Voice Behind Tomahawk has Earned His Chops

by MATT PEIKEN
St. Paul Pioneer Press, September 3, 2002©

Mike Patton isn't a singer's singer, but it's hard to find a young rock frontman he hasn't influenced.

Patton is a vocalist in the most literal sense, bent on exploring the subtleties and extremes of his voice. He colors his music with guttural grunts and groans, high-pitched screeches and squeals, rapid-fire whispers, warbles and wails and, when it suits him, decipherable words.

Since the disbanding of his highest-profile band, Faith No More, Patton has become a self-made vagabond, never letting the paint dry on one obscure project before jumping to the next. You'd never know it from the scant airplay or sales, but the self-titled debut of his latest group, Tomahawk, was one of the richest and most compelling discs of 2001.

It's a rock record dipped in film-noir flavor, Old West kitsch, hardcore ballast, mirror-ball balladry and, when you can discern them, lyrics that tilt to the dark side.

"I don't have deep-seated issues I need to resolve through music, at least not that I'm going to tell you," Patton says. "My lyrics are more like an afterthought. I'm a little more concerned with what the vocals are doing rather than what they're saying."

Tomahawk's music is dense and layered, but compared to past Patton projects -- the schizophrenic, unnerving Mr. Bungle and the bizarre Fantomas -- it's an easy-to-swallow pill.

Among the many Patton fans are the members of Tool, who invited Fantomas on the road for two weeks last year and are taking Tomahawk out as an opening band for their current American tour.

Tomahawk's debut drips with overtones of pop, R&B, techno, trance and drum-and-bass and choruses that are surprisingly catchy. On one dreamy song, Patton sounds like Billy Idol singing "White Wedding." On another, he could double as Corey Taylor of Slipknot.

His voice often comes across as you imagine Jack Kerouac's would if he were reading "On the Road" aloud to music. There's also Patton's patented humor. In one song, he shrieks and repeats, "This beat could win me a Grammy" over an odd-time, thrashed-up rhythm that, of course, stands no chance of a Grammy.

Patton's ideas start with sounds, what he calls "musical baby talk -- phonetic sounds I want my voice to make."

He places tape recorders around his San Francisco house so he can capture unscheduled inspiration. For the few times without a tape recorder nearby, he'll call his voicemail and leave nonsensical sounds as messages. His songs begin taking shape when Patton combs through and scavenges sounds from the recordings.

Tomahawk had a different birth. Patton asked Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Dennison to make a record for his label, Ipecac Records. Dennison asked Patton to sing on it, and Patton agreed, so long as the songs came from Dennison.

"I didn't care what it was -- jazz standards, spoken word -- but he had all these rock tunes sitting around," Patton says. "I told him to get me the songs, and I would add my thing to them."

A big film-noir buff, Patton soaked up Dennison's tunes at a time when he was watching moody fringe films from the '40s and '50s such as "Blue Gardenia," "Strange Illusion" and "Sweet Smell of Success." Patton heard "pretty nasty, pretty violent" overtones in Dennison's tunes and developed mental pictures of images and sound as he wrote his lyrics.

Rounding out Tomahawk are John Stanier, drummer of the defunct Helmet, and Melvins bassist Kevin Rutmanis, better known to Twin Citians as bassist of punk band the Cows.

Patton isn't a particular fan of arenas, but he accepted the offer to open for Tool in part because of the surprising reception fans gave Fantomas.

"There was booing, and we got hit with things, but it was nowhere near where I thought it would be," he says. "An arena is a very strange avenue of expression. It's hard to communicate or throw a problem out there and have people solve it. It's taken me awhile to realize, but that's what we do -- we're not here to patronize but to make people think. I don't know what the kids are there for, but they don't want more questions or more problems, and unfortunately, that's all we can offer."