Fall to Grace: In Conversation with Karate’s Geoff Farina

Where bands in the ’90s alternative underground were concerned, Karate was a voyage of sound.

Formed in Boston in 1993 by Geoff Farina (vocals, guitar), Eamonn Vitt (bass) and Gavin McCarthy (drums), Jeff Goddard would join two years later before Vitt departed the band following their excellent sophomore album, In Place of Real Insight.

Farina, McCarthy and Goddard continued as a three-piece, exploring new terrains and moving further away from the slowcore aesthetic that underpinned their 1995 self-titled debut and the above-noted In Place of Real Insight. It was these explorations over the ensuing three years that would see Karate release their jazz-inspired post-hardcore landmark, The Bed is in the Ocean.

25 years on, and it was the album’s highlights, There Are Ghosts, Bass Sounds and Diazapam that went down a treat during a Saturday afternoon set at Primavera’s Porto edition. Amid the Porto sunset from the hill looking down towards the stage, Karate were back in full swing, spinning pure sonic gold.

“It was a really fun show,” say Farina, recalling the moment fondly over Zoom at the end of last month. “The weather was perfect, and it was just the perfect time to watch the sun go down.”

After disbanding in 2005 due to Farina suffering from hearing issues, the ensuing 15 years saw Karate’s music reach a new generation of listeners. Constantly name-checked as key figures from the ’90s American underground, it was this interest that saw Numero Group get involved, and after helping secure the band’s master tapes from previous label, Southern Records, they reissued the Karate discography in 2020.

All Souls Day: The Burning Universe of Unwound

The subsequent tours in support of the reissues proved to be a boon, with Karate playing to sold out crowds across North America and Europe. It was the perfect storm that led to the band recording their first album in 20 years, Make It Work.

Despite being dotted around parts of the world – Farina now in Chicago, Goddard based in Belgium and McCarthy living on the North American East Coast – the trio reconvened with longtime producer, Andy Hong, to record at his Nashville studio. In many ways, Make It Work is a celebration of the Karate story, with everything from their slowcore leanings of their early days through to the post-hardcore-tinged jazz-rock hybrid of The Bed is in the Ocean, Unresolved (2000) and Some Boots (2002).

Opener, Defendants, and later on Cannibals see Karate looking straight-down-the-lens and delivering songs with a new, anthemic swagger. Farina’s storytelling, taking full flight. Meanwhile, Liminal is democratic post-hardcore with a smattering of blues and jazz. It’s a slight contrast to Rattle the Pipes, which is the epitome of a band having fun; the shackles well and truly broken.

The same could be said of the swooning Fall to Grace and Three Dollar Bill. Here, Karate haven’t sounded so at ease, and it’s these moments that recapture the same magic from up on that hill in Porto watching that sunset.

It all leads into the emphatic closer, Silence, Sound – a track that makes Karate’s reformation worth it. Karate have always closed big, and old habits die hard here, with what is arguably the best song on Make It Fit. An album that is supremely Karate, opening more new doors within their world to walk through and explore.

And speaking of their world, Farina shares a little be more of it, talking about Karate’s past, the present, and what inspired the making of Make It Fit.

Sun 13: What are your earliest memories of Karate?

Geoff Farina: “I remember when I met everybody. Gavin and I met pretty early on, and I just remember him taking a cab over to our basement with his drums in the back of the cab. I have a lot of memories of just when we met in Boston, where we lived. I remember our first show was January of 1993… something like that. The becoming friends, you know how it is when you’re young and you meet people who you become friends with for life? I have a lot of memories around that.”  

S13: What was the initial spark which prompted the band to get back together?

GF: “We had been trying to get our masters back from Southern Records. Our records were just in limbo for about 15 years. They didn’t want to release them themselves, and they wouldn’t let us have access to them, basically. We finally made a deal with them… it was probably five or six years ago, and right when that happened, when we realised we were going to be able to put out our records again, Ken [Shipley] at Numero was following the story and said they really wanted to do it.

