I met Spencer Sult last November in Ballard. We were at a show that a mutual friend had recommended to me. After hearing I went to shows at Redmond's the Old Fire House during high school, my buddy Travis told me about the all-ages Paradox off Leary way. That night, before the Dead Science played, Spencer slipped me a copy of a demo CDR and asked me if I was in a band.
It was funny, how fast I ended up getting to know everybody in Redmond and Seattle who had gone to the same shows that I had been going to for years, but whom I never spoke to. I remembered Spencer at the Paradox as a skinny kid my age with not much to say, but with some kind of real, ambition. Honestly, I was a bit put off because he was so forward and so awkward (I used to think such things to be contradictions). I didn't know much about local music and I didn't know anything about Spencer. Eventually we ended up seeing each other around fairly often at shows. We both go to UW and live in Redmond, so we take the same bus home to see our folks some afternoons.
Fast-forward almost a year. I'm starting sophomore year of college and Generifus (Gen-er-iff-us) has released a CDR of new songs called Soft Climb. The record is pretty much cutting-edge experimental folk shit. And Spencer's music is not experimental in the aggressive or even progressive way; Soft Climb is more Brian Wilson than Brian Eno. The sounds for the first CD were largely accomplished with a nylon string guitar, an electric guitar, and an analogue tape loop. Since the last CDR, Generifus has added more harmonies, more reverb, and a few minimal beats that sound like pieces of wood tapping a clay pot.
This recording represents a move from lo-fi minimalism for its own sake to texture folk that walks you around your old over-grown neighborhood late at night. The mood of the record puts me somewhere between sleep and tears and home. The guitars relax me, but the vocals make me feel very strange things. The emotions I feel when I see Spencer play are equally difficult. On stage, Spencer and an acoustic guitar transform into hyper-coy Generifus taking stops and stars reminiscent of an awkward make-out-sesh behind the gymnasium in high school. His sharp, groaning voice goes thin and light or reaches a howl at surprising intervals.
Spencer likes Animal Collective, Karl Blau, Panda Bear, White Rainbow, Lucky Dragons and tons of other soft, difficult music. On Soft Climb, "Always Said" stands out with a painfully lazy California guitar riff and Animal Collective harmonic beats. "The Smell" achieves an epic vastness that always makes me think of cowboys, the American West, and Seattle's Band of Horses.
Stepping between lyrics carefully, timidly, the newer songs convey the hesitance and uncertainty of young people raised in a confusing musical world. Spencer’s vocals, while sometimes arduous, are often beautiful and always honest. His music is so personal that is makes awkwardness into friendship and dark places into cozy places.