Luke Temple first hit the indie scene in 2005 with his full-length debut Hold a Match for a Gasoline World, a sweet acoustic-based album that triggered immediate comparisons to Elliot Smith and Jeff Buckley. With his second release Snowbeast, due August 21 on Mill Pond Records, Temple has turned his sound inside-out, most notably replacing cozy acoustic guitars with chilly analog synths. Predictable, no. Fascinating, yes indeed. Temple is a true modern renaissance man; classically trained painter and self-taught singer-songwriter.

On the evening of a recent show at Seattle’s Crocodile Café, Temple sat with bandmates, doodling a portrait on a placemat. Junkmedia didn't hesitate to barge right in, pull up a chair, and have a chat with the distractingly handsome, angel-voiced man.

Junkmedia: So, you're from Massachusetts, which I only learned recently. Tell me about growing up in New England. What was your childhood like?

Luke Temple: Pretty normal, except for divorce [laughs].

I think that's pretty normal these days.

Yeah. I grew up in Manchester, Massachusetts. My mother was an artist and a dancer. My dad was in advertising. I went to a small little high school. There were like 46 people in my grade. Same kids, kindergarten through high school.

That can be a killer.

Yeah, it's pretty incestuous.

What was your access to music like? What was your exposure?

Neither of my parents were big collector types, so we didn't have a big record collection or anything. My mother used to listen to this reggae show every night on 88.9, an Emerson College radio show, when she was making dinner. So there was a lot of reggae in my house, I guess [laughs]. We weren't really a specifically musical family. My mother was a dancer, and both of my parents really appreciated music. But nobody played music; that was my own discovery.

When you were older?

When I was about 14 or 15, I kind of discovered music on my own, on my own terms, I guess. My best friend played drums, and my cousin, who lived in town, started playing guitar. So I decided to pick up the bass, just to kind of complete the triangle. We started jamming. And I was a bass player for, I don't know, until I was 25. I never played really seriously. I concentrated on visual art, and music was just something I did as a hobby. Then I got a guitar eventually, and I started to write songs. And it just kind of took over.

Did you always sing?

No, not at all. Actually, no one sang. We really just made a bunch of noise [laugh]. I mean, I always enjoyed singing along to stuff. But it's hard to know when it's OK to sing in front of people. To decide that you're "a singer," not just someone who sings now and then. It was really terrifying, the first time I sang in front of people.

When was that?

Near where I grew up, in Gloucester, MA, there's an open mic every Monday, and I guess that the first time I sang was there. The first songs I sang were my own songs. I never really – I still don't know any covers, so I kind of started writing my own songs from the beginning. I was playing for my friends and people seemed to like it. But the first time I played them publicly was at the open mic, and it was really terrifying.

I'm sure. That seems like a very vulnerable place to be.

Oh yeah.

So, your background is in visual arts. You're a painter, right?

Yeah. I still paint a little; I paint murals. I went to school at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and I majored in figurative painting, oil figurative. I was going to move to New York and try to get involved in the gallery scene there. And I did move to New York, with that intention. But at the same time, right when I was moving to New York I met this girl, Rachel Martinez, who was booking smaller clubs. I met her at this party, and I told her that I played music, and she just offered me a gig, without ever hearing my music. That was the first time that I actually had my own show and played in front of an audience. And it just sort of went from there.

You started recording?

I got a four-track, and I started messing around with the four-track, and I got a little band together. I've always done decorative artwork for money, like murals and stuff, but as far as doing my own work, it just kind of faded away.

Music just felt like the right thing to do.

Yeah. I think there's something less formal about music for me. Because I went to school for art, and there's so much pressure. There's kind of this gallery world, fine art world, and there's all these considerations – critically – where you fit in, where your context is. And all these things that I didn't want to be concerned with. Music was so new and so open, and it didn't have as much of a weight to it. I felt free, I felt like I could do and be whoever I wanted to be. And I still kind of feel that way about music, I think because it's a much broader field, there are so many people who play music. Sure, there are tons of artists, but if you want to be specifically part of that fine art world, then it's very cloistered, it's very small. It's very fashion-conscious, and very self-conscious, as far as I'm concerned. Also, with music, I was less technically adept at it, so there was more risk being taken, everything was new and exciting. Just that I was making a song, period, was exciting for me. And I think I've maintained that excitement, that sense of wonder. And that quickly went away when I went to art school for visual arts.

