Pylon Reenactment Society album 'Magnet Factory' out 9 Februari 2024

Photo: klandermanpromotion.com

​Veertig jaar geleden richtte Vanessa Briscoe Hay de band Pylon op en die werd met name in geboorteplaats Athens, Georgia legendarisch. In 2009 was het klaar. Maar vijf jaar later was daar opeens Pylon Reenactment Society, een groep die, jawel, veel nummers coverde van Pylon, maar toch ook totaal anders klonk. Er volgden een single, een EP, en nu is daar Magnet Factory, hun album-debuut. En dat is een meer dan opwindende plaat geworden. Soms klinkt het als The Slits, soms lijkt het alsof PJ Harvey een fusie is aangegaan met de Gang Of Four. Provocerende teksten en gevaarlijke muziek; zo was rock ‘n’ roll ooit bedoeld. Op een van de prijsnummers van de plaat, Fix It, is er een gastrol voor Kate Pierson van de B-52’s, een van de heldinnen van Vanessa. En dat maakt Magnet Factory zo mogelijk nog specialer.

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​Tracks:
01 Spiral
02 Educate Me
03 Flowers Everywhere
04 Messenger
05 3 x 3
06 Fix It
07 Boom Boom
08 Heaven (In Your Eyes)
09 No Worries
10 Compression
11 I’ll Let You Know  

Album release 9 Februari 2024 op Strolling Bones distributie  V 2 BeNeLux
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“They say people change their cell structure every seven years, so I’ve totally regenerated several times since we started Pylon forty years ago,” says Vanessa Briscoe Hay, frontwoman for that iconic Athens band and now frontwoman for Pylon Reenactment Society. “Over the course of your life, you’re going to learn new things. Your mind is going to change and expand. I’m a lot older now, and I can’t be something I’m not anymore. Pylon is our guiding star, but we’re notPylon. We’re Pylon Reenactment Society.”
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It's easier to explain what Pylon Reenactment Society isn’t than what it actually is. It’s not a continuation or a reunion, because Vanessa is the only member in both groups. It’s neither a
tribute act nor a cover band, although they do perform Pylon songs. Instead, this new banddraws inspiration from that old band, taps into its motivating principles. “In order to be faithful to the spirit of Pylon, we had to move on from them,” says guitarist Jason NeSmith. “Originally they intended to be around just as long as it took to get on the cover of New York Rocker, so there was a sense of impermanence built into the band. Trying to be Pylon or trying to be a Pylon cover band really goes against the spirit of the band, and I hope that spirit comes through in what we’re doing now.”

Pylon Reenactment Society’s full-length debut, Magnet Factory, presents these four musicians—Vanessa and Jason, along with bassist Kay Stanton and drummer Gregory Sanders—as their own unique entity, making music that is sophisticated, joyful, yet shot through with a deep sense of melancholy. “I think the album is about the life cycle of a human being,” says Vanessa. “Not anyone in particular. It could be anybody. It’s about the layers of time shifting—how you remember events that you experienced, how you remembered events tha took place before you were there, and how you’re experiencing events right now.”

More than thirty-five years after Pylon played its first show and just five years after they played their final one, Pylon Reenactment Society convened in 2014 as part of Art Rocks Athens, a festival exploring the intersection between the college town’s vibrant music and visual art scenes. Rather than try to reunite the band—which was impossible, given the tragic death of
founding guitarist Randy Bewley—Vanessa assembled a new, multigenerational group that included Jason and Kay, her bandmates in the supergroup Supercluster, as well as the band
Casper & the Cookies. The response to their set convinced them to keep the band going. “Everyone was super excited and dancing like crazy,” Vanessa recalls. “At first we were sort of a
tribute band, but we couldn’t help ourselves. We started jamming and writing, and I think wewrote some pretty good songs.”

