, that we've made a record that's absolutely no compromise to anybody, and it's doing better than our other records."