After an acclaimed album release, Eyelids were forced to cancel a tour and cede momentum to the pandemic. They’re now back with a new single, an album on the way, and Victor Krummenacher on bass
Like so many things in the band’s existence, Eyelids’ last record began as a chance encounter that bloomed into a big, ambitious project. Singer and guitarist Chris Slusarenko often jokes that the band is fueled by accidents, and meeting Larry Beckett was no exception. Their kids are friends, and Slusarenko and Beckett began talking about their musical histories one day while their kids were hanging out. The idea for a collaborative single quickly turned into a full-fledged album once they grew more familiar with one another. This culminated in The Accidental Falls (2020), Eyelids’ third LP. The album exists in some otherworldly realm devoid of time. The lyrics, written by Beckett from the 1960s to the present, meet a band whose members have a long collective resume. To select just a few past acts: Guided By Voices, The Decemberists, Elliot Smith, Camper Van Beethoven, The Jicks — you get the picture. The band features three guitars from Slusarenko, John Moen, and Jonathan Drews, Paulie Pulvirenti on drums, and now Victor Krummenacher on bass, taking over for longtime member Jim Talstra. With the addition of Beckett, Eyelids added Tim Buckley’s lyricist to its resume, and even resurrected a lost Buckley/Beckett song in “Found at the Scene of a Rendezvous That Failed.” Together, they created what many have hailed as the band’s best record to date. Beckett’s words proved to be an unexpected creative spark that inspired the band to hone in on how music brings words to life. Without handling lyric duties, the band’s job was to create an atmosphere that these songs could flourish in, a living environment to unite poetry from the ’60s with jangly guitar rock powered by modern guitar pedals. In essence, The Accidental Falls was the ideal collaborative experience in that both parties created an achievement that neither could have orchestrated alone. As songs like “Ceremony” and “Dream” prove, Eyelids ventured into new arenas and came away with a record that both sounds like a natural extension of everything they’ve done, and an entry into territory they may never have reached without outside influence.
The songs were created well before the Covid-19 pandemic began, but due to its February 14 release, it’s an album that will forever be tied to the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. Eyelids debuted The Accidental Falls live in late February 2020 with a weekend in Seattle and their homebase in Portland, a sold-out album release show at Mississippi Studios on Leap Day. Hours before Eyelids took the stage, Oregon officially registered its first Covid case. It had arrived in the area, but it was not yet a prominent concern. “Everyone was in a great mood that night,” Slusarenko recalled. “But people were occasionally talking about how things were starting to get weird in terms of the numbers up in Seattle.” As is common at Eyelids gigs, the band was joined by a rotating cast of guests, and as the tiny stage crammed full of musicians would indicate, the term social distancing had yet to enter the lexicon.
With the momentum created by a critically acclaimed record, Eyelids were primed to hit the road in March and April. Covid showed no signs of disappearing as the dates approached. As a self-booked and -managed band, they had to decide themselves whether to play or delay the shows. “I didn’t have that sense of, ‘ah screw it, we should just go,’” guitarist and vocalist John Moen said. “I was kinda scared about it. I remember being like, ‘I don’t really want to go and just see what happens.’” And though circumstances were unforgiving for virtually every industry in the world, musicians and venues knew that even a few months without live music could have catastrophic ramifications. Yet Eyelids had no time to see how others would react to the worsening crisis. “The timing was so right on top of our next move,” Moen said. “It wasn’t like, ‘oh, there’s a week or two of leeway to see.’ It was like, ‘we just have to decide this.’” But as regulations for large-scale events began to appear in early March, small venues still felt gatherings could proceed safely. They were assured that if they traveled they’d be able to play. “I think we were waiting for someone to say ‘don’t do it’ because of the unknown, rather than ourselves,” Slusarenko said. “We were wanting the venue or someone to be like, ‘stop.’” Although they felt guilty and feared letting their “indie bros” down, Eyelids postponed the shows. Just hours later, the entire country and most of the world entered lockdown for what was a presumed span of weeks.
“At some point the world was in control and there was no way we could push against it,” Slusarenko said. “We just had to live in it.”
