Joy Zipper:
Song: Out Of The Sun
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“A music writer said we’re like a candy apple with a razor blade inside, which I think is a really great way to put it,” says Joy Zipper’s Tabitha Tindale. Vinny Cafiso, the other half of Joy Zipper (and Tabitha’s other half in real life), admits that he “doesn’t like to give away too much” and says he and Tabitha are indeed “flowering it up a bit to hide the darkness underneath.”
There is an exquisite sweetness to the Joy Zipper sound. The tone of American Whip, the duo’s second album (due Feb. 22 on Dangerbird Records), is set by “Christmas Song,” which boasts a dreamy chorus – “I love you more than a thousand Christmases/ I want you more than any gift I can think of” – that sticks like Juicy Fruit. The Alpha Centauri keyboard effects, super-groovy organ line and that one Summer Of Love guitar progression give way to ecstatic stacked harmonies recalling The Beach Boys and The Beatles, two of Tabitha and Vince’s favorite antecedents.
Perhaps equally important to Joy Zipper’s sonic character, however, are bands like My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab, The Breeders and The Velvet Underground. And there’s this line, which is likely to keep “Christmas Song” off the lips of most carolers: “I feel you now ‘cause I’m deep in madness.”
The chorus to “Baby You Should Know” – “That’s what I see when I see in your eyes” – sounds like it could have been written by Burt Bacharach, but what about the part that goes, “Baby you should know this time/ That every thought you have is mine?” Tabitha insists it’s a love song. Why, then, does the specter of mind control, or, at the very least, garden-variety manipulation, seem to be hovering just over her shoulder?
The candy apple also glistens with violins, viola, cello, fluegelhorn and glockenspiel, but take care you don’t cut your tongue on the intimations of psychosis, “this terrible thing coming over me,” the “never ending search for a suitable enemy,” loading the gun and getting the rope, becoming invisible … mannequins. Asked what the hell these songs are about, Tabitha rattles off some possibilities: “Life and death and fear.” When pressed, she says: “Vinny lost his father when he was five, and his mother died a few years ago. He’s kind of alone, and alone with his thoughts a lot of the time.”
The dichotomy driving Joy Zipper’s artistic modus operandi is reflected by Tabitha and Vinny themselves. Yes, he’s dark-haired and she’s blond. He’s introverted and she’s outgoing. He’s been playing music as long as he can remember; she started when she met him. But there’s a deeper, downright symbiotic, temperamental dynamic at the heart of Joy Zipper that gives it its hypnotic power.
They met at a Battle Of The Bands contest in Franklin Square, Long Island, on the Hempstead Turnpike. “The place was called Hot Rocks,” Tabitha says. “Isn’t that perfect?” “This was right after high school,” she continues. “I was living in the city. I’d come back to Long Island to see some friends and they said I had to see this band. They were amazing. Vinny was playing guitar. There was something about him. Right when I saw him, I said, ‘Hmm.’ And then … you know … I stalked him.”
Joy Zipper has been enjoying recent success in the U.K. – American Whip was released there in March of 2004 – and Vinny and Tabitha spend half the year there. They spend the other half in their New York City home studio. Joy Zipper’s initial recordings were passed among friends until they landed with composer and DJ David Holmes, who played them on his U.K. radio shows. “They were songs we made in the bedroom,” Tabitha informs. “We got a deal and we released those demos as our album.”
Despite these humble origins, the record established a presence among English tastemakers. The pump was well primed for American Whip, which inspired NME to say: “Imagine Jack ‘n’ Meg [White, of The White Stripes] taking a holiday from reincarnating the Delta blues and deciding to listen to Beach Boys records all day. Now you’ve got Joy Zipper.” The Times reported: “American Whip is packed with woozy, sun-soaked pop songs, dreamy Sixties psychedelia and sugary vocals.” Uncut spoke rapturously of “arrangements burnished with summery harmonies and silky strings,” and Q called Vinny and Tabitha “masters of an otherworldly perfect sound that seems to make time stand still.”
The band also drew praise for recruiting Holmes and My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields to participate (the former contributed production to “Christmas Song” and “Baby You Should Know,” among others; the latter added a spot of production and had a hand in mixing several tracks). Buoyed by the rave reviews, Joy Zipper toured with Air and Turin Brakes and collaborated with Zero 7 (on the compilation Another Late Night).
The band recorded the more orchestrated sections of the album in Scotland, at Glasgow’s Cava Studios. “The strings and horns were done there,” Tabitha confirms. “Cava is in a huge, old [1872] converted church on the river [Kelvin]. When the string players recorded their parts for the song ‘33x,’ the sound just filled the room. It was so beautiful. It made me cry.” It’s a response Vinny could scarcely have anticipated back when he was playing what he describes as “heavy, drone-y noise rock” with his buddies at that joint on the turnpike. But, working with Tabitha, he has developed something, something transcendent, he may never have discovered on his own. Ironically, Tabitha says, “We write the best when we’re alone. I’ll visit my family in Florida, and Vinny will write three songs. Or he’ll take a shower, and while he’s in there, I’ll sit down at the keyboard and write a song. So that’s how they start. But we always finish them together.”
“I can do anything, play anything, for Tab and I don’t feel embarrassed,” Vinny says. “There’s no weirdness. It’s because I trust her. Making music with her is almost an escapist thing for me. It makes me feel relaxed and puts me in a little bit of a trance. It’s like the best drug you could ever imagine. There’s a lot of pressure on everyone, a lot of shit going on. It feels good to sometimes just let it go, escape that world and just stay inside this other one we’ve created together.”
Joy Zipper
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