Chasing Perfection

After three years of experimenting and heavy lifting, An American Chinese finds Utopia.

by John Vettese

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Published: Jan 5, 2011

GEARMONGERS: To make Utopian Tree sound like they wanted, An American Chinese — L-R: Alex Keegan, Becca Huston, Mitch Marzec, Joy Marzec and Mark Skierski — drove to Massachusetts for a vibraphone and to Harlem for an echo chamber.

Mark Stehle

[ rock/pop/local ]

Mitch Marzec and his bandmates used to haul a vintage organ to all their shows.

It was a Lowrey Genie, one of those bulky wood-panel things with oblong, multicolored preset knobs; something you'd expect an old lady at the front of a small-town church to be playing. Down the steep steps for an in-store at The Marvelous, up the narrow hall at Johnny Brenda's — all this physical exertion and effort, just so they could use the organ on a single song.

They don't do that anymore. "We just got rid of 'Chasing Rabbit' in our set list," says Joy Marzec, Mitch's sister and a keyboardist/vocalist in An American Chinese. "It made things so much easier!"

The song is a standout on the band's finally completed debut full-length, Utopian Tree, and fans will certainly miss it when An American Chinese plays its record release at Kung Fu Necktie tonight. But they'll appreciate the reasoning. After three years of tinkering, recording and reworking, the album is ready, and the band is anxious to pick up the pace. "We were learning how to record, how to use all this equipment, as we went," says Mitch.

"That's part of the reason this album took so long," adds Joy.

Gathered around a blue bedroom piled with books and decorated with drawings on the second floor of the Marzecs' Grad Hospital-area house, the band expounds on how "Chasing Rabbit" came to be. Guitarist Mark Skierski recalls finding the organ, and playing with the presets. "Those old organs have drum-machine loops."

This led to the skittery, not-quite-bossa-nova, not-quite-two-step beat that opens the song. Mitch says, "We pressed three of those keys together and hit this fucked-up combination."

Next, Becca Huston came up with a muffled, minimalist bassline. Keyboard trills were added later, and live drums, and Mitch and Skierski eventually leapt head-on into a fierce acoustic guitar duel. As the song unfolds we hear stuff that sounds like pan flutes, vocal echoes and modulations, mixed to keep the driving folk-pop song in the forefront, but with a surreal bed anchored by the Lowery loop. Over months upon months, these parts were recorded to tape and refined, finally getting flown into Mitch's Mac work station last spring. "The file at the end was huge," says Huston. "We watched it run and were like, 'Wow, that's a 34-gig song.'"

Mitch laughs, adding, "That song was three years in the making."

That's only a third of the time he's been making music under the An American Chinese moniker, and accumulating gear. (Walking into the house is like walking into an obstacle course that dares you "go ahead, try not to knock over this 40-year-old, thousand-dollar microphone.") The project began in 2002, when 19-year-old Mitch left his childhood home of Albuquerque, N.M., for Philadelphia. He'd record Joy's vocals when visiting her at home over the holidays, or in Seattle where she attended college, but the project was initially a solo pursuit.

He and Skierski connected through a mutual friend. "I was living in New Jersey at the time, and bored of making music by myself," says Skierski.

The two spent long hours writing songs and planning out their dream studio. "I lived here for a summer," says Joy, "and I remember sitting on their couch, watching them create 'No, No Like That.'" The song was originally released on 2007's Panic Pilgrim EP; its jagged guitar lines and thumping drums generated enough buzz that An American Chinese began the transition out of the studio and onto the stage. Its shows became notable for the visual impact of the classy old tech, the frustration of watching the fritzy equipment fail and the impressiveness of the band recovering with panache.

"What we're writing determines what gear we're looking for," Skierski says. "We drove to Massachusetts to buy a vibraphone because, in our head, we heard it." They also went to Harlem to buy a 4- by 8-foot reverb chamber when The Walkmen's Marcata recording studio closed down; it now takes up an entire wall in their kitchen.

Mitch is just as big on precision in his writing. Drummer Alex Keegan says, "This is the first band I've played in where the lyrics have something to do with the drumbeat. Mitch'll say, 'I need a phrase to correspond with that double kick.'"

But with the album finally out, and a backlog of songs to choose from for their next project, An American Chinese is starting to loosen up. They point to a recent set at Danger Danger Gallery where they arrived to find that there were more bands than expected on the bill, giving them only 25 minutes to set up and play. "Sets like that are the most inspired," Huston says. "It makes us realize we can do it without all those extra parts."

"We keep getting the 'lo-fi' comparison," says Mitch. "But really, this is kind of a perfectionist lo-fi."

(john.vettese@citypaper.net)

Thu., Jan. 6, 8 p.m., $5, with Steve Goldberg & the Arch Enemies and When I Was 12, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 866-777-8932, kungfunecktie.com.

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