The Devil Hates Bright Eyes
By Mary Donnelly
The Philadelphia-area band Milton and the Devil’s Party—the brainchild of two English professors: Daniel Robinson and Mark Graybill of Widener University—blends a rock-pop sensibility with a level of wit and lyrical complexity usually reserved for guys who stand around alone with acoustic guitars. Crossing the lines of literature and rock is rare enough; thinking about how to do it well is even rarer. Recently, Dr. D got Dr. R (with occasional interventions from Dr. G) to sit down and talk about words and music and Johnson and Byron (but not, peculiarly, John Milton or William Blake).
B: You describe yourselves as a “literary band with rock and roll pretensions.” Aside from the obvious play on words, do you want to unpack this for us? What does it mean to you?
DR: Well, we try to have fun with the immense potential for pomposity in our band. I enjoy layers of irony. So, really we’re a pretty good rock’n’roll band, and we’re not really VERY literary. But, at the same time, Mark and I are English professors and we understand that we don’t really fit the image of rock musicians.
B: But you do have a literary undercurrent, no?
DR: Yes, absolutely. But we don’t mean for it to be pompous or elitist or exclusionary.
B: Do you think of yourself as a poet?
DR: No, I do not. I think of myself as a songwriter. More specifically, I think of myself as a rock-pop songwriter who also knows a lot of literature.
B: But you’ve said that you admire bands with a literary sensibility. What bands are you referring to? Who are your precursors?
DR: Well, I don’t admire bands who drop literary references. I admire songwriters who write lyrics that have a kind of complexity but that don’t over-reach for literary profundity so much that it seems ridiculous for the genre.
B: So respecting the genre’s important for you?
DR: Yes, I think respecting the genre is important. The songwriters who measure up in this regard are Ray Davies, Morrissey, and Nick Cave. Also Lloyd Cole, and sometimes Leonard Cohen. The ones who fail are people like Sting or Elvis Costello.
B: Why do they fail?
DR: Well, Sting’s problem as a songwriter is that he’s just a little bit smarter than the average person, and he tries to get as much mileage out of that as he can. But he can’t really go that far. I do believe he is smart—but almost in a mathematical, musical way. Not really in a literary sense.
B: Do you mean the early, poppy, reggae stuff? Or are we talking “Dream of the Blue Turtles” here?
DR: Well, I do think Sting has learned from his mistakes (“Don’t Stand So Close To Me,” “Wrapped Around Your Finger,” “Tea In The Sahara,” etc.). So, now that he’s grown out of his pretentiousness, he has nothing really to say.
B: His mispronunciation of Nabokov has had serious effects.
DR: Well, he’s not that smart.
B: But Elvis Costello has a similar split, no? Between something like This Year’s Model and say, “God Give Me Strength”?
DR: Well, Elvis Costello is too smart for his own good. Sting’s not really smart enough to pull off what he wants to do. Elvis Costello will throw everything away just to dazzle you with a phrase. If I ever taught a songwriting class (and I might one day), I would do a week on EC and have students read Samuel Johnson’s comments on the metaphysical poets—a lot of it applies to Elvis Costello!
B: Remind my readers what Johnson said about the metaphysical poets.
DR: Well, basically, that the metaphysicals love to dazzle you with surprising conceits—false wit—and incongruities, wordplay. But the poems don’t really add up to anything meaningful. Johnson saw that the parts were greater than the whole and that that was a serious deficiency. Elvis will throw a phrase like “I’m in a grip-like vice” and you are so dazzled by the brilliance of that that you forget that the rest of the song doesn’t make any sense.
B: [So how do you approach] working in the good lines?
DR: If I do have any good lines, they come from the overall idea of the song.
B: So the concept songs hang together?
DR: That’s the thing for me; each song has to have its own concept. And I hope the songs are true to what they’re about. This doesn’t mean that I don’t allow for spontaneity or felicity. I try not to over think it.
B: Do you approach songwriting as a confessional art, like, say Conor Oberst?
DR: No, I hate that shit. Conor Oberst might as well be Jewel.
B: So are you more distanced/ironic?
DR: Well, yes—but I try to find greater truth that way. I never really write about myself, my own life. I find that incredibly narcissistic. I tend to exaggerate elements of my personality, my psyche and create a persona and put that persona in a situation.
B: Like “Ugly American” or “Give You the Creeps.”
DR: Yes, and I’m attracted to the more unsavory aspects of my psyche—it’s just more interesting to me. I actually try to create personalities that aren’t sympathetic.
B: So what about “Perfect Breasts?”
DR: Well, “Perfect Breasts” is actually one of my least ironic songs—or at least it was at the time. But people see more irony in it now than I did when I wrote it—and that’s great.