“There were a few labels that wanted to do it, but we really clicked with Numero. That’s what they do, reissue things, so they know what they’re doing, and it all came from that. We sold a lot of records when they came out. People were excited about it, and we thought, ‘Why aren’t we playing?’”

S13: I read somewhere that Numero went to the north of England to pick up your master tapes. Is that right?

GF: “Yeah, they pretty much sent a soldier to Sunderland. We recorded everything to tape. We had master tapes that we wanted and also artwork… all kinds of things. We thought they were never going to send it to us, so we signed the release, but we didn’t know how we were going to physically get the stuff back! So Ken sent somebody up there to get everything.”

S13: When you started playing shows again in 2022, was it always the intention to make a new album?

GF: “No. Everything just happened kind of naturally. We started playing and the shows were pretty big shows, and a lot of people were coming. We just had so much fun that I wanted to write some new songs. I often write lyrics when we’re on tour, when I’m traveling, or when I’m sitting in an airport or sitting in a van. I wrote a bunch of lyrics in 2022 when we were touring together, the first reunion tour, and just wrote some songs and asked them if they wanted to do it. We just got excited about it and made it happen.”

S13: It’s interesting how you say you were just sitting in places writing, because I think one of the aspects about Karate is your storytelling in a lot of your songs. Fall to Grace from the new record is in particular. Are you a big reader?

GF: “Yeah. In fact, this summer I got really into science fiction. I had some back problems and was laying around a lot. I think I read over 30 science fiction novels this summer. I just read the whole summer, basically. So yeah, I’m a voracious reader. I read every day.”

S13: The title of the new record Make It Fit feels inspired by the fact that you all live in different places. Can you tell us about the process of making the record?

GF: “Yeah, the title comes from the last song, and it’s kind of this idea of making it happen by any means necessary. That idea is definitely thematic of the way that we do things, because Jeff lives in Belgium, and I live in Chicago, and Gavin and Eamonn live on the East Coast. We really tried new things. The first thing that I had never done before is before they even heard the songs, I made demos of everything. That forced me to finish the songs a little bit more definitively than I normally would have, so they had something really concrete to work with.

“I would say five or six different times we would meet up over the past year. From beginning to end, it took us really a couple years to make the record. We would meet up, like we played Primavera for example, so we had a couple days off, and friends of ours lent us their space in Madrid. We practiced new material for two days. We did that also in Iceland and in Boston. Gavin went to Belgium and practiced with Jeff… the bass and drum parts. Every time we practiced, we just demoed everything on our iPhone, so we had these series of recordings. The songs would sound better and better, and we would talk about them when we were apart about what we needed to do.

“It was really a different process, but what we found is it worked really well. When we got in the studio, it felt really good, and it felt like we all knew exactly what we were doing once we recorded. So it was a new process… we’re more used to just practicing three or four times a week in the same city together. It was a new experience.”

S13: You worked with Andy Hong in Nashville. I read that there was slight a mix up with the recording days…

GF: “Yeah. He really is a unique person, and he did such a great job on all our records. This past recording session went really well, but it is true; I think we got our signals crossed a little bit; we showed up and there wasn’t really much of a setup. But Andy knows what he’s doing, he really is somebody who can, in a day, put all his gear together and test everything and make it perfect. He’s a real engineer in the real sense of the word. I think it was more our nerves… we were ready to record, and it didn’t happen as easily as we thought it would, but it went really well.”

S13: With you all living in different parts of the world, do you think that your respective surroundings influenced how the record turned out?

GF: “Maybe. Lyrically, I would say so. Being in Chicago, living in a different neighbourhood for the last 12 or 13 years, some of the imagery and experiences come from what I am doing in Chicago, in some sense. I don’t know… everybody travels so much, we’re always in different places. Jeff comes across the ocean five or six times a year now, so it really doesn’t feel like we’re isolated from each other. We’re always working on something… we exchange emails almost every day and talk every few weeks. It really doesn’t feel that it’s that much different than when we were together in Boston.”

