The Royal Arctic Institute’s John Leon on Waking Up ‘From Coma To Catharsis’ (INTERVIEW)

Photo credit: Jack Silbert

New York/New Jersey-based Post-Rock, Jazz-influenced instrumental ensemble The Royal Arctic Institute really captured a sense of otherworldliness with their group of songs, From Catnap to Coma, that arrived in 2021. Now, they’ve followed that with a companion collection, From Coma to Catharsis, which is out now from Already Dead Tapes and Records in cassette form as well as via download and streaming. Both mini-albums were recorded and Produced by James McNew (Yo La Tengo) in the Neumann Leather Factory in Hoboken, New Jersey. 

The band features powerhouse players including drummer Lyle Hysen (Das Damen, Arthur Lee, The Misguided), guitarists John Leon (Roky Erickson, Summer Wardrobe, Abra Moore) and Lynn Wright (And The Wiremen, Bee And Flower, Shilpa Ray), bassist David Motamed (Das Damen, Two Dollar Guitar, Arthur Lee, Townes Van Zandt), and keyboardist Carl Baggaley (Headbrain, Gramercy Arms). Their writing and recording methods tends toward the highly collaborative and they play live around New York and on short tours, like their February tour of the East Coast which is imminent. 

The soundscapes you’ll find on the new collection do seem a little less submerged and a little more evocative of the world waking up again, with the potential discomfort that entails. I checked in with John Leon about the band in recent days, the state of the world, and how that might relate to From Catnap to Catharsis. 

Hannah Means-Shannon: Did making this collection of songs afford you some quieter time in the midst of a crazy world?

John Leon: Well, from the time you and I wake up every morning, until we good to bed, and sometimes in the middle of the night when we wake up, we’re bombarded with information. If you’re the least bit intelligent, you have to spend extra emotional energy trying to decide what’s true and what’s false. It’s so taxing! What better time to make music? [Laughs]

HMS: It’s so true because when you all are creating, you really can’t be doing anything else. And for audiences, you at least give them an opportunity to withdraw from all that noise for a bit. It’s an opportunity to be doing nothing else.

JL: Absolutely. When we’re creating, it’s such a wonderful way to lose track of time. People think of losing track of time as a negative thing. But it can be just wonderful when it’s happening because of something you truly love.

HMS: If I remember right, you have a background in psychology, right? You’ve probably come across the mental health benefit for that feeling of losing track of time.

JL: I’m a shrink! Oh, yes, there is. It’s the closest thing I can think of, unless you’re a mystic or steeped in your chosen religion, to rapture. It’s one of the things that’s so seductive about being an artist. It really is your direct link to the divine, however we construct that. For that ten or fifteen minutes, or even hours, nothing else exists.

HMS: I think everyone can relate to that, regardless of their background. I know a lot of artists dread going through the motions and feeling like they are on the outside of that experience. Sometimes you have to make the space for it in your life. 

JL: My main time that I really sit and consume music is that most Sundays, I try to spend the entire day cooking for the week. My wife got me this pair of noise-cancelling headphones that I use every Sunday while I’m cooking. That’s my main time for consuming art. Doing a manual thing can be quite meditative. For a long time, it seemed like all I listened to was Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack to It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It was wonderful! Every time I listened to it, I heard something new. I know that his Christmas record is considered the end all and be all, but The Great Pumpkin is really where it’s at! [Laughs]

HMS: Does that feel intrinsically seasonal to you, or is it more about the drama?

JL: If you listen to it and don’t know what it’s called, it’s just this beautiful piece of music. But when you know it’s “The Great Pumpkin Waltz” from this autumn thing, it really embodies it for me. 

HMS: I can definitely relate to listening to music while walking and running, but also chores. That seems to create the right mindset. 

JL: Growing up, I always had a Walkman for cassettes, and that’s always been an escape, but with these headphones now, it’s really an escape. I can’t even hear the vacuum when I’m running it. 

HMS: You all did a winter tour last winter, and now you’re doing another! You love the winter performances. Is performance meditative for you?

JL: I think out of everybody in the band, I’m the one who loves playing live the most. I would be perfectly happy just playing shows all the time. I think that a lot of emphasis over the last several months for us has been placed on making the new record. You make a record, you have a release show, and if you’re lucky, you have a tour, and we’re doing that with this one as well. Last year, we did a short East Coast tour last February, and I’m a total polar bear. I love to get bundled up and travel. We’re doing roughly two weeks in mid-February and that’ll be a lot of fun.