And though Eyelids felt they were missing out on a wave of momentum with the record being buried by the force of the pandemic, the best path forward was not to dwell on what could have been, or what they may have missed out on.
Slusarenko surmised the frank reality of the situation: “At a certain point I was like, yeah, it’s our cool record. But so be it. We just had to let go.”
“That’s about it,” Moen added. “Reality. It still exists, even though we’re musicians!”
*****
Chris Slusarenko was, unsurprisingly, wearing a sweater and in a cheery mood when he greeted me from the porch of Victor Krummenacher’s house. It’s a white house on a corner lot in Portland’s Alameda neighborhood. Krummenacher is the newest member of Eyelids. He was at the kitchen table wearing a black coat and blue jeans, sitting with his right leg crossed over the left, sipping a cup of coffee. The room is white, and across from the square wooden table is an antique desk with a typewriter on it, centered below a painting of a saxophonist in a purple suit. Krummenacher bought the house after a single virtual tour, as was common in fall of 2020 when he moved from Southern California to Portland. John Moen arrived moments later in a blue sweatshirt and sat down with a blue La Croix in hand.
When Moen and Slusarenko are in a room together, the energy is palpable. They finish each other’s sentences, fill in the blanks, and this rapport is what makes their relationship work on and offstage. As a three-guitar band, finding space in a song to do something unique can be a challenge, but judging by the way they race each other to punchlines, adding an extra harmony line on guitar just seems like another form of free-flowing conversation. Moen is quick to joke, often sitting back in his chair with his hands in his sweatshirt pocket, waiting to pounce. Krummenacher hardly feels like the new guy, and other than his light So-Cal twang, his presence feels as natural a fit as can be.
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Eyelids recognizes the band for the fact that its members have all been in a lot of other bands. The cover of their first 7-inch single shows the interweaving web of the many groups they have all crossed paths in through the years. Some featured as many as three of them at a time, but never all five.
Slusarenko and Moen have known each other since their teens. When they met, Moen was in The Dharma Bums, Slusarenko in Death Midget. (Slusarenko is fond of saying, “They were on a record label; we had stickers.”) Their musical journeys have taken them down different paths, with Moen spending years behind the drum kit and singing harmony with The Decemberists and many more; Slusarenko’s band Sprinkler had a brief run with Sub Pop Records, he’s held down bass for Guided By Voices (2003-04), and he ran the independent store Clinton Street Video for 23 years. [His brother Isaac runs Jackpot Records.] The spark that launched Eyelids was when Boston Spaceships — Moen’s and Slusarenko’s band with Guided By Voices’ prolific leader, Robert Pollard — came to an end in 2011. They both had some songs kicking around so they decided to work on them together. Producer Jonathan Drews joined on guitar, with Slusarenko and Moen resuming their Boston Spaceships roles of bass/guitar/vocals and drums/guitar/vocals, respectively. But once the idea to play a 7-inch single release show surfaced, they asked Paulie Pulvirenti (Elliott Smith, No. 2) to play drums, Jim Talstra (Dharma Bums, The Minus 5) to take up the bass, and Moen and Slusarenko took their places on guitar live. The five-piece incarnation of Eyelids was born, and it stuck.
While the members of Eyelids spent decades contributing to the musical history of the Pacific Northwest, Victor Krummenacher made his name in California as a founding member of Camper Van Beethoven and later joined Cracker. He’s released 10 solo records and spent years with Monks of Doom and as a touring member of various groups. He has also served as the managing art director for Wired magazine and is now a freelance graphic designer.
Krummenacher spent the first wave of the pandemic living with his mom after a tour with the Dave Alvin-led psych project Third Mind was canceled. Another of his bands, Two Heads, was also set to open for Eyelids for two dates in California in March. The severity of the pandemic came into focus when Eyelids decided to postpone. “We were literally in the studio on the phone with [Eyelids] and everything was shutting down,” Krummenacher said. The Third Mind tour was scheduled for May. They had yet to print merch, but, as he said, the machine had started to build. It seemed as if those dates would be pushed to summer, but like so many, the tour was canceled, leaving the band in limbo.
