Wheels of Fortune

Celebration takes a gamble on its tarot-themed songs. Is success in the cards?

by Michael Pelusi

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Published: Apr 21, 2009

David Andrew Sitek READY TAROCK: Celebration recorded its latest record live in the studio to cut costs.

Maybe success in the music business is just gambler's luck. In that case, the Baltimore-based trio Celebration has decided to play high stakes: They've ended the relationship with their label, the prestigious British-based 4AD Records, and unveiled a new Web site, celebrationelectrictarot.com, where their music will be available for free.

According to singer Katrina Ford, "We felt the world was moving in this direction, and we felt working the other way was going against a tide with time and energy that we didn't want to spend. Why go through the whole process of recording something, waiting six months for the deal to go through and then for the record label to do the promotion, and then to have the whole hoo-bah just be over with in one day? And it just seemed like building up to a letdown, especially when people don't buy records like they used to, so labels aren't seeing the numbers that they used to see. And so they're cutting budgets, too."

Celebration is a relatively obscure band. Maybe it's because their music is strikingly difficult to pigeonhole, some kind of fascinating mix of postpunk, psychedelia and Afrobeat. Fame-wise, they're far from the echelon of bands like Death Cab for Cutie, The Shins or their friends and collaborators in TV on the Radio.

Even with the music industry in freefall, it seems pretty risky for a little-known band to eschew the wage-earning potential of their recordings, not to mention the support system of their label. But Celebration has a few tricks up their sleeves. They recorded their new music live in the studio, in an expanded six-person lineup, rather than spend extra time on overdubs. And without tour support from a label, they'll be embarking on smaller jaunts on the road. "We toured for three years straight," says Ford. "We really wasted a lot of energy and time. I don't think we did it the right way. I think that we'll probably do shorter, smarter, more-often tours, and less of the long haul that will burn us out.

"We can afford to go in the studio for a week and a half, two weeks and then play enough shows to pay it back. And that's our working model right now. But we've always been hand to mouth."

This drastic change in the band's mode of function started at the end of that last, long tour. Back home in Baltimore, the band — Ford, her husband, multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis, and drummer David Bergander — began an impressive writing streak, culminating in 22 songs. Ford studies tarot and she couldn't help but notice that there are 22 cards in the major arcana, "which are the archetypes for the human story of living," she says. "I started kind of looking at all the songs, the lyrics and just for fun matching them to the different tarot cards, and found some really uncanny relationships."

From there, Ford worked with a Web-designer friend to create a site that presented the songs in tarot-card form. Currently, two songs — "What's This Magical" and "I Will Not Fall" — are on the site, and each month a few more will be added. There's a blog, celebrationelectrictarot.blogspot.com, so fans can receive alerts via RSS when new songs are posted. When an album's worth of songs are on the site, the band will release them on vinyl. "We'll either license it with someone or we'll handle it," Ford says. Eventually, they plan to release a whopping 78 recordings to correspond with a full tarot deck. (Pieces not connected to the major arcana will be videos or home-recorded soundscapes.)

The site is clearly a work in progress, and Ford knows the band is leaping into the unknown and that the results might not be successful. But she's committed to her art. "People are walking into fucking buildings with guns and killing people. This is a crazy time to be alive. It's an insane time to be alive. It's a wonderful time to be alive, but to be part of bringing in the light as much as possible and doing what you love to do with no barriers is what it's all about."

(m_pelusi@citypaper.net)

Celebration plays Sat., April 25, 7 p.m., $10, with Instamatic, Kung Fu Necktie, 1248 N. Front St., 866-468-7619, r5productions.com.

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