THE WALLACE BROS. 2012 VALENTINE SINGLE MEETS JEERS, SILENCE

For Immediate Release – The international supergroup. The stunt-recording in the cooler of a dormant Michigan apple orchard. Two grueling years of post-production.  

The Wallace Bros. ‘Greatest Hits’ release, which doubles as their 2012 Valentine single, boasted personal excesses that reportedly included daily deliveries of a gross of caramel apples from a Savannah candy company, a love triangle involving both Detroit philanthropist Eminem and the reigning king of country, Kenny Chesney, and internecine political intrigue worthy of a collapsing third-world dictatorship: all, many believed, hallmarks of a smash hit that some insiders predicted could single-handedly save the cratering music industry, now floundering through its death throes after almost two decades of short-sighted and cynical decision-making predicated, not on the patient nurture of unique talent, but on the pursuit of smash hits that could single-handedly save the cratering industry. 

For two years, music honchos and fans alike were riveted by the vague and contradictory reports that leaked from the Wallace Bros.’ orchard bunker, where they had retreated with an improbably talented suite of luminaries from the international music scene, including Scott McClintock on bass, Brad Elliot on drums, and engineer Brandon Wiard. Ironically, the band’s complete silence during this retreat only stoked media frenzy. Fans combed through Google Street-View footage of Michigan orchards until one discovered the unmistakable and somewhat disturbing image of Mark sunbathing between rows of apple trees, at which point the studio hideaway was swarmed by fans and paparazzi, who set up a Burning Man-inspired campsite and media center in the nearby corn maze. The internet bloomed with conspiracy theories based on the scraps of information that did emerge from the compound, mostly grainy paparazzi shots and deleted blog posts, with international web traffic brought almost to a standstill on the release of the first pirated track to hit music blogs: a paparazzi-recorded track of Mark singing Burt Bacharach in the shower. Based on the strength of that recording, BMI, Sony, and Epic all made reportedly “generous” offers that ballooned to “immoral” in the face of the band’s repeated refusals to sign with any of the big-name labels. Instead, the band insisted on a so-old-it’s-new distribution system, best known by its street name: “emailing it to your friends.”

Any release might have had trouble meeting expectations at this pitch, but response to the Wallace Bros. Valentines Day 2012 release was disappointing by any measure. Many critics refused to cover the record, which some derided as “a stunt” or “an insult”. The reactions of those who did ran the gamut from tepid to rage. Perhaps as a result of poor reviews, or perhaps because, during the band’s extended hiatus, fans had simply forgotten they existed, buyers avoided the album in droves.

Some observers pin the blame for these disappointments on the fact that, after two years of industry buzz and fan hysteria, the much-anticipated album was only two songs long. 

The band insists, however, that what some have called “a misstep,” and other have termed “a failure” was actually a considered decision to preserve artistic integrity.

“We learned a lot from Chinese Democracy,” says Mark, the band’s guitarist, bassist, and arranger. “I mean, if Axl had waited any longer to release it, there might actually be Chinese democracy. And that’d be a disaster, right? Because then you’re back to the drawing board, looking for a whole new title.

“There was so much build-up for that album. Everyone was so excited to get it. It was like, nothing could live up to all that hype. And then you’d go, ‘so did you like it?’ And people would say, ‘I don’t know, man. It wasn’t that great. I mean, I guess there were one or two good songs.'

“We’ve always been out-of-the-box thinkers. I mean, when we were little, we were Quakers. We weren’t even allowed to have a box. So we thought, who says you have to have ten songs on an album? Is there some law about that? I mean, I love to shake my ass to California Gurls as much as the next guy. But do I really have to sit through fifteen more Katy Perry tracks before it comes back on? I mean, ‘Hummingbird Heartbeat’?  Really?

“So that’s where we got the idea: why not put out an album with only the good songs?”

 The Wallace Bros.:

The True Romance Magazine Interview

 TR: Covers have been a longtime tradition for the Wallace Bros. Valentine’s release, but this year you seem to have gone a step beyond simply covering songs by your favorite artists.

 MW: That’s right. You know, Paul Westerberg from The Replacements tells the story of writing Alex Chilton. He says everyone else was stealing a lick or a riff of his now and then. So they decided to come out in the open and write a whole song about him.  

