Undersea Poem

Alternative

Members – Chris Root & Juju Stulbach

For Chris Root and Juju Stulbach, making music is like capturing sunshine in a bottle. The New York City-based pair has perennially chased the sun – and surf – when the northern weather has grown cold. With each trip to their favorite spots on the Pacific coast of Mexico or the beaches of Brazil, they've been inspired to crystallize their adventures into dreamy, sexy and intimate songs. They capture the idyllic side of their life by the sea, along with something of the bittersweet feelings that can accompany the viewing of an impossibly gorgeous sunset. Undersea Poem is the name of their new band, as well as the name of their first album together since disbanding their much-loved trio, Mosquitos, and it showcases their most evocative and alluring songs yet. The album, with its cover featuring a beautifully primitive painting given to Stulbach's father decades ago, is a romantic travelogue that, luckily for us, they've decided to share.

Until now, Root and Stulbach have been perhaps best known for the effervescent "Boombox," the true-life tale set to a bossa nova beat of their blossoming relationship that was repeatedly licensed for television shows, films and TV ads.  It was the centerpiece of Mosquitos' acclaimed debut, which David Fricke of Rolling Stone called  "a sweet hybrid of bossa nova hypnosis and indie-pop restraint." He also declared vocalist Stulbach "a genuine gift from Ipanema, a Rio de Janeiro native with a voice like warm night air." Root, who originally hails from Philadelphia, had first spotted Stulbach at a student film shoot in Manhattan, heard her humming between takes and was smitten. More to the point, he became infatuated. Root followed her back to Rio, chronicling their ongoing courtship across two hemispheres in songs like "Juju and Blue," a paean to the object of his fascination (with her cat) and "Policeman," a recounting of a wallet-emptying encounter with the none-too-friendly Rio constabulary. Mosquitos ended up recording two more albums for the Bar/None label. It was in between the band's America-by-bus tours, that Root and Stulbach first decided to rent a room at the villa a friend had opened in a small Mexican town. Since then, the place has become a primary source of inspiration as well as a veritable second home.

Much of Undersea Poem was written there, says Root, "during a month-long rainstorm. We'd decided to take six months off from touring and I locked myself in the villa with a four-track." But that was just part of the picture. Root and Stulbach conceived of songs and/or recorded them "under the stars, in the dusty heat, on the ocean, with animals around. We had guitar, bass, a reverb pedal, coconuts, magic mushrooms." Among the more powerful attractions were the waves. Root has long been an avid surfer and he notes, "There are many amazing breaks. My favorite is La Punta, a point break that goes left. Then there's the main break, Zicatella, which people called the Mexican Pipeline. It's got big, strong, tubing waves that break in a couple of feet of water. It took me until last October to surf there, and that's where I experienced my first real tube."

Being out in the water is essential to Root's life as a musician. For him, "Riding a surfboard is like writing a song." In fact, wordless tracks like "Juju's Theme" grew out of the hours Root spent surfing: "It was my attempt to recreate the sound of how I feel floating on my surfboard, watching the sun rise or set. It's about those quiet moments. Surf music is usually about catching the wave. I love catching a wave, but I also love the feel of being alone on the water, connected to the rest of the ocean. It's so vast a feeling."