The Olivia Tremor Control “Garden of Light” and “The Same Place”
Brownies was a no frills, inconveniently shaped music venue that had a previous life as an Irish dive bar and a future life as a hipster dive bar. But for about a dozen years, during a semi-dormant period in New York’s downtown lore, it was the place to see Indie Rock. The long, rectangular room had poor site lines, mediocre sound, less than mediocre amenities and no place to hide. Located on the corner of 11th Street and Avenue A, it was also unnecessarily far from the 6 train and the L train — its two nearest subways stops. In 1996 there were countless reasons to avoid Brownies and only two good reasons for not avoiding Brownies: cheap beer and cheap live music.
When CBGBs was a past prime tourist attraction and when The Mercury Lounge was the land of singer songwriters and major label showcases, in the years before The Bowery Ballroom and in the same year that my first friend moved to Williamsburg (“Where is that again? Wait — really? You’re moving there?” I asked), Brownies was the club where less than two hundred young New Yorkers could see what was happening in all of the scenes that were more interesting than our own. Which in the mid-Nineties meant that some nights you’d hear Post-Rock from Chicago, or space Rock from Boston. It meant that almost anything was possible. You could get a shitty bill of five unlistenable local acts on a Tuesday or you could see Braid and Joan of Arc on a Thursday. Or, on Sunday, October 20, 1996, you could casually walk into a room of thirty strangers and have a shy lumberjack blow your fucking mind.
The opening act that particular night was not a band. It was just a guy. Or mostly just a guy. And though one day soon he’d perform with a band he called “Neutral Milk Hotel,” that night he was billed simply as “Jeff Mangum.” It’s hard to describe the experience of seeing Jeff Mangum play songs from “On Avery Island” and “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” to a smattering of dumb lucky locals and vigilant zine readers in 1996. And so, I won’t belabor the obvious — namely that I’d never heard anything like him before or since. It still ranks among the top five concerts of my life. And yet, it was only the second best concert I saw that night.
That is because Mangum was opening for the band that I’d actually come to see. A band that I’d never heard and who’d I’d just recently heard of. A band that might have been from Athens, Georgia or Denver, Colorado or someplace called Reston, Louisiana. A band that, if you believed the zine rumors, sounded like early The Beatles on late Beatles’ LSD. A band that sounded too good to be true. A band called The Olivia Tremor Control.
Hyperbole is the grist of music writing. Comparing this not legendary band to that legendary band. Exclaiming that this song or album is the greatest thing since that other great thing. I try to either avoid or vigilantly edit my own hyperbole. And believe me when I say that I both really tried and really edited myself in this specific case. But here’s the thing about that band and that night: On October 20, 1996, The Olivia Tremor Control were so good that they were better than standing five feet away from Jeff Mangum while he played songs from “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”
Twenty-eight years ago on Avenue A, The Olivia Tremor Control were just a band. Meaning that I’d not heard their debut, I knew almost nothing about he Elephant 6 genome and the legend that would surround them was still very far in the future. But what a band they were. Sometimes five, sometimes six or seven men onstage, jangling and fuzzing their way through songs that did, in fact, sound like The Beatles. But also at times like The Beach Boys. And like Spaceman Three. And like The Dream Syndicate. And like The Feelies. And like every band who’s ears were opened by John & Paul but whose minds were expanded by John and Lou. OTC sounded kinda like all those bands except for one major difference — they were supremely, deliriously joyful. They were a parade waiting to happen.
At the center of the stage were the two men who appeared to be the group’s benevolent leaders — Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart. The former: longer, leaner, with shaggy reddish hair, an amiable smile and a quiet concentration that seemed to keep hold on an otherwise boundless organism. And the latter: smaller, bouncier, almost cartoonishly adorable, with a mop of brown hair that would bounce to the jangle. From the outset, Doss and Hart were compared to Lennon and McCartney, except it was unclear who was which. Doss looked a bit more like 70s Lennon — the sideburns, the tinted shades, the grown up of the band. Hart, theoreticlly, would have been the McCartney — mop topped, cuddlier, preternaturally melodic and more likely to smile. And yet, those comparisons couldn’t hold.
For one thing, unlike Lennon, Bill Doss was no rebel. If anything, he was something of a traditionalist. The specs and haircut fit, but the worldview less so. And more than Doss was not the Lennon of OTC, McCartney was absolutely the wrong comp for Will Cullen Hart. Brian Wilson would have been a much better comp. Yoko would have been a better comp. Actually, Hart was probably more Brian Wilson plus Yoko Ono than he was Paul McCartney. Paul could play any instrument. He could write and arrange music. Meanwhile, Will Hart could neither read nor write music. It’s unclear how much he could even play the guitar. His musical well ran deep, but it manifested through hums, howls, whistles and kazoos rather than through guitars or piano.
