Clint Niosi

Sometimes lyrics seem just thrown together, and for some bands, louder bands, you can see why –– on disc or in person, their words tend to get buried beneath avalanches of furious guitars, basses, and drums. Only the melodies escape. But for listening music, deep listening music, lyrics are at least as vital as the instruments.

One of the best lyricists in Fort Worth is thirtysomething singer-songwriter Clint Niosi, who has just released a new album, the follow-up to his 2009 debut, The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders. A dark, folk-based but often maximalist gem, For Pleasure and Spite demands –– and rewards –– close listening. Niosi’s words sometimes verge on poetry, as strong alone on the page as when performed with inflections and music added. But most of the time his lyrics –– about love, the world, and the Great Hereafter –– play off or skillfully illuminate their instrumental shells. The interplay between the words and music in the middle of “Shark in Your Water” is nearly operatic. In a quivering but masculine voice, Niosi sings, “At your / Request my / Sinking / Teeth / In un- / -derbelly revealed / To me,” strings yawning and undulating dramatically alongside him.

Some of the credit for the delicious sonics has to go to James Talambas, founder and owner of New Media Recordings, the relatively new Near Southside studio/label where Niosi recorded the album. Talambas, a founding member of the legendary Fort Worth psychedelic-folk band The Theater Fire, co-produced the album with Niosi and helped arrange the songs. Instrumental contributions came from some of finest talent in North Texas, including violinist Tamara Cauble-Brown (Telegraph Canyon, The Polyphonic Spree), drummer Boyd Dixon (Tame … Tame and Quiet, The Demigs), and saxophonist Jeff Dazey (Josh Weathers & The True+Endeavors, EPIC RUINS, Gunga Galunga).

“A lot of [the arranging] was probably born out of so much of the writing going on in the studio,” Niosi said. “We tried to do what the song called for.”

Some songs required small treatments, he said. Other tracks –– “Anxiously Awaiting the End,” “Apparition,” “Be Forewarned” –– called for “something grandiose,” he said.

Cold Shoulders, he said, was a byproduct of “the stage.” For Pleasure and Spite, on the other hand, came from the studio.

Niosi started recording in 2009. Why the long time between start and finish? Niosi lost his mother and ended a four-year relationship, “a mixed blessing,” he said. “You try to take the bad things and make something beautiful out of them,” he continued. “It was a period of reassessment. I was reassessing all the songs I was writing. When we came back to them, everything maybe felt like it wasn’t quite dark enough to reflect my mood, so all of that kind of came out in the album.”

Niosi also began collaborating with Hip Pocket Theatre. He starred in On the Origins of the Specifics and with Fort Worth guitar virtuoso Darrin Kobetich sat in the pit every weekend for about a month to score The Butterfly’s Evil Spell. “I think [the theater work] helped me approach writing in a different way,” Niosi said, “and approach my voice in a different way, kind of thinking in terms of character, singing the song, the range of expression in my voice.”

Indeed, Niosi’s vocal work on For Pleasure and Spite is novel and might shock listeners who think of him only as that skinny, soft-spoken hipster in the corner petting his acoustic guitar. By the end of “Be Forewarned,” he’s screaming ecstatically/angrily like Jim Morrison, and “Apparition” is a sort of spoken-word poem, about a haunting dream: “But your eyes were closed, the blue of the flood-swollen pond captured the rotten pools in your bloated face, just so.”

“While I’ve Got You on the Line” is another spoken-word goody but more powerful. Over a few simple, strummed acoustic chords, Niosi, his voice delicate yet razor-sharp, sings, “You can fuck yourself / Who am I to stop you? / You could love yourself / But I could never make you.” The song eventually dissolves into brass and strings swirling out of control.

The most theatrical song on the album is “Anxiously Awaiting the End,” its third act blooming into a gorgeous, sumptuous mini-symphony for strings and horns, galloping Copland-style, with Niosi booming as best his wavering voice allows, “I’m the salty pillar forever looking back / Mine eyes fixed upon an imminent collapse / Who dares separate the wheat from the chaff? / Who dares claim the metaphysical last laugh?”

