Rutting Haiku

November 24, 2005

By Justin Hopper

Jim Lingo, renowned Pittsburgh eccentric, describes the Alabama farmhouse where Centipede E'est recorded its debut album thusly: "There were gates, and drives down dirt roads and no neighbors, and cows in pastures."

Perhaps a Bloomfield rooftop -- overlooking piping smokestacks and innumerous hard-hat zones and busy, honking side streets -- is infrequently conducive to haiku. (By now, having read and re-read Lingo's off-the-cuff remarks, you've noticed the 5-7-5 syllabic structure, the acquiescence to nature, the Shiki-esque drifting realist simplicity.) But such a joining of urban smoke and elemental spirit is central to Centipede E'est, a new quartet formed from the ashes of several departed local bands.

Guitarist/singer Lingo and bassist Caulen Kress (also of Karl Hendricks' band) found their post-punk group Boombox disintegrating even as it seemed finally to be fulfilling its potential. Around the same time, singer/guitarist Nick Falwell's group Shopping splintered, and drummer Sam Pace -- ex- of the Dirty Faces and Johnsons -- was looking for a new project as well. The four fell together and, after a three-month romance, a handful of rehearsals and no gigs, found themselves driving 700 miles to record an album at Falwell's parents' farmhouse in rural northeastern Alabama.

"The very first practice, the songs were just there," says Lingo. "I think we're all proud of this album, but we'd only been together three months, and I think it just scratches the surface."

For four days, with ex-Shopping man Scott Carney at the controls, the Centipedes holed themselves up in the farmhouse located near the bustling metropolis of Paint Rock -- population 185. ("It's not actually that bad," says Kress. "We went out to the Piggly Wiggly, and among their beer selection, they had Coors Light, Bud, Miller and two six-packs of Yuengling.") They watched lightning silhouette the woods against the skylights, miked amplifiers in all the closets, and recorded vocals in a fallout shelter, surrounded by dehydrated peanut butter.

"While Jim was doing a [feedback and effects] solo, Sam and I were out on the porch," says Falwell. "There was some kind of stag or mountain lion out there, and it started calling back to the sounds Jim was making."

"I think," says Pace, cautiously, "I think it was rutting."

And rutting is, perhaps, a good way to describe the nature-boy swagger and chest-thump, the damnably confident-if-selfless rock 'n' roll of Cheeks of Neptune, Centipede E'est's completed debut. For instance "Org of Cong," an anarchic rock trundle that bucks at its own reflection in the still pond water, or "Mogadon Dancehall," which runs its course from faux-Afrobeat Gang of Four-ism through to wave-whipped, relentless guitar wash. Beyond an embrace of the organic and of some kind of twisted, natural spirituality that permeates even Centipede's noisiest post-punk thrash (Falwell's suggestion for an upcoming live recording's title: Honorable Mention at the Inner Peace Competition), Cheeks of Neptune finds itself accidentally walking an elemental-themed path. "Sinking Boats," with its disaster-at-sea drumming and nautical lyrics, and Lingo's "Asian-tsunami requiem," "Mountaintop Beaches." As if to stress the point, Centipede E'est goes so far as to include musique concrete recordings of tiny waterways -- goddamn tree-huggers.

"We took a trip to Cook Forest," says Lingo, "and we hiked through the woods down to the Clarion River. I brought a thumb piano and a mini-disc recorder, and we recorded water percussion, and sticks on rocks, for the middle of 'Excuse Me Medusa/The Scaler.' We saw a fawn, too, we saw it stand up for probably the first time in its life. And we all held hands and hovered above the trees."

Since recording Cheeks of Neptune, Centipede E'est has had some slightly more worldly successes, too. A string of well-received gigs has resulted in an upcoming tour with indie semi-stars Oxford Collapse, and in their 12 months together, the Centipede members believe the band has gained more momentum in just a few months than many other projects did in years.

"We'd like to get on a label, and I would hope that would happen," says Pace. "But a label, to me, isn't some kind of get-rich-quick -- or, in fact, anything but a way to possibly get heard more. We're all realistic at this point. But it'd be nice to have someone distribute the music, so that we can call up a venue and say, 'We'd like to come here and play,' and not just be some random band; have something out there that they might've heard of."

"We've talked about [success]," says Lingo, "because -- what the hell would we even want? But still, you strive for something, even if you don't know what it is."

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