Icarus Himself explores “Career Culture” with second, full-length album

Icarus Himself
photo by Christine Christenson

Music has stirred revolutions. It has captured teen angst. Now on Career Culture, the latest release from the Madison band Icarus Himself, members Nick Whetro, Karl Christenson and Brad Kolberg explore the experience of living in a society where aspirations of financial security can determine life choices.

“Growing up I was told I should have a career. You want to be a musician, but you should have a backup career,” said Whetro. “I feel that a lot of lower middle-class, middle-class kids come from families that have a career-cultured upbringing.”

Whetro’s personal story provides structure to the concept album. The songs flow chronologically and express a progression of emotions beginning with bitterness, moving to escape and ending with love.

“All the songs fit together as a kind of story arc. It’s the last ten years of my life starting out working at a factory in Indiana, quitting and moving to Wisconsin, then meeting my wife,” Whetro said.

Their sophomore, full-length represents a shift in musical style for members with a newfound focus on group instrumentation, narrative song style and vocal quality. Fans familiar with the group’s Mexico E.P. will note less synth and drum machine lines, Whetro said.

“The drum machine is almost nonexistent in new songs. Actually, that’s one thing I’d like to bring back. I don’t want to make the same record over and over again,” Whetro said.

Whetro’s desire to innovate also drove his decision to create more lyrically rich songs closer in style to the compositions he wrote as a member of Madison band National Beekeepers Society.

“There are some songs that have a lot more vocals than I’ve written in the past,” Whetro said. “I wanted to start breaking things down into a very simple form in Icarus as opposed to Beekeepers, and now I’m trying to mix it up a little bit and find a happy medium between too many lyrics and not enough lyrics.”

Roughly half of the songs on Career Culture maintain the minimalist song structure that dominated Mexico. These songs use few, repeated lyrics to create music that sonically explains an emotion, Whetro said. On the new album, the song “WI via IN” best demonstrates the use of this structure with the repetition of the lyric “I want my time in the sun” to capture a feeling of despair and a yearning to escape the mundane.

“I’m not really known as a singer,” Whetro said. “[But] I spent a lot of time on the vocals, and I’m proud of that.”

A more solidified group identity and recording process may have contributed to the comparatively traditional instrumentation featured on the album. Previous work including Coffins and Mexico was recorded separately and pieced together in parts, with members building upon Whetro’s demos. By contrast, Career Culture was recorded collectively at the Science of Sound Studio.

“It was more of a start to finish, organic, let’s all get together play live in one room and try to dial in a good sound. We had never really tried that before,” Christenson said.

Some tracks on Career Culture harken back to the group’s previous recording style.

“‘On Your Side’ started out as one of Nick’s demos, and we were thinking that wasn’t going to even make the album. We really had no idea what to do with it. It was a stroke of luck where we sat on it for a long time. We had this burst of creativity, and I think it turned out really well,” Kolberg said.

Because Career Culture was recorded as a live album, it celebrates the humanity of its creators, according to Whetro.

“There are tiny imperfections sprinkled throughout the album that I really like. Any thing that shows we’re in a room playing is pretty cool I think. So much music now is electronic, not that it’s bad, but it can’t exist anywhere except in a computer,” Christenson said.

Though Career Culture features less samples and effects, Icarus Himself worked to maintain creativity in their music.

“In one song we took a little drum part that was maybe not right and added this weird effect to it [that] made it sound like a synthesizer. It stripped the rhythm away and made a melody out of it,” Kolberg said.

Releasing Career Culture represents a solidified understanding of their collective identity for Whetro, Christenson and Kolberg.

“Before, it was somewhat a basement, experimental, recording project,” Christenson said. “I think we’ve finally realized that we’re a three-piece band, which is cool.”

Icarus Himself will tour with their new material this fall. Grab a copy of the album at http://icarushimself.bandcamp.com/album/career-culture.

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