Since the album’s early-August release, Niosi has performed a couple of local shows, with Talambas on bass and Claire Hecko on violin, but he’s working on building a full band for the stage. His next recording project is scoring Her Wilderness, “an art-house film,” Niosi said, by outstanding Fort Worth auteur Frank Mosley. This weekend, Niosi and Hecko are headed to Los Angeles to play a show, “what’s left of a West Coast tour, which will be re - FW Weekly

Since the release of his debut album, The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, Clint Niosi’s life has gone through a series of ups and downs, resulting in a fantastic record in his latest release, For Pleasure and Spite, released early this August through New Media Recordings/Orange Otter Records. While Clint continues to hold close to the idea of death, a topic that is prevalent throughout his first record, For Pleasure and Spite takes on the same role, mixing death with several other emotions, creating diverse, intricate themes. As Clint discusses music, relationships, death, his drink of choice, and other events leading up to the final product of the new album, we were able to get a deep, and extensive look into For Pleasure and Spite.

Bonfire Music: Did you notice a growth between The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders and For Pleasure and Spite?

Clint Niosi: There was growth in several ways, so it’s tough to know where to start. You could look at it from the production standpoint; we did it in James Talambas’s new studio. From the time that first album came out till now, the new studio was being built. There was a good four years, so James and I both went out and did new things.

Bonfire Music: Would you say that a lot of this album is based off some of those new experiences during those four years?

Clint Niosi: Yeah, well, I guess the elephant in the room is that a lot of things went wrong as far as relationships going wrong, a lot of death in my family, to where that became something of the story of the album. When my mother passed, everything stopped. When we started sessions again, my mood was very black. I was looking at things we had started on in a different way, and looking at things we were doing in a different way.

Bonfire Music: Following The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, did you start writing again shortly after?

Clint Niosi: The album, The Sound of Dead Horse Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, came out in June of 2008, and we took three tours, a mid-west, an east coast, and a west coast tour. I had written “New Light”, which is the first song on the new album by the time we did the east coast tour in 2009.



(New Light)



Bonfire Music: At what point did you really dive into For Pleasure and Spite?

Clint Niosi: The first sessions for this album started December of 2009. Now of course we didn’t work on it continuously.

Bonfire Music: Were you touring while you were writing material for the new album?

Clint Niosi: We did the west coast tour in the summer of 2010. We had a big debate because we were going to have to drop everything to focus on the tour. I really wanted to do it because we had never gone out to the west coast. It was amazing. West coast was way more hospitable you could say. Then coming back from tour, I know this sounds very cliché musician thing, but my girlfriend and I broke up the day I got back. My bags were still packed.

Bonfire Music: Did the breakup have any direct affect on For Pleasure and Spite?

Clint Niosi: I kind of think that breakup songs are a bit cliché, or are difficult to tackle because there are so many clichés with them, but as a result of that there are two songs that are very much about the end of a long relationship. It’s something people can relate to.



Bonfire Music: How do the themes differ between the two albums?

Clint Niosi: The last album there was a lot of death and the after life. On this one, there are some cerebral concepts like memory and hallucination and things like prophecy. The first song, “New Light”, is about memory and it’s looking back at the last song, “It’s Easy”. It’s looking forward to something happening. I wanted to have that contrast of perception of time. I don’t know how to put it, but this album is the first time I’ve been able to write about sex in a serious way, in any way at all. So there’s something about the way sex and death interact as concepts. I don’t claim to be an expert on how those work, but they are both at work.

Bonfire Music: You told me that “Be Forewarned” is the closest to producing a pool party effect, and I would love to know why that is?

Clint Niosi: Well that was rhetoric to what you had written (laughs). It’s the party track.

Bonfire Music: What are you referring to on the first part verse of that track?

Clint Niosi: The first verse, “If you don’t leave right now I’m going to kiss you and you’ll like it.” If you read any carpe diem poems, they basically go on and on that, “we have to seize the day, we must have sex now, tonight, it must happen tonight”, and it’s really entertaining. I was thinking of this song “It’s Now or Never” by Elvis, when he just keeps going on and on that it’s now or never. But it’s really not “now or never.”

Bonfire Music: Do you think that “It’s now or never” is cliché?

Clint Niosi: It’s passion.

Bonfire Musi - Bonfire Music

Since the release of his debut album, The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, Clint Niosi’s life has gone through a series of ups and downs, resulting in a fantastic record in his latest release, For Pleasure and Spite, released early this August through New Media Recordings/Orange Otter Records. While Clint continues to hold close to the idea of death, a topic that is prevalent throughout his first record, For Pleasure and Spite takes on the same role, mixing death with several other emotions, creating diverse, intricate themes. As Clint discusses music, relationships, death, his drink of choice, and other events leading up to the final product of the new album, we were able to get a deep, and extensive look into For Pleasure and Spite.

Bonfire Music: Did you notice a growth between The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders and For Pleasure and Spite?

Clint Niosi: There was growth in several ways, so it’s tough to know where to start. You could look at it from the production standpoint; we did it in James Talambas’s new studio. From the time that first album came out till now, the new studio was being built. There was a good four years, so James and I both went out and did new things.

