The Load (5/19/10)
Look -- it’s the Load! Your weekly buffet of independent rock reviews! Dig in:
Devon Kay & The Solutions -- Songs To Sing With
Songs To Sing With, the debut EP from Chicago’s own Devon Kay & The Solutions, is a party record you listen to alone. It begins with an ebullient gang-cry of “Hey!” and ends with Kay blurting “Ah fuck! We might have to do it again.” The six songs collected here don’t re-invent the proverbial wheel but rather glamorize it -- the band latches on to stock melodies and explodes them with ramshackle joy. My favorite is probably “All Or Nothing,” which makes the most of a rubbery, nimble bass line and dueling male/female vocals. As a singer, Kay’s rough around the edges, but he makes up for it with unabashed enthusiasm and a wide-eyed romantic bent. The Solutions match him ably at every turn, whether it’s the balls-out rocking of “Backyard Revolution” or the gooey, drunken I-love-you-all sentiment of “The Birthday Song.” This isn’t a perfect record, or even necessarily a great one, but it is a lot of fun, and highly recommended for anybody who likes driving around and singing at the top of their lungs -- which makes the title pretty apt. I like singing with these songs.
The Maybenauts -- Big Bang
The Maybenauts, one of Chicago’s straight-up coolest (and friendliest) bands, can crank out poppy glam stompers all day long -- lead-off tracks “Girlfight” and “My Head Is A Bomb” combine the dashing guitar work of Vee Sonnets* (also, hilariously, known as Space Panda) with tight rhythms and Leilani Frey’s dynamic vocals to create a kind of unholy Bowie/Benatar hybrid that rocks you hard without skimping on melody or (especially) harmony. But when the group slows it down, as on “You Are Here,” their full potential becomes readily apparent: anybody who misses the kind of grrlcentric alt-pop that used to soundtrack ’90s slacker comedies should latch on to this stuff immediately and never let go. As good as all of the tracks are, one stands head and shoulders above the rest: “Blue Line,” a paean to riding around on the CTA and “counting the houses ’til you get home,” is damn near hypnotic in its melancholic swirl. Your initial impulse might be to view the Maybenauts as some kind of gimmick -- three ladies and a panda, making a stylish racket. But the songwriting chops are there, and all this band needs is a little more time to perfect their sound before they make the kind of record that puts everybody at full attention. Big Bang, though, is a pretty satisfying appetizer, and one of the cooler things I’ve heard this year. (Chicago residents, take note: The Maybenauts are playing Darkroom on Friday for their official record release party. Don’t miss it.)
Noumenon -- Party Mathematics
Noumenon call their brand of sweet, spastic noise “party-math,” and that’s about as good a description as I can think of. Like a tougher, harder Japandroids, these Chicago guys cram as much music as possible into three-minute chunks, shooting electric lightning in every direction and bombarding your ears with furious drum fills. They’re crazy, and great. There’s not much going on lyrically (some shouting on the first track, a few “ba-ba-bas” later on), but that’s hardly important - when you’re throwing a party, intelligent conversation rarely enters into the equation. And that’s part of what makes Noumenon so fantastic, but -- more importantly -- buried under all the fuzz lay some extremely captivating melodies. The band builds up its most impressive head of steam on the EP’s centerpiece “amBROsius,” raising the stakes with every caustic lick. This is some serious freight-train music, almost overbearing in its raw power and taking no prisoners as it barrels down the tracks before finally derailing and creating the kind of sonic explosion that Thurston Moore dreams about at night. Party Mathematics is available absolutely free on their Bandcamp page, so you’d be a fool not to pick it up right this very instant, but don’t hesitate to throw a couple dollars their way -- the band’s dedication to ear-pleasing chaos should be rewarded. 
The Invisible Rays -- Salute The American Popular Song
For anybody that likes their prog delightfully weird and fun, the Invisible Rays have something for you: Salute The American Popular Song, a record that challenges the very notion of what prog can be. Drawing on an extremely deep well of influences (the band cites everyone from Pink Floyd to Dr. Dre on their website), the I-Rays create a lush and tuneful pastiche that mixes familiar styles and found-sound vocal samples to create the kind of noise that nobody else is making right now. It’s music for grown-ups, in a sense, because it requires concentration and commitment to fully appreciate, but it’s also bravely innocent -- kook-rock for people that realize everyone is a little bit kooky and, hey, why don’t we throw a party? There’s a cool science fiction bent (derived both from the band’s use of B-movie dialog and their experiments with all manner of synthesizers and strange instruments) that makes STAPS feel like a handmade, new-millennium Saucerful Of Secrets. Or: it’s kind of like the new MGMT record, if MGMT knew what they were doing. This is is precise, intricate stuff that feels spontaneous. The band refers to it as their masterpiece, and they aren’t joking; they also aren’t wrong. Salute The American Popular Song is a vibrant thrillride, with controls set for the heart of…fun. (Fun fact: you can stream the whole disc, for free, on the band’s website. Do it now.)
Anna Vogelzang -- Paper Boats
We interviewed Anna Vogelzang back in January, and the way she was talking about Paper Boats got us pretty excited. There’s no letdown upon actually hearing the record -- it’s got everything you’ve come to expect from Vogelzang, refined to near-perfection. There’s not too much muscle on the disc; everything is pretty simple and spare, with banjo dominating the proceedings and other instruments providing color and shading when necessary. Vogelzang’s voice is the key attraction -- strong, high, and sweet, it’s the most compelling instrument at her disposal. My favorite track is the first -- “Tiny Monsters” sounds like it was recorded with toys and its “You better run! You better run!” hook is a welcome shot of aggression on an album that mostly plays it slow and quiet. In fact, I would’ve liked a little more of that rambunctious spirit, but the relatively genteel tone makes this the perfect record for daydreaming on the bus or falling asleep in your bed -- it’s like chamomile tea, now with banjo! Other winners: “Marry Me,” which has a warm, homespun hoedown feel (along with lines like “Marry me / I’ll be your honeybee”), and epic closer “Guilt.” (It says a lot when a song can be comparatively “epic” by adding some handclaps and a cello, but not in a bad way.) Paper Boats is a distillation of all the things that we enjoy about Anna Vogelzang, in one convenient package.
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*As originally published, this article misidentified the Maybenauts’ guitarist as Lee Vonnets. I am ashamed of this error and plead forgiveness from Vee Sonnets, the actual lead guitarist of the Maybenauts. He shreds hard.
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yo man thanx for the review! Glad you liked the Maybenauts’ ‘Big Bang EP’. It really was a labour of love!
One thing though, my name is Vee Sonnets, not Lee Vonnets.
Vee – I am so sorry about getting your name wrong! I was in lazy mode this morning while editing and I didn’t check the names like I usually do. Please, please forgive me!
no worries! It was fun being Lee for about 20 minutes! hahahaha
Cheers!
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