Indie rock’s greatest enigma

It’s no small feat, but Mission of Burma has managed to join the ranks of Black Flag, Husker Du and Sonic Youth as one of the most influential American rock artists of the past 30 years.

Between 1979 and 1983, the Boston-based band released one album, one EP and two singles. It disbanded in 1983 when guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Roger Miller developed tinnitus from the band’s notoriously loud live shows. Miller famously wore rifle-range earphones during the band’s farewell tour.

Despite their rather brief creative peak, the band’s impact has been colossal.

Many music historians point to Burma’s first EP, Signals, Marches and Calls, as the point where indie rock diverged from punk to become its own subgenre, due in large part to the band’s unconventional artistic approach.

They used tape loops liberally and experimented with open guitar strings and feedback–ideas that, while not entirely original, were novel in the context of punk. Their unorthodox use of noise and feedback had a profound influence on Sonic Youth, and later bands, including Big Black and the Butthole Surfers.

Miller dismisses the idea that Mission of Burma created “indie rock” as nonsense, but says that, “if Signals, Calls and Marches really is the pivot point, if everyone believes that, well, that just means I should work harder now, and put out better songs, keep writing, if people are going to say that, well, goddamn, let’s keep rocking.”

And Mission of Burma has definitely kept rocking.

Their 2002 reunion was originally planned as a pair of shows–one in New York, one in Boston–but quickly became four shows in Boston, and one in New York. An invitation to play the All Tomorrow’s Party festival in England led to another gig in San Francisco.

The band agreed to write at least one new song for each show they played–an agreement which eventually yielded enough songs for an album of new material–their first in over 20 years. In 2004, Mission of Burma signed to Matador Records and released OnOffOn, the group’s second full-length album, to widespread critical acclaim.

“When we started playing again in 2002, people said it was as if we stopped in March of 1983, and they say that it was as if it was April of 1983, it’s as if there was no difference,” Miller says.

However, he concedes that there are some differences.

“We’re older, and we play about two percent slower than we used to,” he says. “It makes our music clearer. I listened to some of our live shows from ’82, and we’re playing these very complex songs so fast that their complexity just becomes this chaotic blur.”

Another change Miller noticed was the audience, “When we first started playing again in ’02, ’03, a lot of the audience was people in their 40s and 50s, but that’s changed. Those people quit coming to the shows, and our crowds went down for a little while, but all of a sudden now we have people in their 20s and 30s coming to our shows.”

Miller notes that his band’s trajectory has been very unusual, “Every so often,” he says, “we just stop and go, ‘How can this be happening?’ We’ve reformed, we’re all considerably older than we were in 1983, and we just keep playing, and people seem to like it more! We are definitely an anomaly in the world of rock, and proud to be an anomaly.”

However, one thing that remains as it was in 1983 is the band’s volume.

“I quit playing rock music in 1983,” says Miller, “because I wanted to be able to hear when I was 50. I am now at least one year older than 50, and I can hear quite well, so… now it’s time to rock again.”

The band’s drummer now sits behind a Plexiglass shield, and Miller uses improved earplugs, but the shows “are still loud as hell.”

A third Mission of Burma album, The Obliterati, was released in 2006. It too was critically lauded.

In March, Matador Records reissued Vs. (the band’s first album), and the seminal Signals, Marches and Calls. Mission of Burma is currently touring in support of these reissues, and playing Signals, Marches and Calls in its entirety to an increasingly varied audience.

Thirty years ago it would have been easy to say that Mission of Burma were finished, but as the band enters Portland this weekend, it’s hard to deny that they’ve pulled off one of the greatest indie-rock hat tricks of the past three decades. With a well-earned second coming, Mission of Burma is proving that its worth was present from the beginning.