Bonfire Music: Would you say that a lot of this album is based off some of those new experiences during those four years?

Clint Niosi: Yeah, well, I guess the elephant in the room is that a lot of things went wrong as far as relationships going wrong, a lot of death in my family, to where that became something of the story of the album. When my mother passed, everything stopped. When we started sessions again, my mood was very black. I was looking at things we had started on in a different way, and looking at things we were doing in a different way.

Bonfire Music: Following The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, did you start writing again shortly after?

Clint Niosi: The album, The Sound of Dead Horse Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, came out in June of 2008, and we took three tours, a mid-west, an east coast, and a west coast tour. I had written “New Light”, which is the first song on the new album by the time we did the east coast tour in 2009.



(New Light)



Bonfire Music: At what point did you really dive into For Pleasure and Spite?

Clint Niosi: The first sessions for this album started December of 2009. Now of course we didn’t work on it continuously.

Bonfire Music: Were you touring while you were writing material for the new album?

Clint Niosi: We did the west coast tour in the summer of 2010. We had a big debate because we were going to have to drop everything to focus on the tour. I really wanted to do it because we had never gone out to the west coast. It was amazing. West coast was way more hospitable you could say. Then coming back from tour, I know this sounds very cliché musician thing, but my girlfriend and I broke up the day I got back. My bags were still packed.

Bonfire Music: Did the breakup have any direct affect on For Pleasure and Spite?

Clint Niosi: I kind of think that breakup songs are a bit cliché, or are difficult to tackle because there are so many clichés with them, but as a result of that there are two songs that are very much about the end of a long relationship. It’s something people can relate to.



Bonfire Music: How do the themes differ between the two albums?

Clint Niosi: The last album there was a lot of death and the after life. On this one, there are some cerebral concepts like memory and hallucination and things like prophecy. The first song, “New Light”, is about memory and it’s looking back at the last song, “It’s Easy”. It’s looking forward to something happening. I wanted to have that contrast of perception of time. I don’t know how to put it, but this album is the first time I’ve been able to write about sex in a serious way, in any way at all. So there’s something about the way sex and death interact as concepts. I don’t claim to be an expert on how those work, but they are both at work.

Bonfire Music: You told me that “Be Forewarned” is the closest to producing a pool party effect, and I would love to know why that is?

Clint Niosi: Well that was rhetoric to what you had written (laughs). It’s the party track.

Bonfire Music: What are you referring to on the first part verse of that track?

Clint Niosi: The first verse, “If you don’t leave right now I’m going to kiss you and you’ll like it.” If you read any carpe diem poems, they basically go on and on that, “we have to seize the day, we must have sex now, tonight, it must happen tonight”, and it’s really entertaining. I was thinking of this song “It’s Now or Never” by Elvis, when he just keeps going on and on that it’s now or never. But it’s really not “now or never.”

Bonfire Music: Do you think that “It’s now or never” is cliché?

Clint Niosi: It’s passion.

Bonfire Musi - Bonfire Music

Fort Worth singer-songwriter Clint Niosi's sophomore album, For Pleasure and Spite, is so powerful as to make you catch your breath. The folk-tinged songs, laced with pain and the purifying feel of unburdening one's soul, are raw-nerved knockouts produced by James Talambas. Niosi has played a handful of release shows to celebrate the new effort, and he'll take the subterranean stage at Denton's J&J's Pizza at 8 p.m. Saturday. This free show also features Hares on the Mountain and Eyes, Wings and Many Other Things.
- The Star Telegram

Clint Niosi's 2008 LP, The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, was a fine album built around his voice and acoustic guitar, but its spareness made it feel like a bookend on something bigger. Even the artist himself admits that:

"I felt in hindsight that perhaps it could have been a bit more daring."

The Fort Worth guitarist's new LP, For Pleasure and Spite, explores that. It is angry at times, quiet in others, the extremes when dealing with grief and loss, which were the foundation of the album. "Anxiously Awaiting the End" is only four minutes long, but unfurls, wave-like, cresting on Niosi's sharp storytelling, strings and horns, until you feel that titular anxiety. The ghosts of grief and loss are there, but Niosi also cuts his sadder vignettes with songs like the bittersweet "Little Heart" and Leonard Cohen double-take "Shark in Your Water."

Again helmed by producer/arranger James Talambas, the album also benefits from his ear, as well as a revolving door of guests, like violinist Petra Kelly, sax man Ben Marrow and French horn from Heather Test, filling out every corner of the room. I asked Niosi a bit about how the album came to be. Catch him; Eyes, Wings and Many Other Things; and Swirve at Good Records tomorrow, 7 p.m.

