The Rosebuds

Venus Zine, June 15th, 2007

“We just played music all day,” says the affable and petite Kelly Crisp, one-half of husband-and-wife duo The Rosebuds. Her voice oozes laid-back Southern charm, and her name seems fit for a wholesome cartoon character. "We're cut out for the bohemian lifestyle."

She’s calling from the Raleigh, North Carolina, home she shares with the other Rosebud — the tall, reed-like Ivan Howard. Crisp outlines their bucolic, domestic existence made complete with leisurely backyard gardening stints. "We have a little house and there are instruments everywhere,” she says. “A lot of times friends just come through, pick up an instrument, and play all day. We’re totally anonymous here."
<img alt="rosebuds story.jpg" src="http://venuszine.com/stories/rosebuds story.jpg" width="346" height="516" align="right" vspace="5" hspace="5" />

But with the April 2007 release of The Rosebuds’ full-length, <i>Night of the Furies</i> (Merge), and the relentless tour schedule ahead of them, this bout of leisure time had to end sooner or later. <i>Night of the Furies</i> explores new territory, allowing the duo to marry their ’60s pop sensibilities with their newfound desire to conquer dance floors. Crisp’s and Howard’s quest for their inner New Order yields some pleasantly surprising results. Sure, tracks like “Hold Onto This Coat” and “I Better Run” make moody use of synths, but upbeat gems like “Get Up, Get Out” unapologetically toe the disco line.

Despite all of the moodiness and hints of winter on the track “Hold Onto My Coat,” this is a summer record that happens to have been released in the spring. “We’re not sure we know what we’re doing enough to have a style,” Crisp says. “If anything, we like to think of ourselves as more of an art project than a band.”

While <i>Night of the Furies</i> might sound like a dreamy and, at times, lighthearted affair, the lyrics tell the dark and seductive story of Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera, the three Olympian goddess of vengeance, retribution, and punishment. “We do like to make sure the lyrics mean something,” Crisp explains after lamenting that the words are the most often ignored aspect of their music in addition to contemporary music as a whole.

“That’s actually the hardest part of songwriting — making sure the lyrics say exactly what you mean.”

Of course, The Rosebuds are by no means the first band to couch their observations within dense and arcane literary and mythological references. <i>The Furies</i> certainly alludes to greater social and political commentary. “Without that, it all just sounds like a nice story,” Crisp says. However, when it comes time to lay out what the album is meant to represent — especially in reference to the currently stormy political climate — the otherwise outspoken Crisp becomes deliberately evasive. “The metaphor of the Furies is also the safety and the cover,” Crisp adds.

All righty then.

In 2006, The Rosebuds also broke new ground by embarking on their first tour in Europe. In the course of their travels, the band found that its music had already made a profound impact in some unlikely places. “In the independent music world, you never know how people are going to get the music,” Crisp says. “We have no distribution in Europe, yet when we arrived in Vienna to play some ramshackle show, we found that our songs had been playing on their equivalent of NPR.”

That said, certain ironies are not lost on Crisp. “We couldn’t even get on NPR in our hometown,” she says. In February 2007, The Rosebuds were invited to Russia to play a film festival for the release of the film <I>Paragraph 78</I>, to which they contributed the track “Boxcar,” a Russian newspaper even took the liberty of translating Howard’s name into its English counterpart, John Howard. “You get onstage and you see people singing your songs,” Crisp says. “It’s like playing your hometown, but it’s Moscow.”

In support of the new album, The Rosebuds tour as a five-piece ensemble, including Justin Vernon on guitar, Matthew McCaughan on drums, and Giorgio Angelini on bass in addition to Crisp’s position at keyboards and Howard on guitar. “Right now I’m married to a lot of men,” Crisp jokes about the touring experience. “When I’m traveling around in the van, I’m pretty much married to five men.”

Opting to spend a sizable chunk of adulthood crammed into a crowded van is met with some detractors. “My girlfriends ask me all the time, ‘What are you doing?’” I realize we’re not living a normal life.”  

Truth be told, The Rosebuds don’t seem to want things any other way.