Puncture
Summer 1995 , # 33

A WARM GUN contradictions of the blue up?

Somewhere between New Wave and just plain out there- or let's say between Kate Bush and Diamanda Galas- you'll find "weird pop" fiend Rachael Olson, whose band the Blue Up? just might change your world. Fred Mills reports LET'S BEGIN WITH THE FUTURE. Asked where they'd like to be in five years' time, most musicians would give a noncommittal reply, something along the lines of "Still making music my way." Rachael Olson, singer/guitarist in Minneapolis trio the Blue Up?, unleashes the kind of wishful-thinking stream of consciousness one rapidly comes to expect from her hyperactive- and hypercreative- brain. "I want to have a three-story warehouse space, by the ocean, all to myself, to run around in and roller-skate on the floors," says Olson in a preposterously tiny voice that brings to mind a midwestern Betty Boop. Laughing at the thought, she continues, "I want a million cellular phones. And a really big roof to go out on, and dance, and enjoy the outdoors at night without being scared. And to paint the walls and floors any color I want. And I want the giant zebra at FAO Schwartz. I want Peter Gabriel to marry me. And Björk to be my best friend."

Well, we all have dreams, but one dream recently came true for Olson and bandmates Renee Bracchi (drums) and Carolyn Rush (bass), after virtually a decade of obscure toil- a big-deal recording contract (with Columbia). The resulting album, Spool Forka Dish ("just nonsense syllables," she explains) is one of those rare works that sounds great the first time you hear it- and every time after that. Just when you start wondering when you'll get sick of it, another melody or vocal trick sinks its hooks in you.

"Shine," with psychedelic raga-guitar jangles and operatic punk vocals, comes across like Kate Bush crossed with Diamanda Galas, Olson exulting in contradictory facets of femininity ("Ashes in my hair, lashes in my star/Faeries never tell, cherries red as hell... I'll dance in the broken room naked as the wind in bloom"). The pulsing, synth-driven "Breathe You Out," which seems to be about a self-discovery through trial and many errors, finds Olson in as many voices as there are emotions: independent ("I shed all my layers of you/I breathe you out and start anew"), terrified ("I cut a vein, jump at the train"), and resigned ("I unwind the serpentine").

The crazy-quilt display of lyrical schizophrenia sucks the listener into Olson's world; the rich, complex musical arrangements keep you there. It's a place where one minute the singer "could fly open anytime, beautiful, hysterical" (in the lengthy, acoustic-textured "Beautiful, Hysterical"), the next she's on the verge of suicide and feels "my soul give up trying" (in the Go-Go's-meet-Luscious-Jackson pop of "Feel Me Dying"), and then she's recovered and practically giddy with happiness as she dances "to my stereo blasting XTC, bop-bop-oom-ba-dop, this is pop!" (in the lushly orchestrated jazz-waltz "Blasting XTC").

With the magic of overdubbing, Olson becomes a choir unto herself, at once an avenging banshee, waifish innocent, bitch in heat, and reassuring matriarch. Rachael laughs when I suggest the key to her music's appeal may lie in its giddy variety. "We are kind of hard to peg! People say, 'What do you sound like?' You'd think after 11 years of singing and writing I could come up with something to say, but I'm always mystified. I just go, 'Uhhh... weird pop.'

When I first started getting into this my mother said [concerned mother voice], 'What are you doing, are you turning punk?' And I go [mock-shout], 'I'm not Punk! I'm New Wave!' "

Former Prince & the Revolution drummer Bobby Z produced Spool; his roots in '80s popcraft made him the perfect complement to Olson's New Wave sensibility (she cites Yaz, Ultravox, and Adam & the Ants as teenage faves). A self-described manic-depressive perfectionist, Olson says she took to the studio at once: "With the doors closed, and the machinery humming, it's a womblike atmosphere; a safe place where no one can get to you. In real life I feel small and scared by everything; when I get into the studio I feel free."