 CW: We decided, why stop there?

 MW: Right. So we wrote songs that sound exactly like what someone else would have written. We’re like the indie version of Lady Gaga. We just have better taste in who we rip off.

 CW: You could say she got the idea from us. We’re thinking of suing her, actually. As a new revenue stream. Since nobody’s buying albums, it’s important for bands to be creative about earning these days.

 TR: For instance, You’re So Pretty (That I Don’t Know What To Do) bears a striking resemblance to hits by the Cure.

 CW: It’s interesting. You’re So Pretty is one of the first tracks we ever wrote together, almost ten years ago. But it turns out that we actually intuited some things about brain function that are only now being proven by neuroscience. Much like the way Proust’s understanding of memory outpaced biologists’ for over a century.

 TR: Tell me about that.

 CW: Well, they’ve just come out with research in the last few months on the effect of a woman’s presence on men’s cognition. On cognitive tests, men’s function drops measurably when there’s a woman in the room.

 MW: She doesn’t even have to be in the room.

 CW: That’s true. They also ran a version where men were told a woman might contact them during the course of the test. Their cognitive function dropped on those tests as well.

 MW: They didn’t even say if the woman was hot or not.  

 CW: Mark and I came to somewhat different conclusions based on these findings. I thought it probably indicated men might want to get some outside perspectives on their decisions about women. For instance: ask another woman.

 MW: I just figured guys need to start dating dumber girls. So it’s more even, you know. When their brains start to shut down.    

 CW: There’s no corresponding effect for women, by the way. They can think no matter who’s in the room.

 TR: So what was it like for you, trying to inhabit the minds of some of your musical heroes, and write music from the same place they did, so to speak?

 MW: One thing that’s nice about it, as compared to covers, is that you don’t have to pay a licensing fee. That’s the crazy thing about samples, you know. You play the same eight notes someone else did thirty years ago, and suddenly their grandkid wants a million bucks.

 CW: That’s the nice thing about not making any money.

 MW: Yeah, when you don’t make anything, they can’t take it from you. I’m like, yeah guy, come and get us. Take it all. Take everything we’ve made. Seriously man, come on over. We’ll buy you a sandwich.

 TR: This record has a Valentine’s Day release date. How about you two? Any celebrity crushes? 

 CW: Boyd Crowder. John Luther. And Daryl from The Walking Dead. I guess you never really know how you feel about a man until someone mistakes him for a zombie and takes a shot at him from the roof of the RV.  

 TR: I can’t help but notice that none of these gentlemen you’ve mentioned are, strictly speaking – real.

 CW: You can’t expect a man to be perfect.

 TR: And Mark? What about you?

 CW: Mark has a huge crush on the beekeeper from the Jimmy Fallon show.

 MW: It’s true. That guy is awesome. You should see him dance. He can do air splits and everything.

 TR: A lot’s been made of the recording process on this record. It has a rough quality to it. Almost as if it were recorded in an unheated apple cooler, on a day when the temperature had dropped to eleven degrees. And there are some interesting artifacts in the recording. For instance, a moment when Mark seems to threaten the microphone with a baseball bat.

 CW: That pretty much encapsulates Mark’s approach to recording vocals.

 TR: And in “You’re So Pretty,” after the line about “and dream about you” there’s this strange sigh or growl.  Was that another artifact of a rushed recording process? 

 CW: That’s not a mistake. It’s the sound of dreaming.

 TR: You’ve taken a bold new direction with the distribution for this record. Basically, you’ve spurned traditional channels in favor of an extremely limited fan club release.

 CW: Privacy is really the new luxury. Once you lose it, you can’t ever get it back. You can be a has-been, but you can’t be a stranger again.

 MW: It’s always, “wait, are you that guy?  The one people used to care about?” You get to a point where you start to wonder, what’s the point of all this, anyhow? Why are we singing all these songs? For a bunch of people we’ve never even met? Or for our friends?

 CW: Everyone’s worried these days because it’s getting harder to fill up the big arenas with thousands of people. But we thought, why does everyone care so much about “how many?” Doesn’t anyone ever think about “what kind?” 

 MW:  I mean, it’s Valentine’s Day, right? You don’t send a valentine to everyone in the phone book.  

 CW: Just the ones you really like