Over the next few years this new band changed its cellular structure, losing some members and gaining others. During that time, they released an EP and a seven-inch single, performed Pylon’s two albums Gyrate and Chomp in their entirety, traveled to Spain in 2019 to play the PrimaveraFestival, and kept writing songs. Through it all, they held fast to the idea that this band should represent the personalities and peculiarities of each band member: Vanessa’s rich vocals, Jason’s dexterous guitar licks, Kay’s bouncy basslines, and Gregory’s clock-running-backwards beats. “It’s important that there are real conversations going on in our songs,” says Vanessa. “Sometimes it’ll be between the bass and drums, or sometimes between the bass and my vocals. Often it’s between me and Jason’s guitar. I’m always trying to find my place in the conversation. I think we all are.”

The quartet made Magnet Factory while Vanessa was assembling the definitive Pylon set, 2020’s Box, and booked sessions at several local studios, including the legendary Chase ParkTransduction and Sub Von Studio out in Winterville. Each song on Magnet Factory—from thehazy overture “Spiral” to the compassionate “Flowers Everywhere” to the tense closer “I’ll Let You Know”—sounds specific to these four musicians. That’s what distinguishes the band from their guiding star and namesake. Says Jason: “The person who wrote ‘Crazy’ forty years ago and who was so concerned about somebody in that song is the same person who wrote ‘Flowers Everywhere,’ which is also about somebody in dire circumstances. They need to be comforted, they need to feel seen and spoken to. I think that’s more important to Vanessa now as asongwriter. And nobody sings like her. She’s her own genre.”

In addition to their own originals, they worked up two Pylon deep cuts dating back to 1979. “If we’re gonna do a cover,” Vanessa laughs, “we might as well cover Pylon.” With its jumpy rhythm section and jittery guitar licks, “3x3” sounds like it was inspired by one of Athens’ famous house parties from that era—the same ones that produced so many of those first-wave bands—with Vanessa scolding a partygoer for stealing beer and changing the records. A live version of "3x3" performed by Pylon in 1983 is included on Box. “Heaven (In Your Eyes)” is a tormented love song of sorts, maybe not about romantic love, alternating between tender (“Heaven… is in your eyes”) and accusatory (“I thought you were my friend!”). “That one seemed like it had a strong engine,” says Jason, who found the song on archival tapes. “It was fully formed and streamlined—so simple, yet so indestructible.” Vanessa says, “‘Heaven (In Your Eyes)’ was one of the songs that predated Pylon’s first studio album Gyrate. There are a bunch of songs from 1979-1980 that didn’t make the cut — ‘Fluorescence,’ ‘Battery Powered,’ ‘3x3,’ and ‘Modern Day Fashion Woman’ come quickly to mind. ‘Heaven (In Your Eyes)’ and ‘3x3’ continued to show up sporadically in our live sets over the years (with ‘Heaven (In Your Eyes)’ appearing again during live sets supporting 1990’s Chain). We settled on the songs that are on Gyrate and other earlymaterial fell by the wayside. Our next album Chomp had a completely different vibe and those older tracks were not considered. Jason, who had become Pylon’s tape archivist during the compilation of Box, rediscovered these songs, encouraged us to put our own touches on them, and record them for Magnet Factory.”

The only fifth person on the album is Kate Pierson of the B-52’s—a last-minute addition to “Fix It,” the effervescent rave-up that closes side one. “I’ve been a B-52’s fan since the first time I saw them, which was their third show,” says Vanessa. “They were always supportive of Pylon. When I saw their final show in Athens, it struck me that Kate would be perfect for that particular song. She recorded at her home studio and sent the tape on the last day of recording. I was so excitedto sing with one of my idols.”

“Fix It” celebrates the teachers and mentors in your life—those people who show you how to do things and gently expand the world for you. Both Vanessa and Kate belong in that category, as they’ve shown generations of aspiring artists how to do new things, including how to make art a lifelong pursuit. “It's something I’m compelled to do,” she says. “I’ve had to put it away at different times in my life, but even when my kids were small and I wasn’t in a band, I would still find ways to be creative. It might just be scribbling something on the back of an envelope or singing to myself in the car. And now I feel like I can better appreciate what a gift it is to create with these people and be able to express myself with them.”