'From Far It All Seems Small'
Recent Seattle Compilation Showcases A Thriving Underground Scene
Maybe Seattle’s the next Seattle.
In the early ‘90s when a wave of Pacific Northwest bands like Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden crashed the pop culture party, major label A&R reps scoured the country trying to predict which city could be next. The music press joined in until “Is (insert city) the next Seattle?” became a running joke.
That’s all ancient history now. The music landscape is a drastically different animal thirty-five years later, but the recent compilation From Far It All Seems Small shows how the latest iteration of Seattle’s scrappy underground rock scene continues to thrive on its own despite long ago leaving mainstream consciousness.
“There are a bunch of great bands active right now, many of which are included on FFIASS. There are a number of venues to play at, both all-ages and 21+. You could easily catch a good show (or more) every week here,” said Mark Palm, frontman for the band Supercrush and curator of From Far It All Seems Small.
As with any thriving underground scene, it comes down to the talents and passion of the people involved.
“There are some great recording engineers in our circle, some folks documenting the scene through photography, some cool record shops, a few people like Kay Redden releasing records on small labels, people doing art for bands, a little bit of radio. I don’t think Seattle is really on the radar of the greater music industry, but that’s not the metric by which I’d measure if a scene is thriving,” Palm said.
I caught up with Palm by email a few months after the compilation’s release to discuss the inspiration for this collection, his thoughts on the current Seattle music scene, and what’s next for Supercrush.
Mark Palm Interview
Congrats on the great comp. What was the inspiration to put this collection together?
Mark Palm: Thanks, Steve! I suppose the initial idea goes way back about seven years or so to when Supercrush first started playing shows. We played with the band Fluung here in Seattle and one of them gave me a cassette tape of what were unreleased songs at the time. One of the songs was a track called ’Smokercraft’ that eventually ended up on their Satellite Weather album. I LOVED that song and used to play it in the tape deck in the old Supercrush van constantly. Just rewinding it over and over. A perfect driving song. Killer riff. Plenty of whammy bar action and noise. And one of Donald’s trademark wild fuzz guitar solos. I punished the Fluung guys about that song every time we played together for quite a while until I decided they were probably sick of hearing about it.
Anyway, way back then I had this idea that it would be cool to do a tape with songs from other Seattle bands that we could spread around the country when Supercrush was on tour. Not even necessarily an official release of exclusive tracks, just a mixtape essentially of songs from our peers’ records. Naturally I wanted to include ‘Smokercraft,’ but the idea never ended up coming to fruition—partly because there wasn’t really a whole tape’s worth of bands in our general style from Seattle at that time, at least not that I was aware of. There was Fluung as I mentioned, Great Spiders, Versing, Big Bite… not too many others at that time.
Fast forward a bunch of years and a ton of new alt rock bands of one kind or another had emerged in Seattle. We started talking about it a lot on Supercrush tours—all the great bands back at home and how it would be nice to document them and try to contribute to the feeling of camaraderie that was building between the various musicians. Again, the original concept was to do a cassette or perhaps a short run of CDs, but as with most projects I start, it snowballed into something way bigger.
I like how From Far It All Seems Small updates lingering impressions of the Seattle music scene based on the '80s/'90s grunge era. Was that part of what you were trying to accomplish?
Mark Palm: Well, there’s obviously a certain musical and aesthetic influence from the Seattle ‘grunge’ era, and the ‘80s/‘90s ‘alternative rock’ wave in general, that exists in many of the bands in our current scene, but strangely there seems to be a huge disconnect between those two eras, as far as participation is concerned. There’s not really a lot of folks that create a through-line connecting that past to our present. There seems to be very little overlap between the Seattle old guard and the current scene that is documented on FFIASS. You don’t really see folks from the old scene at our shows, and likewise I don’t think many of us keep up too well with what the ‘80s/‘90s heads are up to these days. I think there’s a mutual lack of awareness. I’d really like to change that though. I’d love to put on a show with a band like The Fastbacks or Mudhoney, one of the bands from FFIASS, and a younger band of late teens/early twenties folks to bring all of those generations of Seattle rock together at one event.