Do you feel like there is a lot of criticism in music? It feels like everybody has something to say.

Oh absolutely. There's certainly criticism. But also, through radio, and the fact that you can buy a CD for $15, whereas you can't go out and spend $100,000 on a painting – music is open to a mass market of people who have been educated through radio. All the steps, the evolution that music has taken, we, as a culture, have been educated through that. I feel like, with the art world, there's been this huge gap. People sort of stopped with Picasso, and then it became really conceptual. It moved so far from being accessible to regular people, and it was only accessible to the critics and to other artists. It's so insular. With music there are the critics, but there are also people who just enjoy it. People who listen to music and just want it to be an oasis to them, not something that they have to consider or that defines them somehow.

Do the concepts you use in your painting apply to your songwriting and your performing?

Definitely. I mean, I utilize the same part of my brain. There's still composition. There are parts and I sort of amass them, and I take the un-necessaries out, and find some sort of little thread or some narrative in there. And that's the same kind of thing that happens with painting. You start really rough, you start broad, and then you slowly define it. You start eliminating negative space, and then you slowly define something. It's a process of discovery, and music is the same way. And I think in terms of composition when I write a song. I think in terms of arrangement, and I see color, I see shapes. Each song has a specific kind of color in my mind, each record that I make has a general kind of tone or color to it. I think it's the same part of my brain.

You've lived in a bunch of places. You grew up in Massachusetts, and you lived in California for a while…

In Mendocino.

And then New York, and Seattle, and New York…

Yeah, I was in Seattle two times. I moved here before I moved to Mendocino. I was on a road trip – this was many moons ago when I was 19, and then I went to Boston to go to art school, and then I moved to New York when I was about 25. Then I moved back to Seattle, and now I've been back in New York for about two years.

Wow. So where feels like "hometown" for you?

New York. I've been there for the majority of my adult life. I've been there for about seven years, so all my friends are there. There's just something about the East Coast in general that I understand more. And it's definitely a love/hate relationship. I don't stay in New York for the reason I moved to New York in the first place – because I thought it was the only place I could be in order to do what I wanted to do, and make the connections I wanted to make. Now it's just home. I have my little neighborhood, I have my little pattern, the things I do every day. Most importantly I have my community there, and I just understand it somehow. It's home to me.

There's a supportive community there, artistically?

Certainly my community. I mean, it can get a little bourgeois, New York. The art world creeps in there, especially in New York. But then there's something about that that keeps you on your toes a little bit, everyone's trying to push the envelope. And I am definitely influenced by that to some degree. And I'm always having to remind myself of what it is that's the most important about my music: am I expressing myself at all? Sometimes you can get kind of caught up in trying to redefine yourself all the time, and you sort of lose sight. It's important to be constantly changing. But it's a thin line between doing that and losing sight of what it is that comes most naturally. A lot of people, I find, in the indie world sort of hide themselves. And that's not a blanket statement. But they are more conscious of the form of the music, stylistically, and trying to revolutionize a sound at the expense of really communicating something as a person. You need both and I think it's a matter of trying to find that nice blend.

There always seems to be a "new thing," and then the wave of everyone imitating the new thing. And at first it comes from a very genuine place, but then there is so much repetition of it. And people do have great new sounds, it's really exciting.

And now, it's sort of like the door has been blown open. And now it's like, anything goes. We have been to the mountaintop and back! [laughs] There is nothing new sonically. It might surprise one person, but then there's another person who's already heard it. You can be as atonal as you want, you can play the most sincere folk as you want. But stylistically, it's all been done and it's all been said. So I guess it's more important now to just try and be as honest as you can. It's hard to say what "the new thing" is anymore, because there are so many bands doing so many different things.

Sure, there's so much room now, there are so many platforms to release music on. It can be overwhelming.

Too many options.

Very overwhelming as a person trying to take in the music scene.

