Photo by Aliza Rae Photography
Sometime around the release of their first album, Group of the Altos shortened their name to just Altos. It seemed fitting. The group had evolved far from the minimalist metal project that band leader Daniel Spack had first conceived it as, and he wanted a band name that better reflected the intricate hymns of their 2011 album, also titled Altos. But the name didn’t stick. Elegant as it was, that short, five-character name didn’t do justice to the sheer scale of the band, an ever-expanding ensemble that now claims 16 or 17 members.
So for their new album, R U Person or Not, the Altos reverted to their longer, slightly clumsier moniker, and the name has never seemed more fitting, since the latest incarnation of the group is more concerned with force than understatement. The instrumental arsenal is more or less the same, but Person forgoes Altos’ mournful dirges in favor of concise, furious art-rock songs. Where the band spent three meticulous years writing and refining their first album, R U Person was born of impulse. Feeling fried after a couple long tours with Volcano Choir, Spack returned home and immediately booked studio time for the group, despite not having any songs written.
“Everybody thought it was a very dumb idea,” Spack says. “But I tried to get the idea across that this is our punk rock record. I wanted very badly not to make the same thing as the last record. I’m not that bummed out anymore—everything’s OK now. So as soon as I explained that the record was going to be different, that we didn’t need to do the same thing and that we could do whatever we wanted, everybody was like, ‘Hmmmmm, maybe.’ Then the sessions started and they were like, ‘No, this is bad. This is a bad idea.’”
By the second session, however, the songs started taking shape as the group continued writing melodies, figuring out everybody’s role and piecing (and in some cases smashing) together parts and ideas. “We spent a lot of time re-sculpting everything to make sure all the ideas were accounted for,” Spack says. “By the third session we had a record that we knew wasn’t like the last one but that we all had put our hearts into.”
The most lyrics-heavy work yet from a previously instrumental outfit, R U Person’s eight songs meditate on the nature of judgment and forgiveness, with a conviction that often borders on hot-headed. The group’s choir shouts, their horns stampede and their guitars boil over, and while none of this is totally new to the Altos’ playbook, the group now generally carries itself less like an orchestra and more like a rock band. The album incorporates so many moving parts that when Milwaukee rapper Klassik takes a verse around the album’s halfway point on “Fucks With Us” it’s barely even surprising. It only makes sense that an ensemble this vast might have a rapper lingering somewhere on its bench.
Part of Group of the Altos’ mystique has always been the sheer impracticality of it all. From the outside, it seems as if getting so many musicians on the same wavelength—let alone in the same physical space and on the same schedule—must present an enormous logistical challenge, but Spack insists that it’s all easier than it looks. The group’s size certainly doesn’t seem to be limiting them any. In addition to their local release show for R U Person next month, they’ll perform with Grandma Sparrow, a project from Megafaun’s Joe Westerlund, at an Alverno Presents performance, then head down to Austin’s South by Southwest music festival.
“This band just has weird luck,” Spack says. “Weird opportunities keep presenting themselves. Since we’ve been doing it we’ve always had cool things to work on. There’s always a record or a film or some weird project, and I think that’s what keeps all of us doing this.”
Mini50 Records will release R U Person on Feb. 23. Group of the Altos play a release show on Saturday, March 14 at Company Brewing (735 E. Center St.) at 8 p.m. with Dead Rider.
