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Joan of Arc (band)

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Joan of Arc
Background information
OriginChicago, Illinois, United States
GenresIndie rock, emo, math rock
Years active1995–present
LabelsJade Tree, Record Label Record Label, Polyvinyl
MembersTim Kinsella
Bobby Burg
Victor Villareal
Theo Katsaounis
Past membersSam Zurick
Mike Kinsella
Nate Kinsella
Amy Cargill
Jeremy Boyle
Ben Vida
Cale Parks
Matt Clark
Todd Mattei
WebsiteJoanfrc.com

Joan of Arc are an American indie rock band from Chicago, Illinois. They formed in 1995, following the breakup of Cap'n Jazz.

Singer Tim Kinsella has been the only permanent member of the group; he has also recorded as a solo artist.

Joan of Arc are known for their use of electronics, samples, and multi-track recording in their songs; some songs on The Gap contained over 100 tracks.

Joan of Arc's lyrics and cover art are often intentionally misleading, humorous, or confusing. For example, the album Live in Chicago 1999 is not a live album, but a reference to the fact that the band lived in Chicago in the year 1999.

Members of Joan of Arc have been in many other bands including Friend/Enemy with Califone's Tim Rutili; American Football with Kinsella's brother Mike; Owls, a Cap'n Jazz reunion; Ghosts and Vodka; Everyoned, and most recently Make Believe.

Biography

Joan of Arc began as a band named Red Blue Yellow. They broke up after their first show, threw away all of their old material, and started afresh with new songs and a new name. Three months later, Joan of Arc had their first show at Autonomous Zone in Chicago. After two promising 7" singles, the band recorded their debut album A Portable Model Of... on the Jade Tree label.

A Portable Model Of... introduced JOA's signature sound: a fondness for stark acoustic songs combined with subtle electronics. The debut album also included some harder material and collaborations with former Cap'n Jazz guitarist and The Promise Ring singer Davey von Bohlen and Euphone's Ryan Rhapsys, who would later drum for Owls following the departure of Mike Kinsella.

In 1998, Joan of Arc released How Memory Works. The album included what would become a hallmark of Joan Of Arc's subsequent output: interludes of synthetic noises cut with vocal samples and off-beat instrumentation. As always, Kinsella's lyrics were cryptic and oblique, though the song 'This Life Cumulative' made reference to the media alienation of singer/songwriter Fiona Apple. Significant to this shift was the influence of member Jeremy Boyle, whose work with laptop and various software and hardware was a part of his broader multimedia artistic training at the University of Illinois,Chicago's School of Art and Design.

Following the departure of Mike Kinsella, Erik Bocek, and the addition of Todd Mattei, Joan Of Arc found themselves thrust unwillingly into the spotlight by the sudden success of a Jade Tree retrospective by Kinsella's former band Cap'n Jazz. Despite being heralded as a pioneer of a diverse genre known as 'emo' (a term rejected by Kinsella), Joan of Arc's next album was a reaction to this unwelcome classification. The songs on the album were slower and contained more spacious arrangements thanks to a newly found fondness for studio trickery. The album's artwork depicted recreated scenes from Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Weekend. The release of Live in Chicago also marked the increasing media perception of Joan Of Arc as a 'difficult' band, an impression that would dog Kinsella in particular throughout the band's existence.

Negative critical reaction to Joan of Arc would become especially apparent after the release of The Gap in 2000. Completely eschewing past convention, JOA created one long ebbing piece of music, with only occasionally recognizable songs. This increasingly progressive studio-heavy approach — mostly of clattering, incidental percussion and background noise — found some favor among band loyalists, but baffled the music press. As a result, growing tensions within the group, indifference from their label, and a poorly-received follow-up EP led to Joan Of Arc's breakup.

