by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood)
After Carl Shane graduated high school, he went to work. As the frontman of the long-running DIY noise-rock band Kal Marks, Shane’s relentless work ethic is something to be revered. After all, it was hard work that afforded Kal Marks the opportunity to make records and tour across the U.S. and Europe while garnering praise from major music publications. And though the Providence-based band has yet to see the broader success one is taught hard work should earn, Kal Marks persists. Wasteland Baby, the band’s ambitious fifth album, is out now.
Over the last fifteen years, Shane has become a cypher for a particular kind of musician, one undeterred by the darker realities of capital. Once described as a “proletariat everyman on the brink of collapse,” Shane’s line-‘em-up and knock-‘em-down approach bleeds into the confrontational nature of the music. In some ways, Wasteland Baby doubles down on this characterization, a concept album that’s as personal as it is bleak, but it also shirks the simplicity of the narrative. For as personal as it may sound, Wasteland Baby is far more inclusive, addressing universal anxieties humans face today. It’s the band’s best work to date.
Post-Trash caught up with Carl Shane at his home via phone after another long, hot workday. The artist discussed the fears and inspiration behind the new album, the future of Kal Marks, and how love helped him find light in a darkening world. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
photo credit: Jeanette D Moses
Post-Trash: Congratulations on the new album. And a concept album, too! Are you generally a fan of concept albums?
Carl Shane: You know, I’m not actually a big concept record person. With Wasteland Baby it’s more of a story featuring an exaggerated version of me. Someone who's very disenchanted with the world. The world is crumbling around them. They’re about to give up on everything, and suddenly, they meet the love of their life and they find that, you know what? This makes everything worth it.
PT: I know you just married your partner, Christina (Puerto from Kal Marks, Mulva, and Bethlehem Steel). I think I see where this connects.
CS: Yeah, the story really stems from my wife. She makes everything so much more tolerable and I feel grateful and lucky where maybe I didn’t before. She really helps me look at things differently. If you listen to the record, it's one difficult song after another until the very last song, which is my ode to her. “Wasteland Baby” is probably the easiest listening song that we have. And it's like, you have to go through all of this to get to the nice song, because that's what life is like. The world can kind of suck, but love makes it worthwhile.
PT: Sounds like a pretty good concept for an album.
CS: I was hesitant to say that it is a concept album, because I find a lot of concept albums are kind of pretentious. The best concept albums don’t force it on you. But I needed a concept on this album to help me write it, to help me make sense of it.
PT: I heard the writing of this was pretty hard on you.
CS: I was very thorough, maybe a little too much so. While I was writing the album, I always carried a little notebook with me so I could jot down anything that struck me, like a line from a movie or whatever. I began to have a problem concentrating. I used to be able to sit down and watch an entire movie, no problem. But after a while of always thinking about the album, I found I couldn’t sit still. I started purposefully doing random scratches in my notebook, trying to make them as chaotic as possible. When I looked back at them, I saw all sorts of religious imagery in the random doodling. And I was raised Catholic, so I guess that shit stays with you. Your past experience shapes future experience.
PT: Why do you think you put so much pressure on yourself for this album?
CS: Because I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing this and I felt like with the last album (My Name Is Hell), I didn’t get it right. We recorded it at our dream studio (Machines with Magnets) with our dream producer (Seth Manchester) and I think I got in the way of it a little bit.
PT: How so?
CS: Seth is so good at his job that we should have listened to him more about the final mix. And also, my voice was not quite up to snuff. So, when I hear the album, I hear all these mannerisms I don’t like. It was a very hard record to do vocally because coming out of the pandemic, we weren’t able to road test the material and my voice just wasn’t well-oiled.
PT: So, the pressure comes from wanting to make sure you got this album right, which was then intensified by all the time and care you spent writing the album.
CS: Some of the criticism Kal Marks has received in the past is that there’s a lot of variety on our records with a lack of cohesion. I like variety, and I want the band to fully express themselves, but sometimes I think having some limitations helps you paint a better picture.
PT: Is that why you chose to write a concept album? To give yourself some unifying limitations?
CS: There was a bit of that. But we didn’t start out writing a concept album. It was more like realizing there was a unifying concept after a lot of the songs were written. You see, many of the songs on the new record were written long before My Name Is Hell came out. The concept album became a way to reinvent some of the older songs, songs like “Motherfuckers” that had been around since before the pandemic to fit this newer batch. And then I wrote the two “Wasteland Baby” songs around them.
PT: The concept of the album, quoting from your press release, “was driven by the fears I’m having about being a father.” What are some of those fears?
