Keeper Awards: Is/Is
Part of the charm of Is/Is is the music can’t necessarily be distilled into a buzzword—and its level of quality means it doesn’t need to be.
Image credit: Marshall Franklin Long
At first glance, this year’s Keepers are a ragtag bunch. Their mediums run the gamut from good old-fashioned pen and paper to the human body; their habitats are classrooms, venerable theater stages and rock clubs. But here’s where this diverse group converges: Each Keeper has talent to spare, and is an indispensible cog in the wheel of Twin Cities culture. For that, we hereby present them with fancy words, pretty pictures -- and an illustration by fellow keeper Robert Algeo -- in an attempt to flatter them into never leaving town.
No one seems to remember exactly when, but at some point Is/Is became known as a “witchgaze” band. When the band is asked for an explanation of the term, drummer Annie May—who has been quiet for most of the interview—suddenly pipes up.
“Picture this witch,” she says timidly, causing her band mates to erupt into laughter (and probably confusing the hell out of the early-evening crowd at Merlin’s Rest). “It’s not a conventional witch. It’s a hippy who lives in south Minneapolis, has three kids and sends them to hippy school. She has all these precious stones and stuff, and just kind of dances around her house in a daze. That’s what it feels like to me.”
Bassist Sarah Nienaber decides to take a stab. “It’s hazy and dark and magical,” she says tentatively. “Maybe magical isn’t the right word. Mystical?”
Part of the charm of Is/Is is the music can’t necessarily be distilled into a buzzword—and its level of quality means it doesn’t need to be.
Inspired as much by punk, ’90s sludge-rock and Fleetwood Mac’s darker moments as they are by Mazzy Star, Black Tambourine and Spiritualized, the songs are impressively multifaceted. Even among the four tracks on 2010’s This Happening, wistful pop (“So Long”), meandering sparseness (“Death Threat”) and down-tuned sludge (“Pretty Girl”) build a miasmic wall of sound that makes it hard to believe Is/Is is just a trio.
The band formed in 2009 when Nienaber, a member of Gospel Gossip, recruited Sarah Rose and original drummer Mara Appel to play with her. That set became the first Is/Is show, with Rose taking over vocal and guitar duties and eventually recruiting May (after creeping on her Facebook wall, Rose sheepishly admits) to replace Appel when she moved to Portland. This Happening garnered them enough momentum to tour nationally and to gain a slot at the 2011 SXSW festival—and, inexplicably, a cult following in the small town of DeKalb, Ill.
“We’re like [DeKalb’s] favorite band,” says Rose. “There are Is/Is stickers and posters all over that town.”
The band will release its first full-length album this spring on local label Guilt Ridden Pop. It was recorded by The Old Blackberry Way’s Neil Weir, with whom the band credits the origin of the elusive W-word.
“I told [Weir], ‘We know how it feels, we know what it sounds like, but how would you describe it?’ says Nienaber. “He just texted me an hour later and said ‘I can’t. It’s too hard.’”
Illustration by Robert Algeo. Download a high-res version here.
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