Interviews

Cassette Corner: Jeff Sellars of The Unseen

The Unseen is a three-piece band that has split its time between my hometown of Eureka, CA, and Portland, OR. Their sound is largely influenced by sixties pop, notably Beatles, Beach Boys, and Booker T. and the MGs. There's also a huge Elvis Costello component to their sound, as well as a little Van Morrison. A few years back in Rolling Stone, the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl described them as "a cover band of 17-year-old kids who dressed like the Jam and could play any song you asked for." Well, the members of The Unseen are no longer 17, and they never were strictly a cover band. But provided they've heard it, and they've heard lots, they can play any song you ask for. The Unseen has just released their second album Worldview, which shows that they have undergone considerable growth since their first release Thinking of Thoughts. Worldview makes a solid case for the benefit of recording an album in your own home rather than being a slave to the clock and the budget in a "professional" studio. This of course is provided that someone in the band has the engineering skills, ears, and talent to pull it off. Here's what Unseen singer / main songwriter / guitarist had to say about the making of Worldview, recording school versus learning on your own, and a few other things.

Give us a brief history of The Unseen.

The Unseen has been recording and playing together, in some form or another, for about eight years. The band started out with Kevin (Porter — bass) and myself. Kevin brought in Ed (Pierce — drums) later through a mutual friend in school. All three of us condensed sound I was looking for.

How did recording Worldview at home compare with recording Thinking of Thoughts (The Unseen's first release) at (Humboldt County's) Redwood Creek Recording?

Thinking of Thoughts was recorded and mixed over three days in September, 1993. I like to call it our Please Please Me album. It was basically a recorded live performance, with very few overdubs or treatments. But it failed to capture our excitement as a group. The songs were all things I had written long ago. I felt I had to put them out in order to push them out of my head and get on with the new songs. I still feel that album has a certain urgency or immediacy, and it has some really good songs on it. Recording Worldview was a much better experience overall. I had time to do things, like experiment, without having to worry about the cost. I was also in control of how things sounded, so I couldn't blame anyone but myself.

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