Things Fall Together

Trolleyvox pops up from the rabbit hole with two new CDs.

by M.J. Fine

POP ART: Trolleyvox's new Your Secret Is Safe and Luzerne are available as a double CD from Transit of Venus, or separately online. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

It's not their fault, but the Trolleyvox has never been what you'd call prolific. Between 1997, when the band began recording their debut, and 2006, when they released The Trolleyvox Present the Karaoke Meltdowns, they made just three albums, which weren't always easy to find. Something always got in the way: singer Beth Filla's stint in grad school, lineup changes, label troubles, life. So it seemed ambitious, to say the least, when guitarist Andrew Chalfen announced late last year that a double EP was in the works. Seems he wasn't giving himself enough credit. The Trolleyvox has two new full-lengths, packaged together as a double CD on Transit of Venus or available separately online. Your Secret Safe kicks the group's rock tendencies up a notch; the acoustic, partly instrumental Luzerne tones them down, with Rachel's cellist Eve Miller filling in for the rhythm section when The Roots drafted bassist Owen Biddle. Chalfen gamely chatted about the project over e-mail.

City Paper: When did you have time to write all the songs?

Andrew Chalfen: I have a huge backlog of music and I always seem to be coming up with more all the time. Lyrics are the roadblock that's keeping me from turning into Bob Pollard. I procrastinate with lyric writing and I'm rather particular, which keeps the finished song-count down. ... Several of the songs are quite old, pre-dating the Trolleyvox. Your Secret Safe has "Anvil" and "Fume of Sighs," and Luzerne has "Intermission," "Pratfallers" and "Stomping Grounds," all tunes we've had in our live acoustic sets for years.

CP: What experiences between The Karaoke Meltdowns and now have shaped the new songs?

AC: Well, I tend to dwell, and lately I dwell on our country and the planet going to hell in a handbasket at the hands of humans with their wars and greed and short-sighted self-interest, and I try to channel the resulting psychic toll. ... "Can You Find a Way Down" and "Sundowning" off the new ones deal with that stuff. My dad, who passed away last month, had not been well for a while and his physical decline was heavy on my mind. So I've been thinking about the theme of things slipping away personally as well as globally. Lots of my friends are having kids, and some are kind of baby crazy, so "Rabbit in the Sun" is sort of a flip look at the phenomenon of people caught up in that vortex of hormones, desire and irrationality.

CP: Did you have any transcendent moments in making them?

AC: Most aspects of recording are like chocolate to me. I can't get enough of the whole process. Just hearing the songs come together through an endless series of tiny epiphanies, breakthroughs and lots of hard work. Brian [McTear, who co-produced Your Secret Safe], especially, is a super-driven and super-detailed engineer. It's amazing to watch him do his thing and to bounce ideas off one another constantly.

CP: How have you developed your guitar style?

AC: Basically trying to copy parts of artists I love and usually failing to get it right, but in the process, coming up with something different. I didn't even play guitar prior to college, just piano. I started off trying to play Tommy Keene and Who riffs and R.E.M. songs off Chronic Town and Murmur in the dorm stairwell. I dislike making barre chords, so I kind of invented my own chords to get around the guitar neck. That's probably how I got into playing lots of arpeggios and using my thumb. Sometime in the '90s I went down the rabbit hole of alternate tunings.

CP: What's it like to share a band member with the Roots?

AC: The whole thing is surreal. On the one hand, we're thrilled for him. It's like being asked in the '60s to join James Brown's band or something — the chance of a lifetime. ... We don't know if our gigs are going to be full-band or acoustic, because The Roots frequently get these last-minute festival gigs. We've been through our share of rhythm section lineup changes, and it's a difficult thing to have the band chemistry changing all the time, and Owen brings so much in terms of personality, musicianship and friendship. We have a good friend filling in for him at the moment for some upcoming shows, but beyond that, we'll see.

(m_fine@citypaper.net)

Fri., Oct. 19, 9 p.m., $8, with Division Day, the Novenas and Art DiFuria, the Khyber, 52 S. Second St., 215-238-5888, www.thekhyber.com.