“We don’t know if that project will see the light of day again,” Krummenacher said. “It’s this bizarre thing where we sold a lot of records, got a lot of critical acclaim, and maybe it’s just gone.”
While in quarantine, he repeated a familiar process of creating a solo record between tours. He began writing new songs in his mom’s den with the goal to make them as cinematic as possible because he thought they would never be played live. The process presented logistical issues, such as drummer Michael Jerome not having a home recording setup. He played into the Garageband app on his phone, and Bruce Kaphan, a producer and pedal steel player for The American Music Club, was able to program the best drum sounds into a sampler and re-record the drums as a sampled kit. Though Krummenacher has spent much of his career as a work-from-home graphic designer, learning how to be a band that records remotely was a challenge. But the resulting Silver Smoke Of Dreams sounds as good as any high-budget recording. Its songs are long and enveloping; they pursue the freedom of having nowhere to go and thrive in the feeling of getting lost as a form of exploration.
“It turned out to be one of the richest recording experiences I’ve ever had and it was a total accident,” Krummenacher said. “That record actually kept my mind from completely collapsing. I am not used to having no creative interface with people.”
The combination of a nearly caved-in mind and an accident-fueled recording turning out better than expected seems like the perfect entry point to joining Eyelids’ orbit. He had shared the stage with Eyelids once prior. It was at an August 2019 show at Portland’s Mississippi Studios, which the band recorded, along with the later Accidental Falls release concert. During the pandemic they chose the standout tracks from each show and released a double live record, aptly titled Dubble Live. With highlights from both recorded shows, including the star-studded encores with Hedwig & The Angry Inch star Jonathan Cameron Mitchell singing “Angry Inch” and covers of Lou Reed, X, and Camper Van Beethoven with Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck, Jonathan Segel, Krummenacher and others. It’s a great representation of what an Eyelids show is like: playful and energetic with a stage full of musicians who have been performing together for decades.
Moen assigned himself a special project during lockdown. He had previously animated, which he put in air quotes, the video for “The Accidental Falls” using a two-layer electronic drawing pad borrowed from Slusarenko’s daughter. “It was clunky but also kinda strangely efficient for a clunky old mind,” he said. He enjoyed the process of creating visual representations of the lyrics and music, so for Dubble Live he decided to draw unique digital covers to accompany preorders of the album. It began as a fun incentive for buyers and a way for Moen to fill some downtime, but his patience met its match as the drawings piled up. “My motivation would wane and wax and I had moments where I didn’t do anything for a month because I was so burnt out. But Chris kept encouraging me sweetly and I got them done.” He tapped out after 128 drawings, many of which were included in a printed insert on the Dubble Live vinyl and in the video for “The Minutes.” Creating images for songs from a record in which they had to use music to bring life to someone else’s lyrics instigated a fresh perspective on lyric writing. Soon, a new project began to take shape.
*****
The poetic imagery of The Accidental Falls has rightfully been praised by fans and critics alike. And while it may seem like a daunting task to return to lyric writing after partnering with a renowned poet and lyricist, Moen and Slusarenko returned to writing the way they know how: put pen to paper and write. During the early days of the pandemic, the band decided not to do any online concerts, or even see each other until it felt safe to do so. Slusarenko and Moen wrote separately in their time apart and waited until the band was able to play together to seriously pursue a new project.
Moen says collaborating with Beckett helped him to reevaluate how he feels about writing lyrics. He in no way regrets having worked with Beckett, but after ceding the duties to an outside source, he feels more validation in his own lyrics and how they inform the band’s identity.
“I think you get in this rut where making music is the exciting part and lyrics feel a little bit like an obligation,” Moen said. “I discovered as soon as I gave it away that that wasn’t the way that I felt about it. I actually really like writing lyrics. It’s more difficult and it takes patience, but it’s actually really fun.”
