Mammoth Life makes country pop in kaleidoscope colors

Nicholas Goss doesn’t care if people think his band — six 20-something musicians making orchestral pop and wearing ruffled psychedelic clothing — is weird. Mammoth Life just wants to stun Kansas City’s senses with aural and visual art. The theatrics are just part of his philosophy.

“We passionately, ambitiously try to manifest this wild vision of being in a pop group,” Goss says.

Every sentence he utters, in fact, is an assertive, unapologetically grandiose statement. Serious and longhaired, he suggests a bespectacled, hipster Jesus — if Jesus played guitar in a ’60s psychedelic pop band.

With its 2007 debut, Kaleidoscopic Art Pop, Mammoth Life distinguished itself with harpsichord-heavy chamber pop and classic pop lilt. Mammoth Life’s forthcoming sophomore LP, An American Movement, builds on the group’s signature sound by borrowing musical elements of ’50s country and ’60s spaghetti-western soundtracks.

According to Goss, the stylistic shift is meant to be subtle. Harpsichord and synthesizers give way to piano and organs; lead electric guitar is swapped in favor of rhythmic acoustic strumming; and the violin — as classical instrument and as fiddle — sometimes becomes the lead instrument.

Goss explains: “If I were to say [the Beach Boys’] ‘Good Vibrations’ was the moment when I fell in love with pop and thought this is what pop music is to me, then spaghetti western was hearing Ennio Morricone and saying that’s what spaghetti-western music is to me — then it was a matter of bringing those colors in to what Mammoth Life has already been doing: pop music.”

So Mammoth Life isn’t exactly going country. Instead, Goss and his bandmates say they’re using the genre to propel their music into a new artistic sphere. “An American Movement is not about using the blueprint of older country-and-western luminaries but just using little bits of textures in our aural palette to paint with,” Goss says.

Genre hopping has been Goss’ master plan since the group’s inception in 2005. The title of that first album offers a three-word summary of Goss’ overarching manifesto for the project. “Throughout Mammoth Life’s career, we’re going to be bringing new aural colors into pop music,” he says.

An American Movement features more collaboration than the first record, but Goss is still pulling most of the strings in the band’s songwriting and aesthetic. “As the content is concerned, I am in control of the production and the arrangement because I want a cohesive record,” he says. “Some people may not think very highly of a formula, but that’s what’s going on. We’re funneling down the universe to this single formula that we can do well.” This time, he says, “that’s pop country.”

Control aside, Goss admits that he alone is not Mammoth Life. “We all take full advantage of our strengths and weaknesses, and that’s what we want to portray with this artistic project,” he says. The project’s concept extends to the band’s modern-renaissance stage attire (designed by Goss’ brother, Neil) as well as its upcoming single-release show, in March, at the Lawrence record store Love Garden. Though Goss is keeping the details of the performance under wraps, he drops a couple of hints regarding its inspiration.

“I had a dream about Speedy West, the pedal-steel player. He was in a library playing, and everybody in the band was wearing cowboy hats — big foam ones — and dancing around. A really tacky way of saying it would be ‘spaghetti western on acid,’ so to speak,” Goss says. “As soon as I had that dream, the project became tangible. I had an idea: This will be our first stage production.”

Though An American Movement isn’t finished yet, Goss already has a plan for Mammoth Life’s third album. “The next record is called Mammoth Lives and Times, and the new aural color is going to be folk,” he says. “When I say folk, I mean a vocal style that is telling stories. I still want it to be in an American context. I consider myself an American artist in an American band, and that next American color is folk.”

Despite Goss’ visions of grandeur, Mammoth Life’s mission is simple. “We want to keep writing the equation down, erasing it and writing it further,” he says. “We’re always trying to work down to the perfect three-and-a-half-minute pop song.”

Achieving perfection is a tough calling. But achieving spaghetti western on acid? Now that’s something to aspire to.