SOUVARIS

Writer: Chris Summerlin
Photographer: Joe Blanchard

Formed in late 2000 and self described as an ‘erudite instrumental rock outfit’, Souvaris have always confused me. I like some of the textures the band create but often I find myself lost in the density of the sheer amount of sounds going on and confused as to whether they are a great organic rock band or a fussy, complicated exercise in technical prowess and bombast. Basically, I don’t know what Souvaris are about.
I met with John Simson (aka ‘Simmo’ – keyboards), Dave Stockwell (guitar) and Ian Whitehead (bass) to try and find out and ended up more confused than when I started. Absent were the non-Nottingham dwellers Dan Layton (guitar) and Aaron Doyle (drums).

Theory: I think Souvaris display something I want to copyright right here, right now as ‘first band syndrome’. This is a compliment by the way. It’s when a group of people are thrown together as friends to make music by circumstance as opposed to putting an advert out and recruiting people with a similar, pre-decided musical goal. It creates the most disjointed and confusing bands but also the ones with the most unique and seemingly alien sound to an outside observer. It’s usually people’s first bands that exist like this (hence the term), because they are thrown together with school friends, or siblings, or maybe the only drummer in town - and they have to make it work. I mention this in the hope they’ll agree and the interview will be a breeze…

“When we first started out it was me with two guys from school - Dave Moult and Mike Beevor. Dave Moult met Ian at a recording studio where Ian was recording his other band (of which Aaron was the drummer)” begins Simmo by way of band history.

“When we started out we heard some Mogwai, some Godspeed You Black Emperor! and we thought ‘wow, lets do these epic, profound pieces of music’ but we were 18 and 19 and it just changed slowly. We soon grew out of that without wanting to sound patronising. Dave Stockwell came in to the band a couple of months in and we built it up to a certain point. Then Mike and Dave left for lots of complicated reasons in late 2003 and we got Dan in before we toured Europe.”

Their recorded output is epic in both the length of songs and the scope of sounds. Reviewers throw words like ‘deep’ and ‘evocative’ at them without ever really stopping to wonder why. I have always seen them at their best as being opposite to the grand worldviews presented by bands in the genre like Godspeed, in that I see them as being concerned with the internal relationships of the band rather than how they, as a unit, relate to the world outside. Not being part of that unit it is unsurprising that, as an onlooker, I find them both interesting and maddening because so many conflicting ideas are given equal space.
Simmo: “There is a big democratic aspect to things although it’s not entirely democratic. We’ve known each other long enough to get to a point when we play where we’re not afraid to say ‘this isn’t working’”.

I am unsure whether Souvaris would be better or worse with a more direct blueprint – i.e. “we’re going to sound like THIS and THIS”. Dave and Simmo are also part of the band Bologna Pony, an uncompromising assault on the soul via volume and numbing monotony. That band could never suffer ‘first band syndrome’ benefits and shortfalls because its motives are clearly predefined. I wonder out loud if the band feel their time together is limited as they move out further into other musical ventures, or put another way – everyone’s first band comes to an end as members find no room for their growing tastes within it, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue…

Dave: “I think why we’re still together is each of us to different degrees is passive-aggressive about contributing - you can tell people what to play but ultimately they’ll do what they want and I know at certain points I am playing what I am playing because I am basically saying ‘fuck you’ to the band and I’ll do what I want.”
Simmo: “For me now Souvaris is my most important band – it’s home. I hate to pull in the cliché but it’s a meeting of minds and different people with different attitudes and we’re trying to work on fundamental things, beyond personality - dynamics, rhythm…”

I have to admit to being confused by this last comment. “Beyond personality” ? Surely if you have no words in music you still have to communicate something? Rhythms and dynamics are a tool for this but the value in Souvaris to me is the way they’re good at telling people what they are like as humans through the music they make.
Ian comments that “we are emotionally abstract in our songs.”

and I start to worry I’ve got the wrong end of the stick and my plan for this piece will have to be scrapped. Damn, I had it all planned! Now it seems the things I like about Souvaris are actually the things they want to eradicate. My head hurts.
They must have a feeling in mind when they write their songs, or at least something to communicate?
Simmo: “I think a lot of the time we inject feeling and invest essence post-mortem style. We come up with structuring and ideas and work them through and they become instinctive and then we get an idea of what it is we’re saying and the songs get a life of their own”
“A classic thing with us is that, whatever the original idea was, we always ends up subverting that original intention,” adds Dave.

