Bi-Continental Collaboration Features Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck, Frode Strømstad, and Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen with Guest Appearances from Patterson Hood, Darren Hanlon, Andrew Reiger, Davey Wrathgabar, Lucy Parnell and Debbi Peterson
The No Ones’ debut album, The Great Lost No Ones Album, is out today!
Who else to have given a better introduction to the new album than Scott McCaughey himself? Here’s the long and… well, frankly there’s nothing really short about it:
Here’s the way it works. People like us like music. We like people who make music that we like. We like to meet nice people and make music with them. Thus another band! It’s so simple.
Peter and I met Frode Strømstad and Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen sometime… uh, not really sure exactly. Possibly at the small Norwegian coastal town Egersund Festival, where we were invited to play with Robyn Hitchcock & Venus 3, as well as Minus 5 and Baseball Project. Robyn had worked before with I WAS A KING, a very fantastic band which includes Frode always and Arne at least currently. That was an exceptional weekend of rock’n’roll, expensive beer, and fishing, and hanging about a lighthouse. Steve Wynn has a star on the sidewalk there, like Hollywood.
Then came further Northern explorations, in fact above the arctic circle, in Vadsø, another small(er?) Norwegian coastal town where our mutual friend Michèle Noach invited many friends to come and share music. Twice! These fests, like Egersund, naturally encouraged collaborative foraging, and found the four of us sharing stages and campfires and hot tubs under the stars, with the likes of John Paul Jones, Howe Gelb, Mike Mills, and Sami singer Elle Márjá Eira.
At some point Frode sent a few songs to me, basic tracks with him on guitar/vocals and Arne on drums, explaining that he thought it might be awesome if I played bass and Peter played guitar on said tracks. I found the music very inspiring. I noticed that some tunes had humming instead of words, and I wondered aloud (via aloud emails) whether the songs needed lyrics. Frode, an excellent lyricist himself, kindly offered me to have a go. Well, I must say it went extremely well, and the result: the four-song Sun Station seven-inch EP (with guests Patterson Hood of Drive By Truckers and Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn) released on Coastal Town Recordings in 2017, followed by debut No Ones live shows in Norway, June 2017. Oh yes, I should mention that Frode & Co. conveniently have a recording studio, label, and a PRESSING PLANT. Seriously??
But wait a minute! Because earlier in June, 2017, Frode and Arne had appeared in Portland, where the four of us gathered together (in the same room!) and recorded 15 new songs, live, just like a real band would. This took place at Type Foundry, helmed by Adam Selzer, a golden team previously responsible for all three Peter Buck solo LPs, Tired Pony’s The Place We Ran From, both Filthy Friends albums, the Baseball Project catalog, many Minus 5 recordings — well, you get the idea. It’s home!
I could let THE GREAT LOST NO ONES ALBUM speak for itself, but I guess that’s not the way these helpful bios are supposed to work. I’m supposed to do your work for you! So I’ll try. I’ll be honest — the sound might be exactly what you’d be expecting, given the collective’s previous output, but I do hope to presume that it’s also something more. I can’t find anything exactly comparable amongst our various past outputs to songs like “Clementine,” a pulsating circular dream (The Cars?), or “Saucerful Of Nothing,” a frantic psychotic re-invention of early Floyd, or “Cinnamon Roll Hair,” a tender meditation on none-other-than Carrie Fisher (o.k., it’s no “Hearts And Bones”). That being said, you wouldn’t be shocked to hear “Gone” on an I Was A King record (with the Bangles’ Debbi Peterson’s exquisite harmonizing instead of IWAK’s Anne Lise Frøkedal), or the Dream Syndicate drone of “Dream Something Else,” or the Byrds/Soft Boys-referencing album closer “Turn Again.” Then again, I don’t think any of us had ever tried something as sludge-heavy as “Sweet Home Mississippi,” which naturally puts Patterson Hood to fine use, but singing not about The South, but the gentrification of a Portland neighborhood. “No Ones Fall Alone” opens the album with familiar ringing power pop, but is followed by a speedy furious abduction rant, “(Going Back To) Stockholm Syndrome.” There, now. But I recommend listening, it’s really better in ears than words.
So, it’s another band. We’ve made a killer record. It took a while — not the actual making, which was lightning fast. It’s just that life got in the way again. But maybe that was right too, and the wait was worth it, and now is the time for The No Ones. I do hope you’ll agree.
Watch the music video for “Straight Into the Bridge” below:
Get your copy of The Great Lost No Ones Album now from the Yep Roc store! First Edition LP includes full length album PLUS a 2 track bonus 45 – both on Yellow and Purple splatter vinyl.