CS: Global warming. This was the hottest summer I’ve ever experienced, especially working an actual labor job. I don’t have it as bad as, like, construction workers, but I hate how fucking hot it is. I feel sick all the time. I mean, what's happening in Palestine right now really fucking breaks my heart and the fact you go to a demonstration, and immediately your voice is muted. People just say, Oh, you're these young kids, you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about. And then the fact of post-pandemic inflation. I know I’m definitely feeling it right now and I think all musicians are feeling it.
PT: Every musician I talk to is saying the same thing: it’s increasingly hard to do music.
CS: Sometimes people treat it like, you're lucky you can even still do music. And I know I’m lucky. I never expected to make a dime on this and I haven’t. But now it’s getting really hard to even cover our costs.
PT: And yet you still do it.
CS: Because I really want to still do music! I still want to play shows! I love it! But not earning any money forces you to make tough decisions. If I do become a parent, will I be able to make any time for music? There’s no better reason to stop making music than having a kid. I want to find a way but at the same time, there's some massively wealthy people who are making it so hard for people to just make a few bucks. It's daunting. Greed is especially apparent in America. Because we live in a very capitalist country, I fear that is what is going to lead us to annihilation.
PT: That makes me think of “Hard Work Will Get You Nowhere” from the new album. Do you feel like that describes your personal experience in music? Or is it more descriptive of what it’s like to be a normal person living in the United States?
CS: It’s a little bit about both. I want to reiterate I am grateful for the few things I do have. Everybody in this band has been able to have amazing experiences. Some of us have met our significant others through this. I did and I'm so grateful for that. And I’ve met some amazing, amazing, amazing people, and we got to go to Europe and tour all throughout this country. We've played some amazing shows and we've also played a gazillion heartbreaking, bad shows. And that’s the part of the song title that relates to music: the fact that, despite all the touring, our music has never reached a wider audience. We've kind of stayed at the same level the whole time. And every so often somebody will be like, you guys are really underrated. Or, oh, I'm surprised you're not doing better.
PT: Does that make the hard work feel, I don’t know, like it didn’t pay off?
CS: I really appreciate anyone that takes the time to listen to our music and come to a show. But it does hurt just because it has been a fuck ton of work. Like, our music does not come easy to make. We definitely put things up to a high bar. But then I think about how so much of this is right place, right time. It’s a crap shoot! Our friends in the Bay Area are in this band called the Shut Ups that I think should be the biggest band on Earth!
PT: You grew up going to shows in the Boston scene and now you live in Providence. Is there a similar scene there?
CS: I'm currently not quite sure. I love living here, but I'm kind of shy and haven't met a lot of people. Boston’s music scene doesn't seem the same but that’s what happens when a place gets too expensive. There is some really amazing music coming out right now but it’s not so geographically based. You have to live where it makes it easy enough to do your craft. Good music always finds a way but there might be growing pains right now. A lot has changed over the pandemic. A lot of venues that were a good fit for new bands have closed.
PT: Is being in a touring band the size of Kal Marks sustainable?
CS: I think making a record every two years and touring a bunch is no longer possible for us. It only worked this time because we had so many songs saved up or started over the pandemic. Honestly, this could be the last Kal Marks record. I don't really want it to be, but that may be the reality. I definitely think it'll be a lot longer until we can make another one. We’re very fortunate to have saved up a budget to make this album but it’s not getting easier. We felt a lot of those effects during the touring for My Name Is Hell. We got a lot more attention online than we’d ever had in the past and I think it kind of went to our heads. We went on a month long tour and that was a mistake. We learned that just because people are saying nice things about you on the Internet it doesn’t necessarily translate to better shows. Even if you’re posting all the time. I admit I’m not great at the Internet but I can’t tell you how many times we’d get a message like “When are you playing Chicago” the day after we’d just played there.
PT: That’s got to be discouraging.
CS: And it’s not that person’s fault! Information travels weirdly. As a band, you aren’t appealing to people anymore. You have to appeal to the algorithm and hope people see it. I'm not really into it. It hurt us pretty bad. For me I think it caused me to have an unhealthy relationship with music, but that’s also on me. It’s kind of my fault. Making music is the most important part, and nothing else really matters.
PT: I would imagine it steals some of the joy you get from playing music.
CS: You want to believe the music will be enough but sometimes it’s just not. Promoting your music is hard and I'd rather just focus on making music more than anything. I hate that I'm complaining so much about this, but I hope other bands don't have it this hard. Some people think hardship and adversity makes better art. I've lived long enough to know that’s bullshit. All you really need is a good imagination and good opportunities.
PT: If this does end up being the last Kal Marks album, how do you think you’ll feel?
CS: I think I’ll always feel like I have something more in me for this project. I'm not saying it's definitively the end, but yeah, it could be it. And it would be a good note to end on. I feel like it’s the best record we've ever made. If this is it, better to be this record than a record that we're not happy with. And if by some fucking crazy chance the record actually does do well, I still don't think we would make another one if we didn't think we could do something as good or better.