By this point I am starting to wonder if dissecting Souvaris’ music might be missing the point and in fact whether interviewing them about what they do is somewhat self defeating. It seems like they still feel a need to at least say they cover all bases of their genre in their music even if maybe, on evidence, they don’t (and are better for it).

Let me explain; the term ‘post rock’ is something of a misnomer. It should be ‘post US hardcore’ or better still ‘what the people in hardcore bands in the USA started doing as the 80s came to an end’. The only way to link such a disparate collection of artists together is that members from bands in the genre used to play in hardcore punk bands. In fact a lot of musical forms grouped together are in opposition to each other: the minimalist rock of Shellac has nothing to do with the slow-build layering of Godspeed for example.

The problem comes when bands use the supposed genre as a starting point and so feel they need to include aspects of every musical style that supposedly exist under the one umbrella term. What then happens is a clash of opposing styles that serves to only dilute the end result. So you get the curse of the British ‘post rock’ band: long, epic songs that are phenomenally complicated and say nothing apart from “check out how many parts we can remember’ or more accurately ‘marvel at the size and development of my brain’. Post rock becomes nothing more than a nob comparison at the urinal.
“The thing with every ‘scene’ ever, though, is most bands in it suck” muses Ian to much laughter.

He’s got a point. There’s an impulse in people, when they discover an album, to then consume everything by that artist and then move into everything in that genre right down to the dregs. They get stuck in a style. Same goes with bands that are so uptight that if something they play reminds them of something outside of what they is ‘allowed’ they ditch it, and in doing so they create rules that limit their own natural sense of expression.

The good thing about recent Souvaris gigs I have seen is that seems to not be the case with the new songs the band are playing. What used to sound like 3 or 4 separate songs spot-welded together now sound like flowing, human conversations. Where the old rhythms used to strike me as deliberately tricky they now sound right. They’re no less impressive or unusual, it just seems now the band are only trying to satisfy themselves and strangely this has the effect of being more satisfying to the listener.

The band seem to have a newfound courage that allows them to do things (like running through the crowd clapping or playing riffs that Souvaris circa 2002 would deem ‘cheesy’) that maybe their contemporaries would find inappropriate.
Simmo: “I find I am interested in a violent way of putting music forward. I mean music written aggressively to be exactly what it is you want – it’s pushing what you’re doing. There’s no shyness. Violence is maybe the wrong word. Music that basically says ‘this is what I love and I don’t give a fuck’.”
Right on! Even if it means people who liked the older, more generic Souvaris stuff might feel alienated?
Dave: “If you’re a band that’s been going for a certain amount of time you get people who get upset when you change. I do it myself. But I find it weird that we’re getting people now who say they don’t like the new stuff”

Me too. But fuck ‘em. I think Souvaris are on the cusp of being a band that exists as it’s own entity, separate from influence. I don’t know if they even realise it (and trying to find out is breaking my brain) but they succeed more when they are telling the listener about themselves and the friendships within the band. It’s almost like they have an ability to move above questions of technical prowess or the restrictions of genre and just be themselves as a unit. With the average age of the band hitting the mid to late 20s they are a rare example of a band that has grown up playing together and learning from each other and their strength is communicating this. Even though I don’t always understand Souvaris maybe that’s fine? If I go to the pub with my friends I don’t always understand them either so maybe I don’t need to be able to always grasp what the band does because that way it’s more like life.

I tell them the conclusion I have come to is that interviewing them is pointless…
Dave: “The conclusion we’ve come to after 5 years is we like playing music, we like playing together therefore we’re going to express ourselves in these different ways, if it doesn’t make sense then listen to it again. The self consciousness has gone now, we’re just expressing ourselves.”
Simmo: “We’re not doing epic, we’re trying to have fun and be ourselves”

Maybe I was right all along?