B: But some of your songs are quite pained and poignant. “Been Here All Along,” for example.
DR: Well, even “Perfect Breasts” is pained. But, I think songs about frustration, longing, regret are much more interesting. And I write from the first-person most of the time, not because I’m singing about myself, but because I want to inhabit a personality and because I want to avoid commenting on the personalities involved from some kind of third-person authorial voice.
B: Well, conflict builds narrative. Though you tend toward snapshots, it seems to me, capturing a moment rather than telling a story
DR: Yes! Like Leonard Cohen. Sometimes he’s good at capturing a moment. “Chelsea Hotel” or “Famous Blue Raincoat,” those songs work. And Lloyd [Cole] used to be especially good at capturing a moment of tension between two people. I call it the Lloydian moment.
B: Okay, so we have a sense of where you are lyrically. Where do you come from musically?
DR: It’s all about guitars. The Church, The Smiths, REM—those are the biggies. I love layered guitars, chorus-y guitars.
B: But a lot of your stuff is musically more direct than, say, REM.
DR: Not really—it’s just that my lyrics make more sense than Stipe’s. That creates the illusion. Musically, it’s pretty comparable, I’d say. I don’t look to R.E.M. for songwriting inspiration, but I love the sound. The old sound, that is.
B: So Mark’s sort of jangle-pop guitar style comes out of, say, the Byrds, filtered through Peter Buck?
MG: Sometimes my guitar parts just wind around the bass lines like ivy around a pole. As in, say, “Ugly American.” But sometimes my guitar serves a counter-melodic function. It’s not just jangle-jangle.
B: But Buck—an amazing instrumentalist, in my opinion—doesn’t come out of a vacuum. He’s part of a tradition.
DR: Mark’s a lot more melodic than Buck or McGuinn.
MG: Neither of them [Buck or McGuinn] had as meaty a rhythm section as I have.
B: Right. Of course, these comparisons are all to mid ‘80s stuff. How do you fit into the current scene?
DR: Well, theoretically, I think we should fit in with the people who like Snow Patrol, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, The Shins, etc. We share the same influences as those bands. BUT, most of the people who like those bands are young and don’t remember the bands they’re copying. I mean, Interpol is clearly copying Joy Division; Franz Ferdinand is copying Gang of Four.
B: Right.
DR: The problem with us fitting in with the current scene is that Mark and I went through those phases in high school and college. We’re more for the people who have been through all of that too. We have those influences, but we’ve matured. Franz Ferdinand and Interpol could actually be something I listened to in high school. So it’s difficult for me to like The Strokes, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand because it seems like a regression—they have the sound, but the substance is still for teenagers.
B: And what you’re doing is a little different?
DR: I guess the style and substance make us anomalous. We’ve gotten over the style as the message—we see the style as supporting the substance.
B: Do you think that’s a problem?
DR: Maybe it’s a problem.
B: But in combining intelligent lyrics with a more rocking guitar sound, you break some rules, some generic boundaries.
DR: I think that we’re never going to change that. We’re always going to put substance first. And if we have to sound like Del Amitri or some generic rock band to do it then we’ll do it. We’re never going to dig up Joy Division or Gang Of Four just to sound—ironically—contemporary.
B: What’s the most fun thing about having your feet in two worlds?
DR: Well, I enjoy not having to be two different people. Most people assume that I’m English professor by day and rock frontman by night. But I’m really both all the time. People who know me know that.
B: Those identities don’t conflict?
DR: People ask, do your students get a kick out of seeing your band? And I say they’re strangely unimpressed because they see immediately that it’s the same guy. I’m a little bit rock-n-roll as a professor and a little bit professorial in the band. I mean, Pat was even my student once! And we still have a little bit of that dynamic.
B: So who makes better fans, students or strangers?
DR: Students—they have incentive to listen carefully, especially if they’re English majors.
B: Okay, one more question. Which poet would have made the best rock star?
DR: Well, that’s too easy—my answer will be too obvious. Byron. He was the first rock star. The only one of the Romantics, by the way, who really was.
B: As a poet? Or in lifestyle?
DR: Both. He was the first writer to become an international celebrity during his lifetime. And his lifestyle was like what we believe rock stars do.
B: Sex, drugs, and Don Juan?
DR: Well, certainly drinking.
B: Opium, no? Or laudanum, which splits the difference.
DR: Not any more than anyone else at that time—everybody took some opium. It was like Tylenol.
Mary Donnelly is a professor of English. She thinks the Little Mermaid is the scariest movie you can show a toddler. Then again, she hasn’t seen the Brave Little Toaster. E-mail her at mangansis@stny.rr.com.