"WE WANTED TO do it in the dark, and we wanted it to feel creepy.” While that could be from any of a dozen Werner Herzog films, it’s actually Freelance Whales’ Judah Dadone describing his band’s first public show, at the New York City Farm Colony, an abandoned 19th-century poorhouse crumbling away on the edge of Staten Island’s Greenbelt. “It’s supposed to be one of the most haunted places in America, so we went there, stayed up really late, in the cold, and played a bunch of songs in the dark.”

That makes some sense when you consider that the band’s first record, the self-released (soon to be re-released by Frenchkiss Records) Weathervanes, has a lot to do with ghosts. And dreams. And mumblecore classic Hannah Takes The Stairs. And a few other things. Actually, it might be the thing that makes the most sense about Freelance Whales, a band that has gone from meeting over Craigslist to playing on street corners to blowing away the collected critical minds at CMJ 2009 to having a pretty major indie record deal in a little under a year, despite sounding pretty much nothing like any other band in New York.

It also makes sense when you consider what a hard worker Dadone is. As it turns out, he and his band weren’t really in that abandoned building to play a creepy show for a few friends.They were there to film some promo videos, to help them land shows, agents, gigs and everything else a band needs. And this was before they’d ever even played a “real” concert.Their whole, short story is full of tales like this—of single-minded dedication to the band, and doing whatever it took to get people to pay attention.With a freshly signed record deal, it seems that Freelance Whales has made all the right plays.

Back in 2008, Dadone wanted to get a band together, so he put some songs up on Craigslist with a short, bashful note asking, “Would anyone want to interact with this sound, or be a part of it?” He spent the next three months traveling all over New York, interviewing people for a slot in the band. “I went to other people’s places because I didn’t want to feel bad about them coming all the way to my place if it didn’t work out,” he explains. Fifty interviews (and one 50-yearold dude pretending to be an 18-year-old girl) later, Judah had his band: Kevin Read, Doris Cellar, Jake Hyman and Chuck Criss.

Just like that episode of This American Life where the band put together on Craigslist has a bizarre range of sounds (including a theramin), Freelance Whales plays an impressively alphabetical array of instruments, from banjo to glockenspiel to watering can. It may sound self-consciously zany, but it works.

Freelance Whales is intoxicating.The band’s tracks spool out, repeat, drone and wind back in on themselves, making for immersive and surprisingly comforting music. But then, talking about how Freelance Whales sounds is difficult, and the band members know it— some tracks sound like an electronic indie dance party, while some sound like they’re being played in overalls on a front porch.

“I think the record has a variety of sounds,” says Dadone. “The band doesn’t necessarily have a fixed, static sound, as it has a sound at any given moment that really complements the story it’s trying to tell.”

The band got plenty of practice honing this sound playing on the streets of New York.You’ve probably already seen Freelance Whales, even if you don’t know it; that might have been them busking at the Bedford Ave L Train, on the Lower East Side, outside Trash Bar or in plenty of other places.

“People would watch, and people would like, intentionally miss their trains, and that’s hugely encouraging,” says Dadone. Still, why bother with all that subway nonsense? Isn’t a band supposed to build an audience at, well, regular shows?

“I think that when people aren’t expecting to get music, that’s when they’re most vulnerable to receive it,” says Dadone. “In New York, when people go to shows, they’re ready to be unimpressed, but when you catch people on the street, you sort of catch them off guard.” Anyway, he adds, “We didn’t do it because we thought it was cool or interesting, we did it because it was really, really working.”

> Freelance Whales

Dec. 18, Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St. (betw. 3rd & 4th Aves.), 212-353-1600; 6:30, $17

 

If they weren’t so precious, we would make a joke about blowholes.