I suppose I’m from sort of a bridge generation between those two eras in that I’m old enough to have been buying some of the classic early ‘90s alternative rock albums when they were new releases, but I was too young at the time to be playing in bands and actually participating in that scene. But I remember the excitement of that time and I want to try to bring some of that enthusiasm to the current Seattle scene. My birth year actually happens to fall in a tiny couple year transition period between generations (a “Cusper”)—I’m neither Gen X nor a Millennial, so I suppose that feeling of being a bridge between the two makes perfect sense.
What has been the reception for this compilation so far?
Mark Palm: The reception seems to have been really positive so far! We did a limited edition color vinyl version that was only available at Sonic Boom Records here in town, and I was really pleasantly surprised how quickly those copies sold out. Apparently a lot of people were coming into the shop specifically in search of the comp and the folks working at Sonic Boom were also recommending it to customers who were curious about current Seattle music. That relationship with Sonic Boom worked out really great. Kay at Sonic Boom is a huge supporter of the local scene. Like I mentioned earlier, be sure to check out her label Den Tapes.
There didn’t seem to be a ton of support or enthusiasm for the compilation from a couple of the major Seattle indie music institutions, but I suppose that’s not really a surprise. It’s just another reminder that what we’re doing here is truly underground. We are existing in our own little world, far outside of anything even remotely mainstream.
I was already a fan of your band Supercrush, so it is no surprise that "Lost My Head" is one of my favorite tracks. Is that a newer song, or one you had kicking around?
Mark Palm: Thanks! Yep, that was a new song that we put together specifically for the comp. At the time I wrote it I was crashing at Che and Kailey from TV Star and Sun Spot’s place for a couple weeks. Che had a Moog synthesizer at the house which is what got me inspired to add those little synth lines to the verses. For some reason there was also this cheap, crappy splash cymbal laying on the floor of the basement where Sun Spots practiced. On a whim I grabbed that too and brought it to the studio to throw into the drum part a couple times just for kicks. I also found one of those old DigiTech Whammy pedals on Craigslist and used that to do the pitch jumps in the guitar solo—to mimic the pitch jump effect of the Moog synthesizer. Supercrush bass player Phil Jones recorded that song at our studio space in SODO called HMS, and it was mixed by Brett Romnes out in New Jersey.
TV Star's "Ride" is a great sunshine-y pop track. How does the sound of that one fit into the current Seattle guitar pop scene?
Mark Palm: I’d say TV Star fits in nicely on a bill with a lot of different bands here in town, without actually sounding like any other band. I think Ashlyn’s voice and melodies give the band a really unique quality.
Shine's "Happy Diving" has pop elements, but sounds more shoegaze. Does that seem accurate?
Mark Palm: Definitely. I think those guys were very influenced by UK shoegaze groups like Chapterhouse and so forth.
Any plans for future Seattle comps?
Mark Palm: I’d love to see someone do another compilation in a few years to document some of the other great bands in Seattle, many of which have emerged in just the short time since FFIASS was sent to press. Or compilations documenting some of the other underground musical genres here in town.
I don’t think it’ll be me organizing the next one because I’ve got my hands full with my own band’s projects that kinda got put on hold while I worked on FFIASS. It could be a full time job just putting comps together every so often. It’d be great to see someone do a sequel at some point, though.
What's next for you and Supercrush?
Mark Palm: Supercrush has been in studio mode as of late, working hard to finish up a few different recordings that have been in progress for a while now. We should have a new one-off digital single out in the next month or two, and then a couple new records out next year.
Aside from that, I’ve been playing bass with TV Star in recent times and we are also preparing to go into the studio in a few months to record a full length album.