I don't even worry about it anymore. I just let it come to me. A lot of my friends are sort of musicologist types. So I just kind of live vicariously through them. [laughs]

I assume you have a day job in New York?

I paint murals.

Really? For a living?

Yup.

That's really great! Do you go into people's houses and…

No. I work with this guy, Andrew Tedesco. He's been painting murals for, like, ten years. He does them on muslin, which is a thinner version of canvas. And he does them in a studio in New Jersey. So, we do them in the studio, on canvas, and then we install them in people's homes. It's just like wallpaper, basically. You get the dimensions, do the mural, then get in there and just size them to the wall. It's a great job.

It sounds great. I mean, if you have to have a job.

Yeah. And he's really flexible. He loves the fact that I have this other thing going on. I mean, I'm away for almost two and a half weeks. And it's no problem, my job's there when I get back.

It must be nice to always be painting, and be always in that environment. Rather than being in an office or something that just drains you. Doing something creative all the time, is there always something going on in your head, musically?

It's not always music, but a lot of the time. It depends on where my head space is at. I go through more musical periods than others. Sometimes I don't think about it at all. I actually went through a bit of a drought, recently, in the past few months. When everything was sort of said and done with my new record, I sort of had nothing left to say. And just recently the wheels have started to turn again and I feel like I have something to say, so I've been writing more now. But yeah, if I have a song that I'm really excited about, or that I'm trying to flesh out, then it will just be on constant repeat all day in my head. And a lot of times I work by myself, if my boss is on-site or something. And it will just be churning, over and over.

Does that drive you crazy?

In a good way. Good crazy. [laughs]

Do you have a favorite city to perform in?

I really like Baltimore. I've never played there. But I just like that city.

It just seems like it would be a good place to play?

Yeah. It feels like this last vestige of real Americana. It's sort of forgotten, it's an old industrial town. A lot of the old factories, from the '30s, were just abandoned. Everyone kind of took their personals and just left, in a day, and left all the poor people to fend for themselves. So it's this industrial wasteland, but there's something so beautiful about it. But a city to play in? I really like playing in Portland, I usually have a good show there, I like that city a lot. There's a kindred spirit with Portland and Brooklyn somehow, culturally.

How so?

I don't know. There's something subtle about it. Not to downplay Seattle at all, but it's not so "rock and roll" and aggressive like Seattle. There's certainly been this sort of folk movement that's happened. People are getting hip to a lot of early American folk, like all the Alan Lomax recordings and folk music from around the world. I feel like the same thing is happening in Brooklyn, a lot of bands are being influenced by that stuff. And it feels like it's in the forest, sort of, the city. It's more like a big town. And for whatever reason, some alchemical process makes us have this amazing show every time I go there.

That's a nice thing to look forward to. You're playing there tomorrow?

Not tomorrow but the next day.

So, what do you want to tell me about the new album, Snowbeast?

Well, I recorded it myself. It's the first album I've recorded entirely myself. I recorded it on an 8-track. I had a year to make it, so I really flushed through all the songs. I have like 10 different versions of each song. I really tried to take these simple forms and twist them and turn them, and see if I could find a different strand somewhere. And a lot of the time I did. I was working with a different sonic palette. I got rid of the acoustic guitar on a lot of it, and replaced it with an analog synth. There's something less precious about it. Acoustic guitar is an immediate genre signifier, it brings you somewhere so specific. And the fact that so many people were wanting me to make a solo acoustic record made me want to do just the opposite. [laughs] So I picked something that's cold and impersonal, like the synth, but I wanted to try and bring some warmth out of that. And I didn't understand that instrument at all, so there was a lot of limitation on my part. There was a lot of limitation in general in making the record: I had only 8 tracks to work with, I wasn't going through any digital medium, I had two microphones, I had these little odds and ends of instruments and I had friends come over and play on it. But because I had such a limited palette, I had to figure out the most economic way to say the most possible. I think limitations are important for the creative process, like setting up your parameters before you begin.

These days, with ProTools and stuff, I think people get stuck trying to fix things by adding and adding and adding. So that was a huge part of my process, the limitation, and also trying to tame this instrument that I didn't understand. I think being naïve about it, I got some interesting sounds, just because I was moving sliders all over the place and just using my ears. It was a completely new thing, and there was something so exploratory about it. I mean there are still a few acoustic songs on the record.

