Joan of Arc (band)

Joan of Arc are an American indie rock band from Chicago, Illinois. They formed in 1995, following the break up of Cap'n Jazz.

Singer Tim Kinsella has been the only permanent member of the group; he has also recorded as a solo artist.

Joan of Arc are known for their use of electronics, samples, and multi-track recording in their songs; some songs on The Gap contained over 100 tracks.

Joan of Arc's lyrics and cover art are often intentionally misleading, humorous, or confusing. For example, the album Live in Chicago 1999 is not a live album, but a reference to the fact that the band lived in Chicago in the year 1999.

Members of Joan of Arc have been in many other bands including Friend/Enemy with Califone's Tim Rutili; American Football with Kinsella's brother Mike; Owls, a Cap'n Jazz reunion; Ghosts and Vodka; Everyoned, and most recently Make Believe.

Biography

A Portable Model Of... introduced JOA's signature sound: a fondness for stark acoustic songs combined with subtle electronics. The debut album also included some harder material and collaborations with former Cap'n Jazz guitarist and The Promise Ring singer Davey von Bohlen and Euphone's Ryan Rhapsys, who would later drum for Owls following the departure of Mike Kinsella.

In 1998, Joan of Arc released How Memory Works. The album included what would become a hallmark of Joan Of Arc's subsequent output: interludes of synthetic noises cut with vocal samples and off-beat instrumentation. As always, Kinsella's lyrics were cryptic and oblique, though the song 'This Life Cumulative' made reference to the media alienation of singer/songwriter Fiona Apple.

Following the departure of Mike Kinsella, Erik Bocek, and the addition of Todd Mattei, Joan Of Arc found themselves thrust unwillingly into the spotlight by the sudden success of a Jade Tree retrospective by Kinsella's former band Cap'n Jazz. Despite being heralded as a pioneer of a diverse genre known as 'emo' (a term rejected by Kinsella), Joan of Arc's next album was a reaction to this unwelcome classification. The songs on the album were slower and contained more spacious arrangements thanks to a newly found fondness for studio trickery. The album's artwork depicted recreated scenes from Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Weekend. The release of Live in Chicago also marked the increasing media perception of Joan Of Arc as a 'difficult' band, an impression that would dog Kinsella in particular throughout the band's existence.

Negative critical reaction to Joan of Arc would become especially apparent after the release of The Gap in 2000. Completely eschewing past convention, JOA created one long ebbing piece of music, with only occasionally recognizable songs. This increasingly progressive studio-heavy approach- mostly of clattering, incidental percussion and background noise- found some favor among band loyalists, but baffled the music press. As a result, growing tensions within the group, indifference from their label, and a poorly-received follow-up EP led to Joan Of Arc's breakup.

Tim Kinsella then formed a group called Owls, a reincarnation of the original Cap'n Jazz lineup. After recording the album with Steve Albini in 2001, the departure of Mike Kinsella and Victor Villareal led to the Owls' breakup. Left without a band once again, Tim Kinsella started working on songs for a solo album. After completing the album with help from Sam Zurich and Mike Kinsella, Tim Kinsella decided that since all three had played in Joan Of Arc, it should bear the name Joan of Arc. The album, much different from the conceptual madness of The Gap, instead consisted of guitar-driven tracks with journal-like observation from Tim Kinsella. Heralded as a return to form, So Much Staying Alive And Lovelessness became the band's last on Jade Tree.

Later that year, Joan Of Arc released In Rape Fantasy And Terror Sex We Trust on Perishable Records, featured collaborations with Califone's Tim Rutili and Ben Massarella, and was produced by Califone. Although the songs had been recorded during the same sessions as ...Lovelessness, they were darker and more collage-based. According to the website Allmusic, on In Rape Fantasy And Terror Sex We Trust "Joan of Arc...once more surpassed themselves as artists".

To tour the albums in 2003, Tim Kinsella organised a new lineup including Bobby Burg, Nate Kinsella (Tim's cousin) and Sam Zurich, who would also double as his side-project Make Believe. After a live album recorded in Germany and a split EP with Bundini Brown (of Tortoise and Gastr Del Sol), the band assembled a huge team of collaborators for 2004's Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain on Polyvinyl Records. This effort was largely well-regarded and a significant step forward for a new incarnation of Joan of Arc.

For the album Presents Guitar Duets (Polyvinyl Records), Tim Kinsella rounded up ten former members of Joan Of Arc and others like Tim Rutili. Each was paired off with a partner by pulling names from a hat. Each pair then had to record a guitar duet together, and the styles vary from standard acoustic plucking to droning, looped soundscapes. The track-names are identified only by the faces of the pair who play on the track.

In 2006, Joan Of Arc released a compilation of rarities entitled The Intelligent Design Of... and also a new studio album entitled Eventually, All At Once, a largely acoustic affair. The Many Times I've Mistaken EP was released in 2007 followed by Boo! Human in 2008 and Flowers in 2009.

Discography

Albums

EPs

7"/Singles/Splits

External links

References