VON STRANTZ

To borrow a line from Joni Mitchell, I am staring a hole in my scrambled eggs.

Sitting in a diner on the far west side of Indianapolis, I am transfixed. And I don’t want to move. Any shift in the air, any change to my personal-space bubble, would be a distraction, and I don’t want to miss anything.

I’m listening to “Troubled Souls”, the new single from the Northern Indiana collective Von Strantz, and I am trying to imagine a world in which all musicians or those who call themselves musicians infuse their art with a tenth of the emotion that Jess Strantz and her vagabond band have put into this big sky of a four minute song.

The song begins innocently enough; a simple acoustic phrase gives way to the first verse, bathed in a thick vocal harmony. “We’ve entered in as troubled souls/we come and go unnoticed”. It’s the sound of a band waking up at their next destination and venturing out into unchartered territory, brave and crazy and rolling its rhythm across a vast prairie that seems to be theirs for the taking. It’s impossible to listen to “Troubled Souls” only once. It’s the anti-thesis to almost everything that’s wrong with music right now.

“Troubled Souls” leads off Narrative: Chapter 1, the first of three planned EPs the band will release in the coming year, with chapters 2 and 3 coming in summer and fall respectively.

Jess Strantz is on the horn from Mishawaka. “We’re hoping that people will figure out what we’re trying to do”, she says when I ask her about the intentional or accidental thematic linkages between the Narratives EPs. “There are multiple stories that intertwine with each other. I wish we could record the whole blasted thing in one sitting but I’m glad we’re taking time to put it out because it will take on more shape”. It is fitting that Strantz is approaching the Narrative project this way. Much like the band’s live performances, the audience’s interpretation of their music will be unique to the individual listener. Von Strantz’s music is a variable and the depth of its meaning all depends on your baseline.

One thing that is universal about Von Strantz is that they get their audience’s attention before they even start playing. At their Indianapolis gigs, where they’ve shared bills with bands like Veseria and Coup D’eTat, Von Strantz’ violins, cello and upright bass got people talking about them instead of the usual between-set banter. And once they start their set, and Jess’ voice breaks the ice, everyone – even the smoking-patio dwellers – stops what they’re doing.

“I am in love with that woman’s voice…Dear Lord”, says Veseria’s Jen Roberts. It’s a sentiment that gets repeated throughout our little music community quite often. When you see them, musician or not, you want to know when they’ll be back. Everyone knows Von Strantz and thinks of them as one of ours, not some out of town band that plays here occasionally. They are on that short list of bands we wish we could adopt.

It’s hard to mark a point of reference for this band. You can easily hear geographic and cultural influences, but when someone asks “who do they sound like”, you’re stumped. They don’t sound like anyone, they sound more like…a place.

Jess Strantz’s place started in Houston, Texas. Her dad’s job saw him taking positions all over the country, and the family went with him. Her mom home-schooled and eventually she found herself in the South Bend area. It was there that Von Strantz came together and still calls it home base. During a “dry season” in which she was recovering from an injury, Jess started writing songs that tilted away from the piano-based pop-rock she had been doing. “I wanted to write music that would sound good all by itself, but also with multiple arrangements. The music just lends itself to whatever set-up we have.”

“We played our first gig in 2012. It was me with a string quartet and it went really well.” With the acceptance of the local music community quickly under their belt, they put out an EP in January 2013. Featuring cinematic style meditations like “Death…Or So You Think” and “1793”, the VON STRANTZ EP about as far from the typical freshman release as a band could hope to get. Already sounding like a band that knows its way around the stage and the studio, they “inherited a few more musicians…and from February (2013) until now we’ve been playing as many shows as possible”

Narrative Chapter 1 and its sister EPs were recorded as a seven piece. The goal is always to perform in that configuration, “but sometimes it’s a 6 piece, a 5 piece, a 4 piece….”.

The new material is a testament to the group’s road tan. The songs sound of a larger space. “Troubled Souls” and “Nothing Good In Me” come across as a new form of spiritual, and would have people testifying in a stifling rock club or a desert-blown tent revival. There is more of a stomp to the new songs, a slightly rockier vibe. But it doesn’t undermine the gentle beauty of the songs. There is some intricate electric guitar, mixed with prominent and lilting phrases from the string section. Strantz’s voice beckons and soars, delivering lyrics that convey both a curiosity and an understanding. It’s a complex world, and Strantz’s lyrics ask questions about what we might be if that complexity was stripped away, and life was simpler.

Strantz says the songs are the result of a communal effort. “We meet in my home, an old school building in the middle of nowhere,” she says with a laugh. “A lot of time they bring their influences with them and everybody is so different. Josiah (Gaut, guitar) loves progressive rock and metal, Nick (Leatherman, bass) likes Motown and surf rock, and the string section….I am not even on their level…its another world. Kelsey (Arntzen, violin) loves alternative rock and metal, Kristen (McDonald, violin) and Isiah (Brock, cello)– a lot of the music they tell me about I don’t know anything about. Alyssa (Neece, violin) loves modern contemporary classical arrangements.”

The classical elements seem to suit the bands overall charter. “Me and Nick and Josiah are the ‘rock and roll’ half of the band, and the string players are used to working together and want to make a piece of music sound as beautiful as possible together. So it’s a perfect marriage where both aspects of the band are looking to make our music sound as beautiful as possible and that’s why it works.”

To put Von Strantz into any kind of bucket right now would be stifling to the listener. The dividends are greater if you listen to this band with a mind as open as their music. It’s deep, yes, but also very likeable. You don’t find yourself singing along right away, but eventually. This is music that has to seep, like a fine tea, into your soul. Before you know it, you’ve disengaged from the regular distractions and the even the ones that nag you at the periphery…and your lost in Von Strantz. And you don’t want to be found.

And, your eggs are cold.

Narratives Chapter 1 and the Von Strantz EP are both available via bandcamp (vonstrantz.bandcamp.com) and are highly recommended.

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Originally published by DoitIndy