But somehow, Will, Bill, and their misfit stoner friends succeeded. In the summer of 1996 they released “Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle,” a sprawling masterpiece that sounded like Syd Barett trying to one up Pet Sounds, but with only a four track recorder and a singing saw to do the job. Despite its unmistakable greatness, though, OTC managed to remain truly underground for a while. Long enough for me and a couple thousand other weirdos to see them play in small clubs. Long enough to see them perform in an abandoned warehouse in Olneyville, Rhode Island where they led an six elephant sized parade around said warehouse. Long enough to be a foundational, untouchable text for the original Pitchforkmedia.com. And, maybe most of all, long enough for them to thrive while still avoiding the glare that would soon blind Jeff Mangum.
Soon after the arrival of Mangum’s 1998 opus slash swan song, when many eyes and ears were on Elephant 6, The Olivia Tremor Control returned with “Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One.” Like its predecessor, “Black Foliage” was a twenty-seven song, hour plus, experimental dream epic punctuated by moments of pure, perfect pop. But unlike “Dusk at Cubist Castle,” the new dreamscapes felt darker. For long stretches of the record, heavy, restless, ambience consumes the melodies and harmonies. Despite its name, “Dusk at Cubist Castle” sounds much more like dawn. By definition, if not by name, “Black Foliage” exists after dusk.
Generally speaking, Bill Doss writes sunnier, breezier pop songs while Will Cullen Hart “makes up” stormier, heavier pop songs. They’re working with similar influences and instruments, but they produce very different kinds of weather. And though you can easily detect both writers on both albums, I think it’s fair to say that “Dusk at Cubist Castle” is a dash more Doss and “Black Foliage” is a handful more Hart. Whereas the former makes space for at least a dozen flawless pop songs, the latter floats its way through hazy vibrations and fascinating textures. On “Black Foliage” the payoffs come in startling moments rather than in verses or choruses.
Though more opaque than their debut, “Black Foliage” was largely celebrated by both the old guard of zinesters and a new generation of bloggers. And so, for the balance of 1999 and into part the first year of the new millennium, OTC toured, recorded a Peel session and collaborated on the side — all while trying to ignore the shadow of Jeff Mangum’s unexpected celebrity and inevitable retreat. However, even during their glorious ascent — maybe especially during their glorious ascent — the band struggled to reconcile the tension between their two equally inspired, but fundamentally different songwriters.
As is the case with most creative partnerships, this tension proved to be too much. Doss wanted to make his own music his way. While Hart, who was suffering from then undiagnosed Multiple Sclerosis, wanted to make all kinds of music all kinds of ways. So, in 2000, Doss headed in one direction while Hart went the other. The Olivia Tremor Control broke up, leaving us wondering not how and why they collapsed, but how they succeeded in making those two albums — those fifty-four songs — in the first place.
Following Neutral Milk Hotel and The Olivia Tremor Control’s long sabbaticals, there grew a sense that the Elephant 6 community was not made for the internet age. “The Elephant 6 Recording Co” documentary, which was released in 2022, came to a similar conclusion — that Neutral Milk Hotel could not survive the memification of their emo steampunkness and that The Olivia Tremor Control were made for fanzines, not Reddit, and for good, old fashioned LSD, and not Instagram psilocybin. In retrospect, it tracks that both The Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel made two transcendent albums in the waning days of analog culture and that, by the time Napster and MySpace arrived, they were gone.
And yet, they never really went away. Doss released a string of very likable but maybe not lovable albums as The Sunshine Fix. Hart put out spectacular, if also uneven, albums with The Circulatory System. All the while, a generation of Pitchfork, Stereogum and MP3 blog readers came of age, elevating The Olivia Tremor Control from legendary cult band to inarguable canon. Which helps explain why, sometime around 2005, Doss and Hart reunited — first for a special occasion and then, in 2009, to record and tour. Even Jeff Mangum, the most modern-world-weariest, most elusive, most hermetic member of the scene did eventually come back. And for a brief moment, at the end of The Aughts, in the age of Animal Collective and Tame Impala, The Elephant Six spirit was alive and well again.
Tragically, on July 31, 2012, Bill Doss died of an aneurysm. Heartbreaking on so many levels, Doss’ passing signified the end of The Olivia Tremor Control as a going concern. There could be tributes. There could be archival material. But there was no Olivia Tremor Control without Bill Doss. Will Cullen Hart already had his own band (The Circulatory System) but The Olivia Tremor Control was Will and Bill. Will could make strange and beautiful music without Bill. But he couldn’t make Olivia Tremor Control music without Bill. He just couldn’t. He needed Bill’s sunshine and breeze. He needed Bill’s focus and competence. He needed Bill’s melodies and his harmonies. He needed Bill’s John Lennon to his Yoko Ono.