Not a lot, though.

Yeah, two. [laughs] There's two straight acoustic songs. So, I definitely feel like this record is going to be challenging for people who know my first one [Hold a Match for a Gasoline World]. I think it's going to be difficult. It's not as challenging for people who haven't heard anything from me before, it doesn't sound as bizarre. I don't hear it as experimental. Nothing is arbitrary on the record. Nothing was thrown out as "oh this will sound weird, or this will sound cool." Everything on the record was intended, and everything has a specific voice.

I hear it as this thoroughly composed record. I think that sometimes I'll catch it at a weird angle, and I'll hear it when I'm not expecting, and I can sort of hear how it might sound to someone if they don't have context for it. But the only thing I can recommend about that record, to anyone who is going to get it, is – and I've seen this happen to people – with the first listen they don't even know where to listen. And with the second listen it starts to become a little clearer. And by the third listen it actually makes sense, and then they might actually fall in love with it. Because it's a very personal, sweet record. You just have to know where to listen, or allow it to become what it is, and not assume when you hear the sounds that it's this way or that way. It still sounds like a folk record to me.

You know, that was exactly the reaction that I had. On the first listen – well, we'd been waiting two years for this new record! And it just kind of hits you like, woah, what is this? So the first time I heard it I wasn't sure. But then I spent a weekend in New York, and while I was walking around, that album was all I listened to. And it definitely started to make sense.

Yeah! You know, I'm really proud of my first record. But a lot of that record kind of got away from me, it didn't feel personal to me. With that record I felt like, it was so pleasant to listen to, and there's nothing that anyone will really dislike. But at the same time, people weren't going ga-ga over it. It was just sort of somewhere in the middle. They liked it enough. It didn't get a lot of negative criticism, but it wasn't overwhelmingly positive either. This new record, people either really love it, or they really hate it. And I welcome that. I know that it's going to get a lot of negative criticism from people, but at the same time, it's going to do well with a lot of other people.

I just find it so surprising that you feel like this is a more "personal" record than the first. You know, the guy with the acoustic guitar. It's obvious and we all know where that's coming from, and it's easy. The new album is not easy.

Right, I know. Like, acoustic guitar and crying in your beer, you know what I mean? People probably picture me making the new record in an igloo or something, at the North Pole. But I was actually in my own bedroom, sobbing in my beer the whole time![laughs] No, not at all.

I think I read somewhere that you recorded this album in your bedroom, and I thought, well that can't be right. That must be a mistake, they must be talking about the first record. That one was more of a bedroom record.

Well that's the association with the acoustic guitar and stuff. It's hard for me to get perspective, you know? But for me, this album sounds so much more personal. There's much more of a fantasy element, and they're like little dreamscapes. The first one was just done in a proper studio, with a lot of amazing gear, with a producer and everything. And I think it came out sonically really well. But we had to do it in two weeks, because we had no budget. And there was no troubleshooting at all, we had to have all of the arrangements locked down before we went in there, and it was just about performing it. This one is much more organic. I had so much more time to work through ideas, and have people over and bounce things off of other people. So in every way, the process was so much more organic, even though the end result might sound much colder. I hear the process, though, so it's very hard to hear it objectively. But like I said before, I'll catch it without even realizing it, and I won't even know that it's my record, and I'll see how bizarre it might sound if you don't have context for it.

The first record was so singer-songwritery, and you drew all the comparisons to Elliot Smith, Neil Young, all that. Do you think those are fair comparisons? If this feels more like "you" that the last album, do you think those comparisons are still valid?

There were obvious comparisons with the last album. I think, yeah, if you heard me play these songs acoustically – which if you stick around for the show tonight you will – yeah, those influences will… actually, I should say, a lot of those "influences" are not me, they're not valid. I won't name names, but I'm not a fan of all those people. I am a huge Neil Young fan, I'll say that. He's my all-time favorite. But a lot of the other comparisons, I never listen to their music. But the second you have a sort of falsetto, warbly voice, you're put in a specific category. But I've never liked that music, you know? [laughs] And this is just the voice that I have. But people have to make comparisons to understand things, I guess.

