Welcome to Wonderland

With The New Album The Optimist's Club, Casper & The Cookies Cultivate Pop's Essence

originally published October 18, 2006

Have you heard of this thing, www.Googlism.com? It's like Google, except instead of serving you up helpful things like websites relating to what you're searching for, it just gives you a snippet of a sentence that starts with the topic of choice. I don't really understand it, but I stuck the term "pop music" into its search field, and here's what it puked up:

• pop music is fun for all
• pop music is all the same
• pop music is like brownies
• pop music is sooo last century
• pop music is really the only music that is
• pop music is the best music in japan
• pop music is awesome
• pop music is very fantastic
• pop music is definitely nothing new
• pop music is utterly unpredictable
• pop music is about passion and the power to touch the lives of its listeners
• pop music is easy

Sounds about right. Let's roll with it!

Pop Music Is Sooo Last Century

The story of Casper & the Cookies goes back a decade, and doesn't even start in Athens. In 1996, Atlanta natives Jason NeSmith and Kay Stanton met as bandmates in a project called Feyerabend; NeSmith posits the theory that their esoteric handle was why "nobody ever came to see us." Fair enough.

Stanton, a graduate from Berry College with an interest in neo Dada, was the band's bassist, and NeSmith was the drummer. All the while, NeSmith was plying studio engineering - the trade he'd learned at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston - under the name Casper Fandango, dropping one-off cassettes with various fabricated backing bands that were, in reality, NeSmith getting his one-man band thing on. As part of a fledgling performance art community around Atlanta, NeSmith and Stanton often performed alongside one another in a variety of incarnations. NeSmith dabbled in found sound and generally just dabbled; Stanton painted and, on one occasion, set herself on fire.

If you think there's a "flames of passion" segue coming up, you're wrong, but the two soon started seeing each other, and inaugurated their relationship with a visit to New York that would figure into their shared musical future more than they could've expected.

Pop Music Is Awesome

While still in Atlanta, our heroes continued to play with friends in a typically incestuous pop scene in acts such as Orange Hat and Aromatic, and although their band naming skills remained staunchly, almost boldly uninspired, the two still plotted towards a new group with an equal emphasis on art and pop. "I write pop songs and Kay sort of writes pop songs," says NeSmith, "but they're more from the art-punk angle, and we include these allusions to art [as well as] anti-art."

In 1999, following the rich tradition of maverick drummers such as Phil Collins, Don Henley and presumably homeboy from the Romantics, NeSmith decided it was time to stake his claim as a frontman. With Kenny Howes, Christo Harris and Ben Spraker, NeSmith and Stanton succeeded in fleshing out Casper & the Cookies to full-band status.

Fast forward through a move to Athens, plenty of line-up changes, the 2004 debut album Oh! and a wedding, and we find the group at its strongest and most varied stage yet. The current line-up consists of gregarious born-rocker Jim Hicks on (mostly) guitar and a dual drum-throne residency based on availability and timing; Davy Gibbs (Tracer Matula) and Joe Rowe (The Glands) keep the beat with equally youthful fervor.

Pop Music Is Utterly Unpredictable

Last month, the the Cookies' sophomore LP The Optimist's Club was released on Athens pop label Happy Happy Birthday to Me. Recorded in NeSmith's own Bel*Air Studio, the album features a wide-ranging palette, as well as a somewhat mystifying album cover: a photo of a darkened motel outside of Atlanta with a neon sign reading "YES." NeSmith enlightens us to the significance: "There is a famous piece that Yoko [Ono] did," he says, "where - I don't remember what it's called - but there's a ladder in the middle of the art gallery, and there's a painting at the top of the ladder, and there's a magnifying glass hanging from the frame of the painting. So you climb up this ladder and you see there's some little, tiny writing in the corner of the painting and you take the magnifying glass and it says: 'YES.'"

As it turns out, it was this very piece, titled "Ceiling Painting," that intrigued John Lennon enough to want to meet Yoko Ono. Tying in an astute historical perspective on art and pop music and the places where they intersect is certainly where The Optimist's Club becomes more than a catchy record.

The band's songs, at their most exuberant, employ that overwhelmed kind of elastic wanderlust that XTC displayed at its giddiest. The Optimist's Club is centered upon a batch songs in its middle eight, known to some as "the New York suite." Culling samples from a dictaphone carried by NeSmith throughout his fateful trip to New York with Stanton, the songs discuss falling in love in the city alongside the sounds of street preachers, public sound sculptures and traffic.

The couple was mildly tentative about releasing so many tunes speaking so frankly about their relationship. "I was very nervous for the first few months while we were waiting for it to be officially out," says Stanton, "because it does feel like we're naked in a way."

The Cookies stretch out considerably on The Optimist's Club, invoking sonics ranging from barbershop quartet harmonies to musique concrète. "Barking in the Garden of Ill Repute" is a "Laugh-In" style rave-up that the band posted online as an untitled composition, encouraging fans to submit suggestions for the song's name. A 24-page comic book illustrated by Stanton works as a companion to "the New York suite" and is available at all Cookies shows.

In addition, the group has put out a collection of previously unreleased material from the Optimist's sessions - as well as other goofball oddities - titled Overly Optimistic. Not content to rest on its laurels, the band has also contributed to several recent pop compilations (including one called Yay for Cuteness, which may or may not come with its own insulin shot) and has a split release with the Apples in Stereo side project Marbles on the horizon.

Pop Music Is The Best Music In Japan

Following a tour of Japan in 2005, Casper & the Cookies have maintained a surprisingly high profile on the touring circuit. They have toured heavily with British troubadour/ BBC correspondent Keith John Adams, backing him up as - what else? - Keith & the Biscuits. While traversing the states this past September, the group found itself in the midst of a drunken bar fight that they insist ended with Stanton coming to NeSmith's defense and promptly putting the aggressor in a headlock and exclaiming, "Not my man!"

The seemingly endless travels have paid off, as evidenced by their increasingly bonkers live show. Past performances have included oddball covers ("Mother" by Danzig, anyone?), bizarre, shiny costumes and NeSmith's mom, synchronized to the beat of a song, splitting green beans into a metal bowl.

"It was our attempt at some flux art," says NeSmith. Asked if his mother had equally high-minded aspirations during her performance, he admits, "I don't know if she has any knowledge of that kind of art, but she went along with it. I think my dad thought it was incredibly silly." Adds Stanton, "In a good way!"

Following a tour up to New York City for the CMJ New Music Festival with its HHBTM compatriots, the group plans on heading back into the studio to create more pop magic. Indeed, pop music is many things, and few local acts illustrate that more clearly than Casper & the Cookies. You don't need Googlism to know that.

Jeff Tobias

WHO: Casper & the Cookies, Decibully
WHERE: Caledonia Lounge
WHEN: Saturday, October 21
HOW MUCH: $5