Tim Kinsella then formed a group called Owls, a reincarnation of the original Cap'n Jazz lineup. After recording the album with Steve Albini in 2001, the departure of Mike Kinsella and Victor Villareal led to the Owls' breakup. Left without a band once again, Tim Kinsella started working on songs for a solo album. After completing the album with help from Sam Zurick and Mike Kinsella, Tim Kinsella decided that since all three had played in Joan Of Arc, it should bear the name Joan of Arc. The album, much different from the conceptual madness of The Gap, instead consisted of guitar-driven tracks with journal-like observation from Tim Kinsella. Heralded as a return to form, So Much Staying Alive And Lovelessness became the band's last on Jade Tree.

Later that year, Joan Of Arc released In Rape Fantasy And Terror Sex We Trust on Perishable Records, featured collaborations with Califone's Tim Rutili and Ben Massarella, and was produced by Califone. Although the songs had been recorded during the same sessions as ...Lovelessness, they were darker and more collage-based. According to the website Allmusic, on In Rape Fantasy And Terror Sex We Trust "Joan of Arc...once more surpassed themselves as artists".[1]

To tour the albums in 2003, Tim Kinsella organised a new lineup including Bobby Burg, Nate Kinsella (Tim's cousin) and Sam Zurick, who would also double as his side-project Make Believe. After a live album recorded in Germany and a split EP with Bundini Brown (of Tortoise and Gastr Del Sol), the band assembled a huge team of collaborators for 2004's Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain on Polyvinyl Records. This effort was largely well-regarded and a significant step forward for a new incarnation of Joan of Arc.

For the album Presents Guitar Duets (Polyvinyl Records), Tim Kinsella rounded up ten former members of Joan Of Arc and others like Tim Rutili. Each was paired off with a partner by pulling names from a hat. Each pair then had to record a guitar duet together, and the styles vary from standard acoustic plucking to droning, looped soundscapes. The track-names are identified only by the faces of the pair who play on the track.

In 2006 Joan of Arc released a compilation of rarities entitled "The Intelligent Design Of..." which compiles songs from singles, splits, and compilation released from the band’s career up until that point. Shortly after Joan of Arc released "Eventually All at Once", which is largely acoustic, and features members that have been involved throughout the history of Joan of Arc, which was coupled with an EP entitled "Many Times I've Mistaken". This EP features two songs from Eventually All at Once but with full bands, and slightly differed arrangements, which continues to showcase the band’s eclectic style. In 2007 the "Orchard Vale" soundtrack was released, which was another experimental release for the band, and is also directed by Kinsella.[2]

In 2008 Joan of Arc Released "Boo! Human" on Polyvinyl Records. It is a more cohesive album than many of their others, and uses 14 musicians to help create this soundscape.[3] The band’s next effort, "Flowers", partially abandons the more straightforward song writing from Boo Human, and favors a more experimental setting. The next two releases were in the form of “Joan of Arc Presents…” which indicates an even more loose collective of people that create the album, while Tim Kinsella serves as chief instrumentalist and song writer. One of the two, titled "Don’t Mind Control", features songs from nearly every artist that is associated with Joan of Arc, and was couple with the Don’t Mind Control showcase which featured many of the bands in a live setting.[4] "Oh Brother" featured an eclectic ensemble as well, but with the format of four nearly twenty-minute songs that form a collage of sound. In contrast to Joan of Arc’s next release, Life Like, these albums are completely different. "Life Like" marks a point of returning to basics of a sort, with a four piece band, and is coupled with more regular touring than any recent incarnations of the band.

In September 2010, Joyful Noise Recordings released a JOA 10-album complete cassette box set. Contained in this collection are the 10 full-length albums from JOA, beginning with 1997's "Portable Model Of" Jade Tree and ending with 2009's "Flowers" Polyvinyl.

Band members

Timeline

Discography

Studio albums
EPs
7"/Singles/Splits

References

  1. ^ https://www.allmusic.com/album/r637065
  2. ^ http://www.southernsouls.ca/tim-kinsella-interview/
  3. ^ http://www.polyvinylrecords.com/store/index.php?id=477
  4. ^ http://www.avclub.com/chicago/events/joan-of-arc-dont-mind-control-variety-show,149820/
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