S13: On Cannibals, the lyric “Remember candour and compassion” got me thinking about the ’90s underground scene and what bands like Karate are now faced with. Do you participate in things like social media?

GF: “I had a Facebook account for a little while, but I don’t do any of that. I don’t really listen to Spotify. I think what we tried to do with this record is kind of pull people a little bit back into our world. We really wanted to make a record. Numero have people that do all the digital stuff, so I know that they put stuff on YouTube or whatever. In my mind, we’re just making a record and going on tour to play in front of people and play real rock music. That’s really what’s been missing, for me.

“I listen to mostly older music. I know there are a lot of great bands, and there are a lot of really interesting people doing really interesting things. And it’s cool that the internet has sort of democratised people to learn different styles of music or collaborate with each other. But for me, it’s really something that happens in person, in real time. Being with Gavin and Jeff and rehearsing or traveling or playing, for me why we do it is to be there. I think Gavin has an Instagram account, and he runs our Instagram, and that’s about as far as we go. We let Numero do everything else.”

S13: Liminal is a really lovely track, and I sort of link that with Cannibals in a sense. The lyric “lost between tomorrow and yesterday”… obviously it’s all open to interpretation, but it feels like there’s a lineage in trying to get back to those old days?

GF: “Yeah. I mean, the idea of liminality is being a state in between two states. It feels very much like we’re in the midst of really rapid change, but we don’t understand what the other side of it is going look like. Definitely getting older, I really have kind of isolated myself, just because it seems like everywhere you turn, everything is cheapened or made more efficient. Just being able to write songs, or play with my bandmates and go on tour… those things feel so good right now.

“To do anything you have to sit in front of a computer for 10 minutes. You go to a restaurant, and you can’t even look at the menu anymore. Everybody’s got to stare at their phones for five minutes! It just doesn’t feel very good to do certain things anymore. So I think that Karate, for me, and just the way that Gavin and Jeff and I do things, is really an anecdote to that. It really makes us feel like we’re back out there doing something meaningful, but we’re really having human interactions.”

S13: It’s interesting, because bands like yourselves and Unwound are evoking a good form of nostalgia, and it’s because of those reason you mention. In terms of progression, I think you can have a bit of the past with the present. They can coexist.

GF: “Yeah, I think there are enough people around that remember what live music or listening to a real record or reading a book from beginning to end [is]. These are things that I think there’s a lot of confusion around. I teach music at DePaul University, and my students wonder why they need to read a book from beginning to end. I try to impress upon them that it’s a way of thinking, and it’s a way of sustaining concentration, and it’s something that is important to your ability to understand and articulate the topics that you’re studying. I think that there’s enough people around that understand that.

“I think it goes in cycles. I think right now we’re in a place where people are really confused; how do we navigate all this new technology, and how does music fit in and these types of things. But I think there’s always going to be people who bring it back to the human interaction that is really important to people. For example, in the music scene or in academia or whatever.”

S13: You touched on a good point there. It’s astonishing just how many people in the younger generation haven’t listened to an album in their life before. Just thinking about that is hard to fathom…

GF: “Yeah. I mean, it’s sad. Listening to a record is just one of the Sunday morning things I do. [I] go into my living room with a cup of coffee and just put on a record and read the liner notes and just mill around a little bit. It’s such a great experience that, to me, is a big part of what music is about. And also a record being a culmination of your work. Essentially, this is what we’ve been doing for the last year. This is who we are, presented both sonically and graphically, and organised this way, poetically. With these lyrics, all the different parts of an album, it really is an object that is inscribed with the band’s identity and what you’ve currently been doing.

“It’s such an important part of what I think being in a band is about… to be able to do that and make it and go out on the road and play the songs. That’s why we do it. I think there’s all kinds of music. There are guitar players that make a living just sitting in front of a video camera and making YouTube videos, and that’s great, good for them that they can do that. But it’s not really what is interesting about it to me.”