Right after we finished recording the tracks for this record, our second guitarist, Lynn Wright, moved to Germany. We haven’t seen him since and he’s coming back to do the tour, so that’s so joyous. We’ve known one another since the early 90s, and he’s one of my best friends. That’s the other thing about this band, we all get on really well and are good friends. When we go on tour, we do a lot of research and find restaurants to go to together and trying to make it a music food tour.

HMS: Will Lynn continue to be involved in future work?

JL: He will always be involved in some capacity. That’s another glorious thing about this modern age is that you can record records virtually now and he has a home studio. He may not be as much part of the writing process, but I can always send him demos and have him write parts. Hopefully we’ll get to go over there at some point!

HMS: I know of a lot of groups where no members are in the same country. It’s becoming more common. Getting out and playing again, do you feel that the world has gotten back to normal, or do you see ways in which we’re still recovering from so much disruption?

JL: Well, given what I do for a living, business has been booming. The world has been falling apart. The rates of anxiety and depression have skyrocketed, statistically. It’s incredible the sheer number of people who are struggling with anxiety and trauma from all of this.

HMS: Something I’ve noticed is that some people notice they are struggling, but feel conflicted because they also feel like they were lucky. Maybe they didn’t lose their job or a loved one. So why are they struggling? They have a hard time addressing it. 

JL: Some people really struggled with what you might call “survivor’s guilt”. Like, “How can I say this pandemic is causing me so much emotional decompensation when my neighbor’s father and mother died two days apart from covid?” There’s a lot of that. Across the board, everyone, including nurses who I’ve treated, came to me because they cited depression from the pandemic. But after a few sessions, we never talked about the pandemic anymore. It was as if the pandemic finally gave them a green light to go to therapy. It was more all the things from growing up they wanted to talk about. 

HMS: So it helped them make that step towards something they needed to do anyway?

JL: Yes. I saw a great quote the other day, “Hearts are wild creatures. That’s why our ribs are cages.” 

HMS: That’s a great quote. You’re hitting on exactly how much people are carrying around, even before the pandemic. It’s a particularly modern issue that people don’t talk about things.

JL: There’s a well-known coping mechanism that if someone is having a hard time, they compare themselves to someone who’s having a harder time. That’s fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re going through something shitty, too. If you pretend you’re not, it comes out in worse ways. 

HMS: It’s a relativizing of things. 

JL: Bringing it back to music, I believe with all of my heart that the vast majority of my training as a mental health professional happened when I was a professional musician playing full-time. Because any career in the arts, no matter what it is, is a true, magnified view into human nature. The two careers aren’t that different! I’m joking, but you know what I mean. The arts give windows into peoples’ souls. I would hate to have not had that experience in my life.

You mentioned people who worry that their art will turn into drudgery. There were years where I would go out onto the road with mind-numbing acts to make money. I was being payed to stay awake during the set more than to play. You learn so much about what’s really important to you. That’s one of many reasons that I decided to step away from music as a full-time thing. It’s a profession where your success depends on so many factors completely outside of your control, and if you let it, it can really take its toll on your emotionally. 

I made this choice and went to graduate school. But fast-forward to now, the wonderful thing about playing music now is that, while, of course, I hope people love what we do, I’m also in the enviable position of not really having to care about that. That’s very freeing!

HMS: For all of you, I’m sure! All of you have musical backgrounds. 

JL: It’s hard to communicate just how much joy all of us get from this. We really have fun together, and share stories about our families and work. 

HMS: I know the previous album, From Catnap to Coma, had a feeling or mood  that was somewhat like being underwater. Did you have thoughts like that about this album? The title here suggests what happens when you wake up from a coma. That actually parallels a lot of our conversation today. We’ve talked about the experiences and discomfort of coming out of the pandemic, really, back to consciousness.  

JL: I think you’re really in tune with it. I’ll give you an anecdote that sums it up. It sounds crazy, but something I love to do is to go into the bathroom and pour an incredibly hot bath. As hot as I can possibly stand it. But I aim a floor fan at the bathtub. When I submerge myself in that bath, I completely relax. Then I put my head under the water and pull the plug. I let the water drain while I’m submerged. So, to answer your question, if we look at it metaphorically, the first record is getting in and submerging yourself in that warm bath. This record is pulling the plug and letting it drain. How’s that? [Laughs]

HMS: That’s really interesting because there’s a lot of sensory stuff associated with that. When the water starts draining out, you get gravity starting to return. It feels really heavy at that point. It’s almost shocking. 

JL: That’s a great way to put it! It gets really heavy. Our drummer, Lyle Hysen, recently answered what was basically this same question, and said that this record was made during a time when we were so hopeful that covid was over. And it’s not. We’re left with that heaviness that it’s not over, and we’re still in this. That ties into the album metaphorically, as well. 

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