Character: Promises Promises
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Amplifier,
January-February 2005
When Eric Williams refers
to Character’s music as cinematic, he’s not just speaking out of his
bottom end.
The bass player remembers being a fan of the film scores of Hollywood
legends Bernard
Herrmann and Elmer Bernstein as a kid and describes the band’s first
full-length album, We
Also Create False
Promises (Fictitious), by saying, “I think the best way to
describe it is,
it’s music that’s waiting for an image, basically,” before divulging
his hope
that the band would one day make the jump to the silver screen, or at
least to the
Dolby speakers on both sides of it.
Williams knows
whereof he speaks, having come to
For now, the focus
is on Character. The band’s first record, 2002’s A
Flashing Of Knives And Green Water EP (Set International), got a
fair bit of radio play in town and secured them a handful of gigs
around the
South, most notably at the Mid-Atlantic College Radio Conference
(MACRoCK), a
South By Southwest-like festival held annually at
Still, those cinematic inclinations don’t go away
quite so
easily. While waiting for those opportunities, Williams participates in
the
dramatic arts in his own way, mentioning the project he just finished
and that
he’d like to take on the road as Character’s opening act. “It’s hand
puppets,”
says Williams. “We do an original story once a year on Halloween. This
year it
was ‘Eddie Van Helsing.’ It’s about, Eddie Van Helsing goes and kills
all the
former lead singers of Van Halen. Because they’re monsters, basically.”