{"id":114317,"date":"2022-08-31T11:00:34","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T16:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/?p=114317"},"modified":"2022-08-31T08:13:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T13:13:30","slug":"reborn-from-the-flames-how-charlie-looker-brought-new-life-to-extra-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/reborn-from-the-flames-how-charlie-looker-brought-new-life-to-extra-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Reborn From the Flames: How Charlie Looker Brought New Life to Extra Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cLiving in the past is so depressing to me,\u201d\u00a0 says Extra Life<\/strong> vocalist, guitarist and composer Charlie Looker. He\u2019s on a Zoom call from his current home in Los Angeles, where he relocated from his longtime stomping grounds in New York City a few years ago. He\u2019s referring to his misgivings about the returns of bands that played a formative part in his own development as a virtuoso of eclectic musical weirdness, such as Faith No More<\/strong> and Godflesh<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt’s not even that most reunion things suck, because actually some of these reunions might even be good,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut I just don’t check them out even if my friends tell me they’re good.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite his ambivalence about veteran bands striving to recapture their glory days, Looker found himself in 2022 resurrecting Extra Life, the group he originally formed in 2007 to play compositions that combined eerie chamber pop melodies, metallic grooves, math rock rhythms, liturgical polyphony and caustic lyrics. For <\/span>Secular Works, Part 2<\/span><\/i>, a reunion album explicitly positioned as a sequel to the group\u2019s debut, <\/span>Secular Works<\/span><\/i>, Looker needed to pull together a new lineup that would pick up the mantle.<\/span><\/p>\n

The result is an impressive ensemble that features original member Caley Monahon-Ward on violin\/viola, Belgian drummer Gil Chevign\u00e9 of Helium Horse Fly<\/strong> and\u2014most notably for the readers of this Toilet-themed blog\u2014Kayo Dot<\/strong> main man Toby Driver on bass. Trumpeter Nate Wooley and hornist Michael Atkinson also put in appearances to help bring Looker\u2019s pieces to life in all their overwhelming sonic richness and forlorn majesty.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Extra Life 2022<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cOne of the things that bothered me about early Extra Life, or something that just nagged me, is that people say it’s musicians\u2019 music; all your fans are musicians,\u201d Looker says. \u201cI was like, man, I want to branch out. So, I’ve embraced that more. But one of the things that’s so sick about making musicians\u2019 music is that it’s easy to find people who want to play with you. You know, it’s not easy to find people <\/span>this awesome <\/span><\/i>to play with you, so I don’t take that for granted.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By its nature, this new project obligated Looker to reckon with his feelings about the previous incarnation of the group. After all, Extra Life came to a halt in 2012 following the release of their third full-length album, <\/span>Dream Seeds<\/span><\/i> when the frontman chose to refocus his energies on the somewhat more straightforward industrial\/goth metal he wrote and performed with Psalm Zero<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reflecting on that decision, Looker says, \u201cWhen I broke [Extra Life] up, quote unquote. It was kind of like splitting with Nick [Podgurski, former drummer,] and Caley as musicians and as a lineup, But it was really more than that. It was splitting with a whole bunch of aesthetics and aesthetic\u2026.you could say aesthetic baggage, or you could say a rich aesthetic foundation, whatever. But I was sort of cutting off what Extra Life had been and starting this new thing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Looker had plenty of opportunity to reconsider his creative trajectory around the time that Psalm Zero\u2019s 2020 tour with Kayo Dot, in support of third full-length <\/span>Sparta<\/span><\/i>, was cut short by you-know-what.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRight before leaving for that Psalm Zero tour that got truncated, I just started writing some stuff that I figured would be the next Psalm Zero record,\u201d Looker recounts. \u201cIt was the intro stuff from \u2018Diagonal Power,\u2019 the horn thing. And I was doing it on keyboard and imagining it with two metal guitars. But then I’m like no, actually, this should be horns, and then it just becomes not as metallic. The guitar tone I\u2019m picturing isn\u2019t that. And then I\u2019m thinking I wanna do more complex vocal-type stuff and the piece starts to come together, and I’m like, where do I remember this from? What influence am I drawing from? And then I’m just like, \u2018Bro, so, this is kind of Extra Life-y.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Accepting this latest turn in his songwriting required Looker to adjust to the idea that his musical past was not dead and not even past. But he ultimately dived into the Extra Life resurrection by creating a series of songs that explored the myriad possibilities of the style he\u2019d previously left behind. Befitting the band\u2019s genre-bending nature, he took a fluid approach to composition and recording that saw him adapting various methods to suit each song.<\/span><\/p>\n