THE POST-ROCK KING OF CONWAY COUNTY

By Noah Morris

Dr. James Dow has been a Professor of Philosophy here at Hendrix for about a decade, and at this point he knows the feel of a throne well. He chairs our unique, interdisciplinary “Study of the Mind/ Neuroscience” major, which seeks to build general scientific intuition throughout biology, computer science, and psychology, to encourage rigorous analysis of what “The Mind” really is. He lives out in Morrilton, about a half hour from campus, on a sick farm with horses and garlic and chickens, great nearby woods, and, soon, (if all goes according to plan), a recording studio,supporting his latest venture, as an alternative rock musican.

In February of 2020, about two weeks before every concert in the world was cancelled, Dow and three other humanities professors from the general Central Arkansas area1 announced that they had formed a band, THISNESS, which plays wonderful Southern-Gothic inflected and philosophically engaged music that’s stark, brooding, and visceral, all undergirded by a firm psychedelia-tinged post-rock foundation. In particular, Dow named Pink Floyd, Slint, The Black Angels, REM, and The Cure as big influences. Slint, in particular, set a vivid precedent for the band, as the arguable originators of the particular genre Dow plays, called “Post-Rock.”

Covid probably marked the immediate dissolution of almost every band that had started up in the three or four months beforehand, but Dow and his bandmates treated this retreat as tactical, recording, rehearsing heavily (outdoors and six feet apart), cultivating a lot of material. The dynamics and emotional reality of life under Covid, Dow grants, were very influential to the lyrical content of the songs generated during this time period, some of which are still waiting to be released officially.

When I spoke with Dr. Dow for this article I asked him, “as an idealist, what does the ‘Post-’ in ‘Post-Rock’ mean to you?” He told me that the underlying motivation behind Post-Rock has always been to utilize the trappings of the traditional Rock band - bass, drums, guitar, andvocals - to create something different, cinematic, large-scale instrumental suites, like Swans, or the at this point inescapable Godspeed You! Black Emporer. In keeping with this, the first song (Negation) on the EP THISNESS dropped this year (Underneath, available on most streaming services), features a stark, hypnagogic, spoken word breakdown and booming crescendo that, on the whole, smacks of “Good Morning, Captain.”

Each of the four songs on the EP feature brilliant buildups and epic, feedback laden conclusions. Hung, the second song, builds anxious tension well, and showcases Dow’s commendable vocal range. Savasana is a bit of a reprieve, with shoegazey guitars, a vibey bassline, and ethereal vocals in the vein of the Cocteau Twins, another crucial influence to the band. In the best way possible, the first two-thirds of the final song on the EP, “Fake,” feel like a funeral dirge - slow and somber. In the final third, the piercing, feedback-laden electric guitar comes bustling in, and it feels as if the song, and EP, is collapsing from within. I implore my readership to pull up Underneath by THISNESS on YouTube or Spotify or wherever they find music, and experience their most intense emotions to it.

Anyway, Dow’s from Jersey. He’s lived in New York, but he found himself at Hendrix because he knew he could do interesting things with our Study of the Mind major. Another point in Arkansas’ favor was the capability he has here to grow lots of his own food, keep animals, and work the land at Wildland Gardens, which is run out of his house. The farm isn’t really Dow’s project though - the mastermind is Melissa Cowper-Smith, mixed-media visual artist, and partner of Dow. There they grow pretty much every kind of fruit and vegetable you can think of (check https://wildlandgardens.wordpress.com for specifics), and a lot of other stuff too. They hold a large sale every April, and will warmly welcome anyone interested in produce.

Dow didn’t have WiFi at the farm at the beginning of 2020. He noted that this was difficult, but managable during Covid, sort of nice for the adults in the household. However, this lacking opened his eyes to the inherent assumption that has manifested in modern public schools, exacerbated by the pandemic, that all students have access to WiFi, and that assignments often have that as a underlying requirement. They eventually had to get a booster, to accommodateone of their children’s schoolwork needs, but plenty of people didn’t and still don’t have the money, or infrastructure for it. This problem has two possible solutions: internet as a human right, or for schools to require that all assignments be doable without WiFi. There are good arguments for both of these.

Dow often holds class outside, on sunny, temperate days. He’s noted that attentiveness levels don’t really change much, but the energy is much more relaxed. During Covid, he was advocating for old-school outdoor auditoriums, to be used as occasional class-holding spaces. If anyone knows of a donor, let him know.

Over the past few years, Dow has also been taking Music classes at Hendrix in his spare time, having at this point completed MUSI 100, 180, 202, spent time in Choir and Wind Ensemble, and completed an independent study on Radiohead, most well known, perhaps, for “Creep.” On Radiohead, he noted that the band has not been very influential to what THISNESS has composed thus far, but that their music fascinates him on an academic level, due to their unique tambre, sound texture, and obviously iconoclastic nature, all of which Dow suggested were typified well in “Like Spinning Plates” off Amnesiac.

THISNESS’ next gig is May 6, at Full Moon Records. This place is walking distance from Hendrix, and Dow’s got a great track record for cheap ticket prices, so I had better see each and every one of y’all diffident college kids there. They’ll probably play a couple other shows in Little Rock this summer. They still practice at the farm usually, on Saturdays, and they’ve done most of their recording at Dr. Daniel Edquist-Whelan (Political Science)’s home studio. They plan for their first full length to come out next year. Tenuous, but he’s trying to hold a festival at his farm in the future. His neighbors have said yes. What is certain is that THISNESS, and their twangy yet ideological post-rock, shows no signs of stopping. Dr. Dow’s finna feed you! Get hungry.

1 Of the initial four (the band is on their third drummer at this point) three taught philosophy and one taught creative writing.