Interview with Erase Errata as They Head to CMJ

At first Erase Errata are almost too much: too many rhythmically complex, interlocking riffs; too much skittery guitar and pounding, precise drums and effects-laden trumpet and tense, throaty, yelping, insistent vocals. Listening to their first full-length, Other Animals (Troubleman Unlimited) is a bit like playing a really tough game of pinball. Your ears and mind are the ball, bouncing up and back and swirling round and round while all sorts of colored flashing lights go off and weird characters pop up.

Yet the band has a lot in common with the precise, minimalist punk-funk of the early 80s, like Kleenex/Liliput or the Bush Tetras or ESG. They've got that jittery, sexy, moody No Wave-rhythm-thing down, and they've added a willingness to mess around with all sorts of other styles and sounds. As Jenny, the band's vocalist, puts it, "None of us is really scared of any genre. We all like noise, we all like crazy stuff."

The four women in Erase Errata are neighbors and roommates in Oakland who started playing music together when guitarist Sara and bassist Ellie, both from New Jersey, moved in next door to native Californians Jenny and Bianca, the drummer. An accountant, an employee at a book distributor, a writer and odd-jobber and a casualty of the recent wave of layoffs, they work 'cause they have to ("California is so fucking expensive") and "write" their music collectively. Jenny describes their practice sessions: "We're really big on the ready-set-go method... We just say ready-set-go and then play and it sounds really fucked up but kind of cool and it will settle into something comprehensible and then, eventually, a song."

Even Jenny's lyrics are composed on the spot, in practice: "Whatever I say over and over to a song becomes it, becomes the lyrics. Although it kind of changes a lot, because I don't have such a good memory, so I do write things down afterwards... It's kind of like hyperactivity, like Tourette's lyrics." A vaguely philosophical, free-associative kind of Tourette's, as lyrics from the track "Other Animals are #1" show: "Other animals are more evolved/their evolution leads to natural efficiency.../our evolution leads to capitalism/what is the good life?/Is it the rich life? Is it the simple life?" "Tongue Tied," the album's first track, has Jenny and the others twisting the title around in their mouths, playing with the sounds of words and the effects of repetition.

The band's music, while more sophisticated than a lot of what's out there, is mostly too forceful and visceral to be pretentious. (Listening to Bianca pound her drums, you'd probably never guess that she collects unicorns.) Erase Errata aren't snobbish; the day they were interviewed, Bianca informed me she'd been listening to Madonna's Immaculate Collection, the Sparks' compilation CD and a lot of classic rock radio. Jenny had listened to "Wifey" and watched the soap Passions, which features witches and a midget. You can hear the band having fun when they play, and Bianca says that's what it's mostly about for them. Jenny says with pride that "People like to dance to us." And sweat, too: "We probably get a little bit more joy out of the smaller shows, like in Austin and North Carolina we played house parties. They're more high-energy, with everyone sweating. We're all kind of on the same level and there's not a very big division between the band and the audience." On the other hand, "the sound is always really great in larger places." The band first put on shows in their warehouse home, then played at a drag bar, Kimo's, in San Francisco. They went on tour across the country and to Canada after playing together for only a few months. A 7-inch they put out got a lot of attention in what some people persist in calling the underground (I guess it really is, since most folks don't have turntables anymore) and after appearing on several comps the band put out a self-titled EP earlier this year.

Other Animals features catchy, singsongy melodies that circle around themselves while Jenny's fluid, chant-like vocals escalate with increasing urgency until they're almost shouted. Words and notes tumble over each other and echo back and forth. Many of the songs are very short, intense bursts that leave the listener exhilarated and slightly bewildered?some of the longer tracks lose a little of that energy. Erase Errata sometimes use samples too, mostly to good effect?you hear bleeps and blips and sounds like a record being played at the wrong speed. It's refreshing to hear from a band that's so willing to experiment (maximal rather than minimal in that sense) and one that's honed its craft; in our currently garage-rock-crazy world, more complicated music can come off as nerdy, but Erase Errata's music is too passionately felt and filled with energy for that.

It's a misconception, anyway, to think that technique of the sort Sara, say, demonstrates on guitar, gets in the way of playing good music and having fun. If the sounds aren't exciting on their own, what is? The stage show? The outfits? Erase Errata are very much in a Bay Area vein when it comes to visuals?Bianca currently sports a mohawk, and their album art features surreal graphics of a boxing ant and grasshopper. In other words, this is no glam band. But you can tell from the album that they probably kick ass live. Jenny, who also plays trumpet in the group and other instruments in other projects, explains what playing with good musicians means to her: "It just kind of frees everyone up and we don't really have to worry about the basics with each other so much. We can just get into creating some different kinds of sounds and...artistically push some boundaries with each other. It's kind of strange music that we're making."

Erase Errata play Sun., Sept. 16, 12:35 a.m., at Northsix, 66 N.6th St. (betw. Kent & Wythe Aves.), Williamsburg, 718-599-5103, as part of the CMJ Music Marathon (cmj.com).