Slusarenko normally writes music before lyrics, but after The Accidental Falls, his songs developed along a pretty even split between music-first and lyrics-first compositions. After the experience of extracting moods from Beckett’s pre-existing words, he set out to reverse engineer that intense musical relation to words of his own by focusing on how the feel of the song combines with its lyrical meaning. While wildfires raged across Oregon and formed an impenetrable layer of smoke across the West Coast, Slusarenko’s ex-wife, who lives in Estacada, was forced to evacuate her home and move in with his family for two weeks. Combined with the pandemic, the social justice protests in Portland and across the country, his songs began to harness the energy of the world — that feeling of not being in control and seeing how different people react. “How many people were looking at what was going on with different kinds of glasses?” Slusarenko said. “Some were doing worse, and some people were ignoring it. I was not good. I was really emotional. It was hard because of just everything that was going on with my family and my friends. It brought to light all the limitations on being able to help each other in those early moments.” With that in mind, the song “Everything That I See You See Better” emerged. He joked that for every one good song he writes 203 shitty ones, but this one was a keeper. “Right away, I knew this was a song, and it just was easy and effortless. It walked that line of melancholy and optimism that I like in our songs.”
Talstra had spent a decade as Eyelids’ bassist. “When we first started it seemed obvious to have Jim in the band since we’ve all played with him in a billion bands,” Slusarenko said. “His playing initially helped guide our three guitar attack and he played bass like his personality — sweet and thoughtful.” When it became clear that he would be leaving Eyelids for personal reasons, they needed to find someone to fill his place. Moen and Slusarenko visited Krummenacher’s house one day, and while sitting in the backyard Slusarenko mentioned he was working on a new song. He played them “Everything That I See.” They then played it together, and Krummenacher liked what he heard. After receiving a phone recording of what they’d played, he figured he could add some bass. “I got a studio,” he said. “I’ll just fucking play along.” From there, each Eyelid would add parts whenever they had time, the three guitars each finding where and how to best make additions informed by whoever had recorded prior. But soon full songs were emerging and Krummenacher was invested in the project. “It was really organic,” he said. “I thought, ‘OK, that’s how things are gonna work with these guys right now.’ There was no discussion; it just kind of happened.”
“I don’t know if there was ever a more gimme kind of gamble you could take with someone that we’ve been watching play since we were young and loving every time we saw him,” Moen said of Krummenacher joining Eyelids. “It was easy.”
The first taste of new Eyelids music is the now available 7-inch vinyl single of the Slusarenko-penned “Everything That I See You See Better,” and Moen’s “Wayhome.” The digital version also features a cover of The Fall’s “Fantastic Life” featuring Paul Hanley, who co-wrote the song and served as The Fall’s second drummer from 1980-1985. Eyelids asked him to share drumming duties with Pulvirenti for their cover, adding some extra manic carnival energy.
Covering The Fall was a full-circle moment for Krummenacher. He bought the “Lie Dream of a Casino Soul” 7-inch (“Fantastic Life” is the B-side) when it was released, and he recalled sneaking in to see The Fall in Los Angeles on the 4th of July when he was 16 and underage. He was kicked out but stayed on the street to try to hear the songs through the door. “The streets were just erupting with fireworks wars,” he said. “People shooting guns and drinking tequila. And I’m like, what are they playing now?” To join a new band and have their first recordings together include a Fall cover seemed like a match that couldn’t be denied.
“Everything That I See” displays the group’s ability to seamlessly mesh three guitars with gorgeous vocal harmonies in the chorus. Its mood is harder to pin down, as its opening notes quickly pivot from a seeming minor to a brighter major key. The positivity is present, but it culminates in an invitation to “join me in the accident that will be today,” a fair assessment of the mood of the times when it was written. In essence, “Wayhome” is structured as an introductory verse that progresses into three choruses with breaks only for its huge guitar riff. Moves like this suggest why their music is often labeled as power pop, a distinction that both Moen and Slusarenko find funny and slightly inaccurate — Slusarenko prefers “lopsided rock.” Through it all, Pulvirenti and Krummenacher power the songs as a finely tuned rhythm section. They enhance each other’s offbeats, lock in together, and make it difficult to believe that these are their first recordings together.
