Notions of redemption, death and resurrection run rife throughout the music of the Williamsburg-based Midnight Masses. Singer Autry Fulbright was transplanted from Los Angeles to Atlanta at a young age, subsequently spending much of his youth listening to the brittle punk of the Minutemen and X, and spreading the word of the Jehovah’s Witnesses with his mother. Somewhere between these two worlds lies Midnight Masses, the sweetly melancholic group Fulbright fronts with various friends and indie rock luminaries.
“I was going door-to-door, preaching about the Bible,” the singer explains over a beer in Savalas on Bedford Avenue. “Actually, my mom was. I was two years old, so I wasn’t the one at the forefront of the conversation. She was giving her sermon to the Lord, and apparently a gentleman who was in the house was like, ‘What kind of music do you listen to young man?’And I jumped out of the stroller and I said, ‘Rock’n’roll!’ and I started singing ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ by Bruce Springsteen.”
These formative experiences helped shape Midnight Masses, but Fulbright points to another key event in his life that was the catalyst for forming the group. “I knew religion, and I knew a religion that was one of hope and of impending doom,” he says.That sense of impending doom became a harsh reality when the singer’s father suddenly passed away. “It was the single most catastrophic and yet meaningful change in my life,” he explains. “When death is so close to you, after living this whole life of having death in your face, and the idea of rebirth and redemption in your face—when one of the closest people to you dies, you reflect on it.”
Fulbright returned to Brooklyn in a daze after the passing of his father, ultimately finding an outlet for his sadness by pulling together a disparate group of musicians to form Midnight Masses. The initial recording sessions were aided by Conrad Keely and Jason Reece from …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, with Fulbright describing the latter as “the guy who could unlock the door and usher me into a world that I didn’t really know.”
But the journey toward forming Midnight Masses began on a fateful day back when Fulbright and his bandmate Destiny Montague still lived in Atlanta. “TV on the Radio was on tour with Nine Inch Nails,” he recalls. “I ran into Jaleel [Bunton] in one part of town and she ran into Dave Sitek in another part of town.” CDs were exchanged and nascent friendships fostered, with Sitek ultimately helping them out when they were couch-surfing in Brooklyn during their move to the city. “We went to Zebulon to see them [TV on the Radio] play on Letterman,” says Fulbright. “Two days later we had keys to the apartment where TV on the Radio started. That’s how we made it up here.”
That friendship led to Gerard Smith from TV on the Radio co-producing the beautifully desolate recent EP from the band, Rapture Ready, I Gazed at the Body, which is deeply imbued with dueling feelings of loss, hope and atonement. Bunton even provided vocals on the eerily spiritual lead track, the forlorn “Walk on Water.” It’s a testament to his confidence that Fulbright wasn’t overawed by such company, but this is just the beginning of his grandiose ambitions for Midnight Masses. He sees the group as constantly fluctuating, always open to possibility and never sitting still. “Sometimes with Midnight Masses we’re five or six people,” he muses. “Sometimes we’re a 14 or 15-piece. What I want to do, instead of Midnight Masses being 15 people and sounding like 15 people, I want 15 people to sound like one guy with an acoustic guitar, un-miced, by himself, in a huge amphitheater.”
This concept of making what Fulbright calls “living art” will be put to the test during a month-long February residency at Union Pool, which will allow the band to stretch out and unveil the breadth of its vision. A hint of Midnight Masses’ upcoming full-length debut will be provided, but a few surprises are also in store. “I think when we do this residency at Union Pool, we will cover an entire album,” the singer says. “I’m not sure which one. Either the Minutemen’s What Makes a Man Start Fires? or Fugazi’s 13 Songs. I want to do this record that’s iconic in some way, but also something we can create and make our own.”
The residency will also provide Fulbright with a chance to demonstrate the visceral clout of his band. “I want that expansiveness, that power, that kind of superhuman power,” he claims. “Where all these people are forming for one common goal.That to me is the most spiritual, most God-like, most supernatural way you can approach art.”
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Midnight Masses
Jan. 29, Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. 6th St. (betw. Wythe & Kent Aves.), Brooklyn, 718-486-5400; 8, $12. Also every Wednesday in Feb. at Union Pool.