I read the description on your Kickstarter page, as to the events leading up to the recording of the new album. There were some emotional obstacles you had to overcome to get this album out.
A couple of difficult events had a large effect on the mood and tone of the album. The first was the end of a four-year relationship, so you'll hear a couple of songs regarding that. The second, though certainly the most devastating, was the unexpected death of my mother. My mother and I were very close. I don't know that I can really convey to you the loss that it was to my family. In the wake of my mother's death, production on the album stopped entirely for about four or five months. I rewrote a few things during that time and tried to regroup. When we returned to the studio, everything seemed to have a black cloud over it, but I'm glad that I had something to do with those feelings. I also met my fiancée while working on the album, so there is a bright side.

How did you gather the players for this album?
I found players on a song-by-song basis. Mr. Talambas and I would record demos and have long conversations about what we wanted to try. By the time we were looking for players, we knew the sound that the song needed. It's best to let the song lead the way. And of course the players that we brought in were just phenomenal. Everyone used their own unique gifts to bring these recordings to life. I'm grateful for the chance to work with so many talented people.

What will the live show be like?
For the live show we have been focusing on guitar, vocals and strings and it has been a fantastic sound.

How does this album differ from your 2008 LP in terms of theme/sound? Did you feel the need to redirect after that album?
While I'm very proud of The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold
Shoulders, I felt in hindsight that perhaps it could have been a bit more daring. It was also disappointing to hear that many critics seemed to be under the impression that I was an alternative country artist. With the new album, I had hoped to break with any previous rules or expectations, real or imagined. I wanted this to be a chance to really stretch my legs.
- The Dallas Observer

Clint Niosi's 2008 LP, The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold Shoulders, was a fine album built around his voice and acoustic guitar, but its spareness made it feel like a bookend on something bigger. Even the artist himself admits that:

"I felt in hindsight that perhaps it could have been a bit more daring."

The Fort Worth guitarist's new LP, For Pleasure and Spite, explores that. It is angry at times, quiet in others, the extremes when dealing with grief and loss, which were the foundation of the album. "Anxiously Awaiting the End" is only four minutes long, but unfurls, wave-like, cresting on Niosi's sharp storytelling, strings and horns, until you feel that titular anxiety. The ghosts of grief and loss are there, but Niosi also cuts his sadder vignettes with songs like the bittersweet "Little Heart" and Leonard Cohen double-take "Shark in Your Water."

Again helmed by producer/arranger James Talambas, the album also benefits from his ear, as well as a revolving door of guests, like violinist Petra Kelly, sax man Ben Marrow and French horn from Heather Test, filling out every corner of the room. I asked Niosi a bit about how the album came to be. Catch him; Eyes, Wings and Many Other Things; and Swirve at Good Records tomorrow, 7 p.m.

I read the description on your Kickstarter page, as to the events leading up to the recording of the new album. There were some emotional obstacles you had to overcome to get this album out.
A couple of difficult events had a large effect on the mood and tone of the album. The first was the end of a four-year relationship, so you'll hear a couple of songs regarding that. The second, though certainly the most devastating, was the unexpected death of my mother. My mother and I were very close. I don't know that I can really convey to you the loss that it was to my family. In the wake of my mother's death, production on the album stopped entirely for about four or five months. I rewrote a few things during that time and tried to regroup. When we returned to the studio, everything seemed to have a black cloud over it, but I'm glad that I had something to do with those feelings. I also met my fiancée while working on the album, so there is a bright side.

How did you gather the players for this album?
I found players on a song-by-song basis. Mr. Talambas and I would record demos and have long conversations about what we wanted to try. By the time we were looking for players, we knew the sound that the song needed. It's best to let the song lead the way. And of course the players that we brought in were just phenomenal. Everyone used their own unique gifts to bring these recordings to life. I'm grateful for the chance to work with so many talented people.

What will the live show be like?
For the live show we have been focusing on guitar, vocals and strings and it has been a fantastic sound.

How does this album differ from your 2008 LP in terms of theme/sound? Did you feel the need to redirect after that album?
While I'm very proud of The Sound of Dead Horses Beaten Against Cold
Shoulders, I felt in hindsight that perhaps it could have been a bit more daring. It was also disappointing to hear that many critics seemed to be under the impression that I was an alternative country artist. With the new album, I had hoped to break with any previous rules or expectations, real or imagined. I wanted this to be a chance to really stretch my legs.
- The Dallas Observer