Olson's New Wave roots still show through from time to time, but the Blue Up? have undergone a startling transition since their early days. A 1986 single and a 1987 EP (on Susstones) revealed a group balancing sweet, Beatlesque, organ/guitar pop alongside fuzzier garage mannerisms (think early Pandoras or Bangs covering the Squires' "Going All the Way"). Their 1992 CD Cake and Eat It (Catacomb) was more polished, while retaining a British Invasion feel on a quirky cover of the Who's "Boris the Spider." Olson points out that even now the Blue Up? may come across more garagey and punkish in concert; some of the more heavily produced songs on the album can't be reproduced onstage. ("We do 'renditions' of our songs and forget about the record. It's all I can do to play guitar and look at the audience and remember my lyrics. I can't have ten hundred effects too!")

Getting from then to now hasn't been easy for the Blue Up?. Inspired as a teen by Sergeant Pepper and later by Adam Ant, Olson put together a short-lived '80s punk/pop band called Crispy Nun. Bracchi was drumming in various pop, polka, and country outfits; she met Olson by answering an ad. Rush came into the picture after she and Olson found themselves admiring each other's record-shop purchases. The new trio quickly picked up a following in the Twin Cities area, but progress ground to a halt when Rush got a case of wanderlust. As Olson tells it now, "We never really broke up. We got together when we were 15, 16, 17 years old. At that age you don't know what to do with your life. Carolyn decided she had to go explore the world and see what she wanted. For a year I looked for someone to replace her. For another year I gave it up for a while. I was sick of putting ads in papers and getting psychos. In the two years she was gone, Renee and I were still together, and we recorded an album, Introducing Sorrow, that never got released." While waiting for Rush to return, Olson worked on her songwriting and supported herself as a sales clerk and, for a while, as a stripper.

Vestiges of stripping turn up today- physically, in the form of Olson's onstage displays (involving multicolored body paint); psychologically, in songs like "Exhibitionist," the angriest and heaviest on Spool Forka Dish. Lyrics like "God forbid that I should own my body... He called me the exhibitionist, an attention-seeking shame," are spat out as indignantly as Courtney Love might, and it's clear that Olson isn't aiming to be this generation's Stevie Nicks. "I feel insecure and worthless every day, a different mood every half hour," confides Olson, adding, "and I'm on Prozac, you can write that! It's hard for me to get onstage; maybe I'm a masochist, but I don't think so. I like a challenge- to push myself and see what I can do. I could have been an artist or painter; everyone thought I would go to art school [laughs]. "I'm still not totally confident. I can't play guitar and sing in front of just anybody. 'Oh, sing us a song!' 'Nooo!' I get really nervous before I go onstage. I want to throw up."

Olson, Rush, and Bracchi commenced playing together again in 1992, recording Cake and Eat It with a $500 loan from a friend. Bobby Z came along to offer his music-industry experience in the form of personal management. After opening for Firehose, the band also found Mike Watt in their corner; he passed the word to Columbia. For the Blue Up?, with new release in hand, the future is now. Olson seems a little concerned about how the public will perceive the Blue Up?, especially once Publicity & Marketing take over.

"People want to grab one end of us or the other. We're either this rockin' chick-band thing, or a fairy-creature, glitter-happy thing: one or the other. Well, I like Hello Kitty, but I also have a gun. I like contradictions- they have a hard time grasping that." For the moment, Olson is relying on the strength of her personality and her bandmates' stability to maintain her vision. "It seems like we were meant to be together," says Olson. "We're different from each other but we get along so well. We totally support each other, but there's no energy suck. I'm like the one flying, and they're holding me like a kite to keep me from flying away! They're my little tribe, my grounders. From what I see, the thing that breaks groups up is ego. We are definitely not a democracy; I write the songs and I say how it goes. And for some reason, they're fine with that! They aren't giving in or cashing in parts of themselves. They're just like, 'We love your ideas and we want to help.' I feel so blessed that they're happy to show my vision and supportive of what I want to do. There's no ego to it."

Still, Olson admits that a rock band is simply a vehicle for her at this time. Another of her many dreams is to work with "all kinds of strange musicians, like the way Björk has all these cool people.... "I would not say I'm a guitarist; I don't bond with my guitars or have names for them.... My ultimate thing? To find some old analog synthesizers and be something like Yaz. Synthesizer music is my favorite- 1981 Ultravox, John Foxx, Aphex Twin... Psychick Warriors ov Gaia... I love techno. You'd never know it, because it's not in my songs. But then, I've never had enough money or known enough people. I've been stuck with guitar, bass, and drums.

by Fred Mills