In the midst of its ninth year of making music, Boston-based trio Karate is touring in support of its fifth album, Some Boots. Due to the eclectic nature of its discography, Karate has become synonymous with mixing genres and borrowing from improvised jazz. Some Boots follows this trend, but lends itself more heavily to rock than jazz and even spices things up with some elements of funk. It is possible that the only thing that remains constant throughout Karate's catalog of albums is the insightful lyrics and fresh vocals of singer/ guitarist Geoff Farina. The Daily Cardinal recently spoke with Farina about what has kept the band together for all this time, the indie-rock scene both in Boston and in general, and how Karate creates its unique sound.
Karate has been together for nine years. What keeps you guys together and making music?
I think we're always trying to do new things, and trying to develop our playing and our ideas of what the songs are supposed to be. I mean we're really good friends, but the real motivation I think is musical. We just really enjoy playing and I think it's gotten to a point where we know how to generate new ideas and keep it really fresh. In a lot of ways I think that's the main thing that keeps us going.
How do you feel that your sound has evolved throughout your five full-length albums?
I think we just grew into our own identity and sort of learned how to do what we do now. We tried a lot of different approaches and different ways of writing. We've retained all the things that work for us and kind of grew into this sound that we feel is really idiosyncratic. Now it's at the point that we know what it feels like to go through the process of writing a record or writing songs. It's just a lot of playing. We've played hundreds of shows and written many songs and traveled all over the place. It's a very slow, slow process.
Is Karate heavily influenced by jazz?
Yes, we are, but no more than by rock or soul or blues. I think people have a knee-jerk reaction as soon as they hear something that sounds to them to be like jazz. They focus on that. It is true that I think Unsolved was very much more influenced by that than most of our records. But I think we have more rock elements and will continue to have more rock elements than any genre of music.
Do you mix genres intentionally or are you just freestyling?
It's intentional in the sense that we know it's going on. I think it's more a sense of just disregarding genre boundaries. The music that we all really love, and good music in general, doesn't really have regard for those kinds of boundaries. I think those [boundaries] are to an extent artificial. There are different things we like about a lot of different kinds of music, and we have yet to find a reason to separate those things. If we were really trying to sell records or just fit into a certain category then maybe that would be a reason, but that's not really what we're trying to do.
What can we expect from your performance in Madison?
Two-thirds of the set will be songs from the new record and we'll play a few old songs. It's a really diverse set. There's a few really old songs that people to listened to us in the mid '90s might recognize.