Rock Plaza Central: A concept album worth hearing

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By Matthew Sigur

Most of the popular concept albums that have been released are about teenagers slumming it up and being rebellious.

The best concept album of this year, however, isn’t about teenagers or how those teenagers should start a riotous revolution; it’s about steel horses.

Are We Not Horses is the brainchild of the Canadian novelist/songwriter Chris Eaton and his band, Rock Plaza Central. The album defies the tradition of “concept album” with lyrics that can tap into everyday situations and the thoughts of a robotic horse.

“In the early days,” Eaton said, “people giggled and thought that we were making a comedy concept album.”

Fast-forward a year, the giggles have since deceased, and the band has received glowing reviews from Pitchfork to CMJ to Rolling Stone.

“I’m obsessed with it [the press],” said Eaton. “I find it fascinating how people try to put the story together. I’m always up for finding every bit of press and reading people’s interpretations.”

Concepts aside, Rock Plaza Central’s album sounds like my idea of Nashville. A lot of musicians might tap into the city’s musical gold, finding musicians to play certain parts, but with this band, they all know how to play those instruments (banjo, violin, horns). There’s no search for musicians, and the effort sounds focused and tight.

Those focused sounds might be the most deceiving thing on the album.

“We don’t really practice,” Eaton said. “We improvise a lot of our material on stage.”

Through improvisation, the idea for the concept came.

“Gradually, it was the same imagery, and the whole idea fascinated me,” Eaton said. “Once I had a half-dozen songs [about the theme], I knew the whole album would be about these horses and angels.”

What’s even more intriguing is that all seven members “have completely different tastes in music,” Eaton joked. “We barely agree on what we want to listen to when we’re on the road.”

Though the band sounds like a recipe for disaster, Are We Not Horses is proof positive that the band is anything but disastrous because of the emphasis on not forcing the creative juices to work every second.

Eaton, who has penned a couple of books, “can go months and months without writing a song he likes,” he said. “When I write a novel, I have a good discipline and tell myself, ‘Ok, from 9-5, I’m going to write.’ With songs, I try not to force them.”

The stories behind the songs are just as good. In “When We Go, How We Go (Part II),” a choir of children come out of nowhere, screaming a chant of gos.

“Fiona, our violinist, had a friend who was a third grade teacher in a school less than 100 yards away,” Eaton said. “The teacher agreed, drew up the permission slips. They came over, and these kids were super-professional.”

As Eaton explains the story, he sounds as giddy as the children in the song, laughing about how the kids would “insult the ones who said go eight times instead of seven.”

Are We Not Horses may not be a children’s story, but its emotions and music are not to be missed. To the question of when we go and how we go, the response is Friday night at One Eye’d Jack’s in New Orleans where the band will be in all its improvising glory. The how is for you to decide. I’d take Eaton’s perspective – a child-like grin in response to the story of a steel horse.

E-mail the author at MatthewSigur@tigerweekly.com

Originally Published: Issue 581 - September 26, 2007

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