Shallow and proud
The many moods of Thee More Shallows.

By Kimberly Chun

EAST BAY DUO Thee More Shallows make a kind of refined chamber post-rock that's as lulling as a tide, as intimate as a whisper. So songwriters and multi-instrumentalists David "Dee" Kesler and Tadas Kisielius are probably the last people you'd expect to go Don Rickles on a unsuspecting audience, as they recently did in the well-known party town Brighton at the final show during their first tour of England.

The audience fell victim to inadvertent put-downs that would have made any insult comedian proud when Kesler started mocking the viewers, who were split between an attentive crew in the front and gabbers in the rear. "I was such an ass that night. I was like, 'We got more than enough fire power to blow you people out of the water,' " Kesler says, referring to the band's huge amps in his best backwoods codger imitation. He's hunched over a cheeseburger and fries at Jim's Restaurant in the Mission, a favorite hang when he lived in the area, on Capp Street.

Kesler didn't help matters by wearing a camouflage hat, given the current political climate, and matters went from bad to worse when he compared some Brighton female nightclubbers to the streetwalkers of Capp Street. "It came out, 'What's with all the ladies in Brighton dressing like hookers,' " Kesler says, shaking his head.

"Instant alienation," Kisielius agrees.

"Thee More Shallows declare war on Brighton!" Kesler announces.

Judging from the volley of effusive reviews for their debut album, A History of Sport Fishing (Megalon) in U.K. rags ranging from the Sunday Times to Mojo ("A mature rendering of sensitive, guitar-based avant-rock, pitched somewhere between the Kingsbury Manx, Luna and Low, theirs is an understated but seductive debut"), Thee More Shallows won the skirmish with slow, stately, and meditative music more often associated with San Diego all-instrumental groups such as Tristeza and dreamy Scottish space-rock cases such as Mogwai. And the former Ann Arbor, Mich., residents' adopted Bay Area could fall next when the pair perform once more at the Hemlock Tavern before sinking from view once again to work on their next CD.

The process should be a vastly different experience from the making of A History of Sport Fishing, which was released in May. Working on a basic eight-track, Kesler and Kisielius recorded and then tweaked their debut over the course of four months in spring 2001 between midnight and 9 a.m. in a Turk Street rehearsal space when the hundreds of other bands that rented rooms weren't around.

Drummers Jason Gonzales and Brian Fraser of electronic duo Brian and Chris would have to drag themselves in before a Christian rock band came in at 10 a.m. "They would just be in awful condition, slumped over the drum set, trying to play at an hour that you know no musician should," Kesler says sympathetically.

The pair experimented with various instruments – banjo, accordion, and strings – thoughtfully weaving them amid layers of burbling tiny electronics, vibes-like keyboards, and buttoned-down, restrained guitars and occasionally punctuating the mix with Kesler's wistful vocals and found sounds of children playing.

"It was about spending time and time again listening to it and finding the right place for each part within the song," Kisielius explains. "That's stuff that you just don't have the time to do when you're paying somebody to record you."

"We're just obsessive-compulsive," Kesler says, before joking, "and we're both currently taking medication for it. And we go off it when we record."

The result, with the help of some borrowed equipment from producer Scott Solter, is a remarkably pretty, warm, and immaculate-sounding recording, done on a shoestring. This History isn't a dry chronology; instead it washes over the listener like a wave of melancholy, and that's just what the pair were shooting for, so they chuckle at the idea of their music inspiring open weeping.

"It just kind of like envelopes you," Kesler says. "I know that people have said our music puts you to sleep sometimes. And in some ways that's because we spend so much time trying to make whatever is introduced into the song be a totally organic part of it so that nothing is really jarring. It's more mood-based and something that comes up and surrounds you rather than comes up and knocks you on the head."

Both classically trained as violinists, the pair decided to put their heads together as Thee Shallows in December 2000, long after first meeting at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Kesler moved to San Francisco and started bands such as National Holiday, which included Erase Errata drummer Bianca Sparta. When Kisielius moved to the Bay Area, the old college friends formed Shackleton with a drummer (Allison Duke, now of vervein) and a bassist (Audra Kunkle) and began to perform around town, but a yearlong, excruciatingly slow and "bloated," as Kesler calls it, recording process led to the band's breakup.

Kesler and Kisielius began work on their Thee Shallows album and played the random show around town until they hit a legal snag: Mark Eitzel's band member Brian Gregory had his own Thee Shallows project, which had released a few songs on European compilations, and he wanted to keep the moniker. Hence the name change.

Now they are settled in the East Bay, with a new studio in West Oakland that they share with the Latino electronic unit Pepito, and they plan on working on new songs after the Hemlock show, including manipulating freeway noises and integrating a skittish beat or two with help from their studiomates. And they're enjoying their seclusion. Thee More Shallows may have conquered England, but stateside, they've only toured in the Northwest, which is just swell with them.

"We don't play bulletproof music, you know. It has long, quiet, introspective periods, where 'if you're not with the program,' " Kesler says in his finest dorky tone, "then it's very easy to talk over."

And of course, with Fraser on drums and Andy Lund of the decidedly more aggro Lower Forty Eight on bass, they are fully capable of defending themselves against the yammering hoards by the bar.

"When people talk we can blow them out of the water," Kesler vows. "We might sound wimpy, but I believe we can take San Francisco."

Thee More Shallows play with Vetiver, Fri/8, 10 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. $5. (415) 923-0923.