He's been around the Birmingham music scene for a long time, but with the 2012 release of Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires' debut album, "There's a Bomb in Gilead," Bains unleashed his songwriting on listeners' ears. The former member of the Dexateens and Arkadelphia is back with "Dereconstructed," the Glory Fires' second album and debut on the SubPop label.

This time around, Bains and the band have cranked up the volume. "Dereconstructed" is a rocker throughout, portraying the band's level of comfort on stage and the intimate setting in which they recorded. "It was super loud, so there are guitars in the drum mikes and there are drums in the guitar-amp mikes. Those are all purposeful decisions we made, but they were all geared toward creating a more visceral kind of sound," Bains says.

That creates an unusual contrast with Bains' often-literary lyrics. His education (Bains holds a degree in English from New York University) stands in unexpected contrast with the charged, aggressive rock 'n' roll music the band plays. We spoke to Bains about how these influences affect his songwriting.



Birmingham magazine: There are a lot of things that draw me to your music. But at the top of the list are your insightful lyrics. I know songwriting isn't your only medium; tell me about how your education and interests inform your literate writing style.





Dereconstructed by Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires

Lee Bains III: My literary education has informed it mightily. I think it's hard to pinpoint how. I will say that I grew up in a family where reading was very valued, as was writing. My mom really got me reading Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Conner; we read Truman Capote growing up -- some of the Southern Gothic-type writers as a kid, as well as the classics.

But I think I didn't really start consciously applying my education to lyric writing until college because that was when, really for the first time, I started studying form and studying writers working within different forms and using form to generate meaning. It was largely through poems that I sort of gleaned that perspective.

I think of rock 'n' roll songs as their own form. I don't think of it as poetry or prose or whatever. I think of it as rock 'n' roll songs or pop songs. I try to view that medium and contextualize myself in that medium in a literary way.



BHAM: I hear such lyrics in a lot of forms, but I rarely notice them set to a shredding guitar solo.



LB: I definitely try to reconcile those two loves that I have, one being loud, straightforward rock 'n' roll and the other being provocative literary texts. A lot of my favorite bands, particularly growing up, had lyrics that under the microscope don't hold up very well. I still love a lot of music like that. But it's weird, my girlfriend makes fun of me all the time. I'll be singing along to a rock 'n' roll song or an old soul song or something, and I'll get the lyrics wrong. She's like 'How do you not know the words to this song?'

With certain forms of music, I feel like the lyrics are intentionally secondary to some degree, so I hear them that way too. That's really not all that crucial to my enjoyment of it for certain stuff. But at the same time, songwriters have changed my life. Those are the ones that value the weight of every word.

And particularly in a genre of music that is fundamentally an anti-cerebral art form. When rock 'n' roll came out, the last thing it was supposed to do was make people think, really. It was a physical, visceral type of music. All the songs were about girls and boys or cars or dancing or whatever. So I feel like honoring the kind of visceral, accessible, populist qualities of rock 'n' roll is really important, even when trying to write something elevated. It's a really interesting form to write in as far as lyrics go.



Details

Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires "Dereconstructed" was released May 27 on Sub Pop. The band will perform at The Bottletree Cafe June 4, and tickets are available at thebottletree.com. Learn more at thegloryfires.com.