In context, the three songs are indicative of Eyelids as a band.
“It’s fun to have two pretty songs, then something like roadkill,” Slusarenko said with a laugh. “That’s just who we are.”
*****
The original plan for a new album was to pair a few new songs with out-of-print singles such as “Broken Continue” and “It’s About To Go Down.” Slusarenko felt that with the combo of a new band member whom they hadn’t yet gigged with, the uncertainty of future concerts, and a years-long backup of physical media, it might be a good time to release a smaller project. A conversation with Peter Buck (R.E.M., Minus 5) refocused the approach. “I explained this whole thing and he was like, ‘Why aren’t you making an album? You’re halfway there,’” Slusarenko recalled. “I called John and we were like, yeah, let’s just do it.” With a new trajectory for the project, Eyelids went into the studio on the hottest week of the year, which included a three day streak of the hottest days in Oregon history. “We got some Athens action going in that barn,” Slusarenko laughed.
Peter Buck is Eyelids’ go-to producer. They’ve created the albums Or (2017) and The Accidental Falls, and a few EPs together. At this point he’s been in the band’s orbit for so long that Slusarenko dubs him the sixth Eyelid. He frequently joins the band onstage and adds to the chime with his 12-string Rickenbacker, but behind the producer’s console they describe him as a more laidback force. He’s back for the upcoming record, A Colossal Waste of Light, and Moen said they brought him back for simple reasons: “He’s got strong opinions and he’s got great taste.” Krummenacher likened him to a good luck talisman, but they all praised how he works with the band, instead of forcing the musicians to work for him. And though the band often wants to keep recording to obtain the perfect sound, Buck is the one who tells them to move on because they’ve already captured the track. Ultimately, they work well together because he understands how the band functions as individuals and as a collective. “It’s also Peter Fucking Buck in the other room and no matter how close we are as friends, I still want to do good by him,” Moen said. By the way they speak of him, Buck’s greatest skill as a producer seems to be his ability to read the room and the band in it.
“Bands are delicate,” Krummenacher said. “I don’t always work in a band context, but Eyelids is a band context. You need to have people who respect that context, and Peter does. That’s what’s great about him.”
After months of uncertainty caused by vinyl production backups, A Colossal Waste of Light now has a release slated for October 2022. Details of the album will be unveiled further in the months to come, but they promised it’s not a “pandemic” album. Of the songs they mentioned, one is called “That’s Not Real At All” that began as a strange acoustic guitar riff that Slusarenko and Moen came up with that reminded them of The Residents. As Slusarenko tried to morph it into a more typical song structure, he and Moen agreed it was better when it was strange, so they left it alone. “We practiced it once and then we were like, let’s not play this again until we’re in the studio because if we overlearn it, it’s not going to be as cool as what we just did accidentally.” It tells the story of Peter Buck not remembering playing a TV performance with R.E.M. where The Fall were also guests. “It’s a thing you can watch online,” Slusarenko said, “where they have ballet dancers and they’re like pulling strings out of their bare butts, and Peter was like, ‘Yeah I don’t remember that. We were there, but…’ So I wanted to write a song about that, about just not remembering something so iconic.”
*****
One thing Eyelids has taught its members is the value of compromise over ego. They’ve all been in groups that imploded or collapsed due to members not getting along or feeling like creative control was more monopolistic than democratic. They’ve also realized that Eyelids isn’t a full-time job, so the best approach is to just enjoy every moment. The take-over-the-world mindset of youth has been superseded by the joy of creation and collaboration.
“You think you want control of everything, and your voice to be heard all the time and the people to get you and all this stuff,” Moen said. “Actually, it’s been a really great part of this band to just let those voices quiet themselves and really listen to what it is we can do if we share it. So we continue to have this rich experience because we’re all, for the most part, at a place where we can kind of see that the sum of all its parts is greater than any individual moment. Eyelids as a construction brought that to us. With Jonathan and Paulie we have a little perspective, and it’s so great to have that thing going.”