You think you're coming into more of your own personal sound now?

Yeah, but it's always changing. I think the next record is going to be equally as different. I always want to be changing. And my "sound" has been there always, and it's something that I don't even notice, probably, it's in the intangibles. It's something I shouldn't even be concerned with. The less I concern myself with it, the more it will just sort of be, and the more honest the music will be. I just sort of follow where my interests lead me. And I'm listening to a different kind of music now, and a lot of the music that I'm writing now is sort of moving in this new direction that I haven't been in before. So I think the next record will be a totally different thing. But it's hard to say. It depends on when I record it, when I seize the moment. I kind of change a lot, and I get interested in different stuff.

What are you listening to right now?

I've been kind of obsessed with this Ethiopian compilation record called Ethiopiques. It's Volume 5. I think it's the most rural, folk version of Ethiopian music. A lot of the recordings are from the '50s and '60s, or even from the 40's. It's this really raw, really sparse African music. Like two people clapping, and a really dirty little guitar, and someone singing. But it's all these really amazing polyrhythms. It sounds like Delta blues to me. But it's really inspiring. Just the way they fill time is completely different. So that's something I've been listening to a lot. And King Sunny Ade I've been checking out a lot, he's another African musician. He's got this more modern, more fully orchestrated sound. So, a lot of African stuff.

Do you get out and see a lot of music in New York?

I have enough friends in bands that it kind of keeps me busy. There are probably two or three shows I go to a week. And sometimes a band will come through that I really want to check out. What was the last show that I saw…. I saw Deerhoof, that kind of blew my mind. And a few months ago I saw Cass McCombs. I saw him at Mercury Lounge, that was an amazing show. That was the last show that I saw that really blew my mind. And some of my friends' bands, I'm not just biased I think they are some of the best bands in the city.

Mostly local New York bands?

Yeah. There's a whole group of us that sort of have played with each other in different forms. There's this band Flying , who are also on Mill Pond, sort of more experimental. Then there's The Subjects, sort of a more straight I guess garage rock band of sorts. Then my friend Rob Stillman, Rob Stillman's Horses, he's also on Mill Pond. And this band End of the World. A lot of those kids are from Boston, and there's a huge Maine connection too – a lot of bands from Portland.

You just keep going south until you hit the scene.

Yeah, until you fall in the ocean. [laughs]

Was there any reason for the long gap between the albums?

Well, with the first record, I think it was about six or seven months from the time I finished it to the time it was released. And then there was just the logistic process of getting it out, and it's a really small label so we have to outsource some of the different things, the press and the distribution and all that stuff. And it just took a long time, just to get it all together. So it was half a year by the time I got that out, and did a few months of touring, so then it was like a year later. So I started my next record a year later, and I spent a year on that record. So, two years goes by. I have more than enough songs for my next record. Depending on where I am stylistically, I could make a new album right now. So I think I'll start recording, just to get some stuff down. If I take too long, I start to lose the spark in certain songs that I once loved, you know? I'd rather grab it while it's still hot.

Speaking of songs that you love… There's a song that you've played live in the past, I think it's called "You Belong to Heaven?" What happened to that song? It's always been my favorite.

I actually never titled that song.

Well we were awfully disappointed that it wasn't on the album.

Oh it'll make it onto a record eventually. I want to take that song where it needs to go. I'd love to record that song like a Patsy Cline recording, with full strings in an old vintage studio, get that old sound. I want to make that song really sing, I don't want it to be just this little solo acoustic song that I recorded in my bedroom. I think it deserves more. I'll record it eventually; I still love singing that song. There are a lot of these country waltzes that I keep writing, it's like the most natural form for me to write. And they're just compiling, and eventually I'll just record a straight country record, you know? And I'll do it live. I'll just get a bunch of musicians in a room for a week, and that'll be it.

Great idea.

Yeah, I'll do it eventually.

Well, I'm looking forward to the show. It was a pleasure meeting you, I'll let you get back to your drawing.

[laughs] Thank you.

By Brittany Abbott.
July 27, 2007