Either out of necessity or in tribute to their passed leader, Hart initially suggested that OTC would continue to play shows without Doss. Additionally, he indicated that the band had been working on a third album for some time and that they had at least three sides worth of new material. Both claims seemed either hyperbolic or optimistic at the time. And as it turned out, other than a couple of very special occasions, The Olivia Tremor Control did not perform live after Bill died. And as for all that new music? Not a peep — for more than a decade we heard not a guitar or a toy flute or a tape hiss or a kazoo or a lalala of new music from The Olivia Tremor Control.
In the years after Bill Doss’ passing, Will Cullen Hart finished up one last Circulatory System album and continued to paint, while struggling with the debilitating effects of M.S. “The Elephant 6 Recording Co.” doc presented Hart as a middle-aged man whose body was betraying him and who had more not good days than good days, but who was still constantly, impossibly making music. Possibly for fun. Possibly to survive. Sometimes with a guitar. Often with whatever is around. Hart’s method seemed closer to madness. But it was a sweet, beautiful and deeply musical kind of madness. It was the kind of madness that The Romantics and The Beats and The Beatles all dreamed about.
Personally, I never expected another OTC album. I did not doubt that there was “new material” captured somewhere on tape. At the same time I suspected that it was (a) not particularly new and (b) not particularly close to finished. That Will Cullen Hart — the man I saw in the documentary and not the man I saw onstage at Brownies in 1996 — could transform unfinished oddities into sufficiently unpolished gems seemed unthinkable. Physically, he was struggling mightily. And while I knew that his E6 co-conspirators would surely help, the one who could not help was the one he needed the most: Bill Doss.
Whereas Bill Doss was a hard working free spirit, Will Cullen Hart was more of a boundless tinkerer. Doss’ songs have an easy air about them — they feel well-crafted but also kind of effortless. Hart’s songs, on the other hand, sound unlike anything or anyone else. They feel like sun showers and fog and kaleidoscopes and puzzles. If The Olivia Tremor Control were a miracle, Hart was the miracle worker. And of the many miracles he performed, none were more miraculous than the ones he manifested on November 29, 2024. That day, at the age of fifty-three, he bequeathed us “Garden of Light” and “The Same Place.” The surprise of these two gifts — the first new music from OTC in fifteen years — was all the more mind boggling when you considered what immediately preceded them. Just a few hours earlier, Will Cullen Hart had passed away from natural causes.
Although these two songs represent a final transmission, they will not be Hart’s last words. For one thing, “Garden of Light” was written and (primarily) sung by Bill Doss many years earlier. But more to the point, it seems likely that much of the unfinished OTC material — the elusive, mythic (if not mythical) “third album” — will surface in the coming years. I say that with zero knowledge of Hart’s or Doss’ or their bandmates’ or estates’ intentions and more as a logical assumption. One way or another, sooner or later, bootlegs, B-sides, demos and sketches find their way out from their vaults. But these two songs are actually a much rarer case — an instance wherein the artist unlocked the vault right before he left this mortal coil.
Upon first listen, Doss’ “Garden of Light” is exactly what you’d hoped for and slightly more than what you’d expect for an unreleased two decade old song. Like the very best Doss compositions, its construction is sturdy but its form is light. There are jangles, a little swirl, the gentle ease of the his voice and some oohs and ahhs floating in the background. By almost any standard, it’s a Power Pop song, except it has no desire to be powerful or popular. It’s dreamy, but not dreamlike. The strangest aspect of this song is perhaps how not strange it is — how it arrives as elegantly as it departs. And while there might be darkness lurking beneath its surface or around its corners, Doss keeps it at bay. If it were released on any other day, or alongside any other track, “Garden of Light” would sound like the opposite of a “death song.” But it wasn’t. It was released on November 29, 2024 and alongside “The Same Place.”
“The Same Place” and “Garden of Light” are a couple but they are not siblings. They are in conversation, but facing different directions. On “The Same Place,” the oohs and las are not harmonies, they’re other voices in the singer’s head. Hart’s acoustic guitar doesn’t jangle, it entrances. His rhythms don’t move or even keep time so much as they click and clack like footsteps. Bill Doss employs strings and woodwinds on “Garden of Light,” but the cello and clarinet never sound so lonely as they do on “The Same Place.” Hart’s song could be about a town or a street or a house or a dream, but it’s not. It’s about death. It’s his version of Tom Waits’ “Dirt In the Ground,” but without the gospel. It’s funereal but not depressed. It’s a dirge that picks itself up and becomes a march. If it went on forever, I would not mind. And as trippy and surreal as it sounds, It reads like a matter of fact:
No matter what you do
No matter what you say
No matter who your friends are
No matter what you’ve done
You’re headed to the same old place
“The Same Place” is not a celebration, but it is a triumph. And the fact that Hart chose to pair this song with Doss’ suggests that, for all their differences, the two men and the two songs are in fact one and the same. Will is also Bill. The Same Place is also The Garden of Light.
Bill Doss: September 12, 1968 - July 30, 2012
Will Cullen Hart: June 14, 1971 - November 29, 2024