February 17-23, 2005

music

The Wedding Band

GOLDEN RULE: "This is the tone that we deliberately set for our marriage -- one that, like the world of Golden Ball, does not submit to the oppression of bourgeois mendacity," says David Chadwick, with wife Gillian (center).

Golden Ball's psychedelic folk sound is a labor of love and literature.

by A.D. Amorosi

"Eros with Philia — that's what lasting love is all about." Gillian Chadwick is describing her wedding, but she could just easily be talking about the music she makes with her husband, David, in Golden Ball. The Fishtown sextet conjures up a homespun blend of Krautrock, psychedelic folk and Eno-esque glam that would make for a cerebral ceremonial march.

For the Chadwicks, music and love go hand in hand. They got married in a Doylestown apple orchard in July 2000, with Gillian walking through the tree rows to "Marching Theme" by Neutral Milk Hotel. The giggling version of the Beach Boys' "Our Prayer" blared during the ceremony. The finale found them strolling to Kai Winding's "Sukiyaki."

They also customized their vows, clothes, crowns, bouquets and cakes.

"This is the tone that we deliberately set for our marriage — one that, like the world of Golden Ball, does not submit to the oppression of bourgeois mendacity," says David, 36, without a hint of irony. "Lucky for us the group understands and fully appreciates our subversions."

The makeup of the group — doctors turned drummers, dancers who play guitar, members who have dated and broken up — gives Golden Ball a soap opera feel. David is an information technology operator who did doctoral work in writing theory at UPenn. Gillian, after pursuing a course of study in pragmatic aesthetics at Temple, is currently employed at Big Jar Books. Both play multiple instruments. "It is very much like a six-person marriage," Gillian says of the band. Their closeness is made flesh at a Golden Ball gig, where the six crowd a stage, collaborate on harmonies and fumble past each other to switch instruments. They are drunkenly having a good time playing communal music.

"There are connections between the spirit of our wedding and the spirit of the group, despite that Gillian and I did not know the others at that time," says David.

Their dramatic debut CD, The Luxury of Pause — the one with the toad set upon a lily pad — was recorded by the Chadwicks along with pal Noah Wall in 2003 and 2004, in the bedroom of their old Neshaminy home. The lush, desolate house — "a little Lynch-ian," says Gillian — which contained offices for Gillian's bridal tiara and faerie-wreath business, was the perfect place to record the tunes that would become a blueprint for the band's current sound.

With "metacognition" in full gear, as David puts it, Golden Ball speaks smartly of Robert Frost, of existentialism, of stuffing their lyrics with snapshots from a life full of absolutely fantastic moments. "We make fantasy real by bending reality towards the fantastic," says Gillian. Golden Ball's sound seems to start in a theoretical stage. "What plays out in the music is that the theatrical elements are juxtaposed with appropriate depth. For example, something that swings must be played as "uptight' rather than "bawdy,' that sensuality be teased from the metronomic."

Bassist Norman Fetter, whose Honeymoon label released The Luxury of Pause, cites the influences of Wire, Martin Hannett and Faust. "The unique quality and substance of each individual sound is of great importance to me," he says. "It's very much a fluid conversation between elements of the arrangements. Like call and response, it's an old blues trick. But we've absolutely no relationship to the blues whatsoever."

David's Burroughsian word games, filled with "people on fire" "embracing psychotic futures," is made more alive by his wife's producing. She maximizes the creakiest nuances of his chilly, Bowiesque croon. It's as if he's whispering and spitting in her ear. "It's like foreplay, but in the domain of language," says David. "It's what we all do unconsciously all the time."

"I married David because of his lyrics," says Gillian. "He burns very brightly." She sees Luxury's songs springing from her husband's head, Athena-style, with love and awe. "I watched him demo them all to four-track cassette one weekend, making all the whooshes and hard edits as approximately as the Tascam would allow. Golden Ball started just as you hear it on the album," she says. "What it is becoming is another question. An exciting one."

Golden Ball's CD release show, Sat., Feb. 19, 9 p.m., $8, with Fursaxa, One Long Lash and Black Ass, The Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888.