One silver lining of The Accidental Falls being released so close to the start of the pandemic is that they’ve noticed people at their first concerts back seem to have a deeper attachment to the songs. Because of that, instead of feeling like they’re making up for lost time, the delayed tours feel more celebratory. A major part of what drew Krummenacher to Eyelids is their cohesion as people and musicians. But he had seen the band play live before joining and heard from friends how much they enjoyed their shows. He knows it’s uncommon for a group of 50-somethings to be having as much fun making music as they are, but all three say it’s a testament to their decades of experience in other bands that allows them to approach it from a level-headed perspective.
“We are definitely, as a group of people, defying some odds,” Krummenacher said. “And I think we’re all pretty realistic. It’s not profound. Like, it’s just a band. We’re not changing the world. It’s just a thing, and it is important to us because we like to play music, but everybody knows there are more important things than being in a band.”
Eyelids have a good relationship with their label, Jealous Butcher Records, and without a manager, publicist, or strict recording demands, the band has become a project with more freedom than any other they’ve played in. The group seems to egg each other on to find new ways to keep the music fun. It harkens back to the early days when they realized that the secret to being a musician is to just start a band and get in the van. That guiding spirit has continued to push them to make records when they want to, and to follow through with projects they may have dismissed in their younger years for reasons as simple as time, budget, or self-doubt. That’s why they have the freedom to dabble in music videos that include stop-motion sequences and Moen serenading a toy mouse, play Halloween shows in full costume and crucify a sweater, or have a release campaign with 128 custom drawings for fans.
“I like that people are like, ‘Wait, what? You guys made that video, you guys did those illustrations… What?’” Slusarenko said. “For us it feels like an opportunity to try something that we were interested in but never got to do before. It’s like, I wanna try that!”
And maybe therein lies a key part of the secret to what many post-pandemic bands will need to succeed: a willingness to pursue their own interests ahead of the old business models and the savvy to make it work from there. Eyelids generally schedule live dates for short travel stints, usually geared around the release of a new album or single. The micro-tours approach is another promising venture for a group that holds regular jobs. Months-long tours may not always be possible, but a long weekend to California might. These keep the music flowing and allow them to limit their days on the road.
“Every year there’s something exciting to look forward to and a new thing that we haven’t done, or a new collaboration,” Slusarenko said. “And that’s been really wonderful at my rickety age.”
When Slusarenko closed Clinton Street Video in November 2018 after 23 years in business, he recalled the store’s origins at a going away party. The independent shop opened at a time when banks would not loan money to aspiring video store owners due to the overcrowded nature of the industry. With tears in his eyes, he thanked all of the patrons over the years and said that when the store opened, they all knew it would eventually close. But the fact that they outlasted the chain video stores as an independent neighborhood shop speaks volumes about the value of a community store with character, run by caring individuals. It’s hard not to draw a parallel to a band facing an uncertain market. For independent touring musicians, the roads were plotted in the ’70s, the trails carved in the ’80s, the roads paved in the ’90s, the expressways painted in the aughts. In the 2010s, the barrier to entry became so miniaturized that anyone with a cellphone could release a record. And then in 2020, everything was put on pause. Countless bands, like Eyelids with The Accidental Falls, lost all momentum. Now that Eyelids have returned to the stage after time away from music and each other, they agree that their love for music has never been greater. They also don’t recognize the industry that they have navigated for most of their lives, and are attempting to make sense of what’s to come. But through it all, they still feel it’s worth the sacrifice.
“There’s a lot of reasons where if you start to get into wider philosophical trains of thought it’s like, why am I even fucking doing this?” Krummenacher said. “It’s fucking hard. And to dispense with that and just go with the faith in doing it is kind of a big deal. I don’t take the fact that I’m able to get onstage and play with a good band for granted. I’m lucky to be a part of anything right now. If you can’t channel the gratitude, I feel like you’re really missing the point right now.”
Future paths will unfold in real time, and to paraphrase Moen in ‘Wayhome,” sometimes it doesn’t matter where you’re going, so long as you know you’re going somewhere. Just be ready for the accidents that might provide fuel along the way.
Feature image by John Clark; Crocheted letters by Jo Hamilton
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