Rachael Yamagata interview

Rachael Yamagata
The Elephant In The Room

Rachael Yamagata’s sophomore, double-disc effort, Elephants/Teeth Sinking Into Heart (Warner Bros.), should come with a warning sticker. Instead of the cold medicine declaration of Do not operate heavy machinery while using this product, the songstress’ brutal compositions should warrant an equally emboldened, unavoidable tag suggesting those with wounded hearts take the release’s 15 tracks in small doses. Otherwise, who’s to be held responsible for the text messages sent in a moment of weakness, the e-mails written in a flush of anger, and the brazen phone calls placed as the last drop of wine hits the glass after fermenting in the juices of Yamagata’s pain?

Appearing: October 1st at Lakeshore Theater and November 5th at Park West in Chicago.

The curious choice to package the songs in two, distinct albums in a time ruled by the iPod-curated playlist stemmed from an overwhelming dichotomy between the piano-driven ballads that ended up on Elephants and the adrenaline-pumping guitar rockers making up Teeth Sinking Into Heart. After experimenting with close to 50 sequences of the songs, Yamagata realized splitting the tracks allowed both moods room to breathe.

“I didn’t want to dilute either vibe by trying to fit everything together,” says a groggy Yamagata over the phone from Philadelphia, where she’s trying to brew a pot of coffee in hopes of recovering from a red-eye flight. “Honestly, when you’re going through relationship stuff you’re not just vulnerable and touched and sad and all of those things. You also, eventually . . . find your own strength again. It just made sense. They’re two complete pieces coming from just the different stages of what you might feel in a relationship.”

And Yamagata rarely shies away from putting her amorous woes out in the open. The former member of Chicago funk collective Bumpus explored the havoc generated between men and women sharing more than a taxi on her 2004 debut, Happenstance (RCA Victor), and continues the trend in 2008 on tracks like the bleak, cinematic “Elephants” and the cathartic kiss-off “Faster.”

Her molasses-dipped vocals also bear the scars of the prolonged period between releases, when Yamagata split with her manager, lost her longtime A&R man to another label, subsequently got dropped from RCA, and faced the uncertainty of how to get her work (done with producer/Bright Eyes member Mike Mogis) into the hands of the public. Even a solace-searching month-long excursion to the Dominican Republic ended in ruins when Yamagata accepted a dare and blew out her right eardrum diving 40 feet into the ocean.

“I was determined to do it ’cause this was my vacation and I was conquering all my fears so . . . I just held my nose and forced myself to go down, and as soon as I grabbed a handful of sand you hear this pop and I lost my balance and I came up and I was like, ‘This is bad,'” Yamagata ruefully remembers. “And literally for days I could whistle out my ear. It was just awful. So I’m convinced that I’ve never quite gotten back all my hearing.”

Things perked up, but not before satisfying the muse. “It was also a really dark time. I mean my life . . . and certainly after the bit of a mind-fuck to get a certain degree of recognition and then to be dropped from your label. You know, you go through a bunch of ego blows with that. Had a death in the family – there were a thousand things that pushed me over the edge with the dark, lush ballads,” Yamagata explains.

In a funny twist of fate piggybacking on Yamagata’s daredevil travails in the wild and the open-ended status of her career, casting directors from CBS’ “Survivor” contacted the 31-year-old about participating in the show’s 15th season, taking place in China.

What? Is “Survivor” trolling for rock stars now? Apparently the folks over at CBS, unaware that Yamagata’s day job includes relentless touring and press commitments, came across an online profile of her. “They didn’t know which was the weirdest thing, ’cause then I had written back and I was like ‘I don’t think my schedule will allow,’ and [the casting director] wrote back and said, ‘You know what, I mentioned this to somebody else here at the department and they said they thought you were a famous singer or something and I looked at your profile and I see that you are,'” Yamagata relays. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know how famous I am because I’m certainly sitting in a small apartment.'”

Needless to say, Yamagata declined the invitation, but on occasion questions the decision, especially when considering the whole stranded-on-an-island challenge. “Now I look back and I’m like I should have done it. I would have lost like 30 pounds,” she jokes. (Given the choice, she would much rather make a guest appearance on “Lost” anyway, after catching up with the ABC drama on DVD.)

With a new label, a new A&R guy, and her old A&R guy now fulfilling duties as her manager, those days hunkered down in Woodstock, New York channeling all that frustration into mournful ditties seem far away, but a double album marks the spot where Yamagata’s desperate attempts at cajoling comfort out of a piano met a home.

“It’s a dark record. Maybe no one will know what to do with it. Maybe it’ll be the one that like kills me off, but I also remember at 4 a.m. in Woodstock writing a song like ‘Don’t’ and finishing it and being like, ‘Wow. Oh my God. Genius!’ and running around in my slippers,” Yamagata says.

“I remember being so enthused by the initial writing process that I just knew they were right for me, for this round of songs, and they’re supposed to be listened to. And honestly, I shouldn’t even say this, but I picture once a year maybe you listen to the sad songs by yourself. It’s not dinner music. You go by yourself, you put some headphones on, you wait for a storm, and you’ll have a magical experience.”

Get the box of tissues ready and hide the phone.

— Janine Schaults

Category: Features, Monthly