For many musicians, writing, playing and recording music is not their full-time job. Too often (and this is certainly true in Athens) the singer in the midnight slot at Caledonia has someplace to be in eight hours. But from these day jobs comes inspiration — Andy Gonzales can attest to that.
Gonzales, an Athens mainstay for a decade, has worn many hats during his Classic City days. Once a member of Music Tapes and Of Montreal, he’s best known as creator and keeper of Marshmallow Coast (briefly M Coast). And while he’s Andy From Denver and A.G. Forrester, during the workday he’s Registered Nurse Gonzales. And it’s there the muse will hit him.
“I work in endoscopy; I’m totally inundated in that world,” Gonzales said. “I have this song in my head right now called Poop Cycles, which is gonna be like this great ’80s song about pooping, probably the first and last song about it. But I can’t change the lyrics, the lyrics are unfortunately stuck with that title. It could be this amazing song that’s going to end up as a joke video on YouTube.”
Three years removed from his previous release (Say It in Slang under the M Coast moniker), Gonzales dusted off the Marshmallow Coast name and returned to the racks with Phreak Phantasy.
The nine-song collection of ‘nasty and weirder” has Gonzales singing to drum machines and synthesizers, aided by his wife, Sara Kirkpatrick, and Circulatory System’s Will Hart with some “4-track madness.”
The seventh Marshmallow Coast album, stamped with the Elephant 6 seal of approval, has Gonzales reaching into his past.
“Forever ago, I used to be in Of Montreal and Kevin (Barnes) and I were talking about doing this kind of upbeat music with drum machines, synthesizers and keyboards,” Gonzales said. “I left the band, and he went on to do that with great success. I was about to record an album that was going to be kind of like that with Derek (Almstead), but Derek was, ‘No, let’s do drums, let’s make it a big production’ I thought that was a great idea. We did that record as M Coast. Now that I have my home studio, I’m gonna go on this path I meant to go on five years ago. That’s where my interests have been for quite a while.”
Where other Marshmallow Coast albums, such as Slang and Ride the Lightning, bounded with jazz piano riffs, 1960s psychedelic pop and nods to classical music, Phreak is a child of the 1980s.
Gonzales sought to create electronica, but not the electronica listeners would expect.
“My major influences before were classical music and turn-of-the-century French music, so I feel like I’ve gotten away from that,” he said. “I’ve been inspired by 80s production and drum machines. I’m trying to approach the kind of modern music style like what I think electronica is. I don’t listen to that kind of music, but I want to use those tools and create my own version. I’m trying to approach that from a naive perspective.”
When it comes to making music, there’s nothing naive about his approach. A fiddler of sounds and lyrics, Gonzales is comfortable with the recording tools that allow him to create songs from his bedroom. And he’s embraced his identity and voice amidst the sea of songwriters.
“I have the freedom to work on whatever I want. I can record a song I feel OK about releasing at home, which is something I never had before. If somebody else delivered my songs, it might sound crappy, but I hope in my delivery there’s a little sarcasm that makes it OK,” he said. “A lot of songwriters try to write for this audience that isn’t their audience. They try to write for a bigger audience than they have, like, I’m gonna write songs that could be played on VH1. I’m never going to be on VHI: why don’t I just write whatever absurd lyrics come to mind? That’s more real.”