S13: On Rattle the Pipes, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Karate having so much fun. Do you remember writing that one?

GF: “Yeah, I remember it vividly. When we were doing our reunion tour, we had to drive to Chicago from the East Coast, which takes a couple days. We decided to stop and play a small show…we had been playing these big festivals, so we stopped in Cleveland, and there were 80 people there. We’ve always played in Cleveland. It’s a great city, and the people that come out to shows, there are very few of them, but it’s always a really good feeling to play there. We love playing these small shows, and the opening band were really nice guys… locals, and they were so loud that in the band room, we were trying to talk. There were these air conditioning pipes that were rattling really loud.

“That song is really just a celebration of the nuances of collaborating with your bandmates. Like, ‘Okay, we’re ready to go, but where the fuck is Jeff?’ (laughs)… these types of little banal details that, at this point, after having made so many records and been around for so many years, it felt like the permission to be able to do that, you know?”

S13: For sure.

GF: “It’s not something that might go on the first record, but after so many records, just to have a little bit of fun with a lyric and call out my bandmates like that [is] what that song’s about. And the music is a lot of fun to play… it’s got that real hard punky thing, so that part is a lot of fun, too.”

S13: I can’t think of any other bands in the ’90s that shifted away from that slowcore aesthetic like you guys did after In Place of Real Insight and brought those jazzy, dub inflections into play. Was that intentional from the band’s outset, or did you just fall into it?

GF: “I think it was both. I’ve always loved bands that are punk bands that draw from other genres. When I was growing up, for example, the Minutemen, Beefeater, the Rhythm Pigs or Die Kruezen. Bands like the two-tone thing in the U.K., even The Clash! These bands that really take something from other genres and make this kind of hybrid music. I’ve always loved that since I was a teenager.

“How it fits into Karate, I think what happened, personnel wise, is Eamon was the original bass player, and then he switched to guitar then left after our second record. We got Jeff and we were a quartet for the second record. Jeff and Gavin and I are all kind of music school nerds, and Eamon is more of a rock musician. We had all grown up reading music and knowing a little bit about music theory, and I think Jeff and I both played in high school jazz bands and things like that.

“When Eamon left, we had already done a couple records that were pretty well received, and just thought, ‘Well, here’s an opportunity to bring in some other influences’. Because Gavin and Jeff and I bond on this musical level where we are really interested in jazz or in dub and we’ve actually studied that music a little bit and tried to at least casually understand it, it was an opportunity to do something new. I think that’s what we’ve always really done with each record.”

S13: Karate’s hallmark card is how good your closing tracks are, and Silence, Sound is another one. It actually made me gravitate towards Today or Tomorrow…

GF: “We have three or four or five types of songs that we do, and one of the types are these slow burners that usually go towards the end of a record… something really slow that crescendos and goes through an interlude. So I wrote that really thinking a lot about the song, This Day Next Year, from Unsolved, and having something that relates to that. In fact, the verses are really similar on those two songs, so I kind of went back to the old formula of what we were doing around the time of Unsolved. These songs that were really slow kind of arpeggios on the guitar that grow and crescendo into something. It was pretty conscious to make it that type of song.”

S13: Moving forward, are you hungry to write more new music?

GF: “I think we casually talk about it. Right now, we’re involved in a lot of planning. All these tours – we’re coming there, of course – and then in the spring of next year, we’re doing all kinds of things. So that’s where we are now… just trying to juggle all of the preparation for those things. But we had a lot of fun making this record. We were in Brazil just a few weeks ago in Sao Paulo, and we had a big dinner meeting, talking about everything. We were all so psyched about the way the music sounds that I think that, ideally, we would. We’re all getting older, and it’s getting harder and harder… everybody’s got kids and jobs and those types of things. So it’s just more a matter of the logistics of making things like that happen.”

Make it Fit is out via Numero Group. Purchase from Bandcamp.