Photo by Laura Gray

There are awesome bands in Chicago. The problem is that nobody listens to them. And it doesn’t matter how many times I say the words “Welcome To Ashley,” “Jonny Rumble,” and “Maybenauts” – crummy pop-punk bands will always draw a larger audience. I’ve come to terms with that sad reality. What I absolutely cannot come to terms with is you passing on the new California Wives EP – it’s called Affair, and it will make you fall in love with pop music all over again. From the first chords of “Blood Red Youth,” which conjure weird images of Rush discovering a MacBook in the pre-civilization desert, to the frenzied “wearing your fancy shoes tonight” climax of “Twenty Three,” California Wives deliver the goods.

These guys are one of those bands that seem to spring fully-formed from the ether, even though the secret is always practice, practice, practice. California Wives have practiced; they are tight the way professional bands are tight. They own their shit. I saw them open for Jonny Rumble at Beat Kitchen a couple months ago and they were scarily focused and taut; I overheard their set at a street fest a few weeks after that, while I sweated it out in the Assault tent drinking beers with @eddieftw, and I realized that this was something truly special – what Affair does is similar to what M83′s Saturdays = Youth did in 2007. When I listen to Affair, I feel like I am in the greatest John Hughes movie that was never made; I feel like I’m walking not just on the clouds, but amidst the clouds; all my emotions are pink and fluffy, like cotton candy. This band is better than Prozac.

But, seriously: what sets this EP apart from the thousands of others that get released by unsigned bands every year? First, there’s the production – the songs are arranged artfully, with exactly the appropriate amount of bells and whistles. You could break these tracks down to their essentials, play them on an acoustic guitar, and they’d still be fantastic. But dressed up in the fanciest clothes that the band could find, these compositions reach for a different level. Do they grasp it? Yes, of course they grasp it. California Wives are major! Second: this is sensitive, emotional music that still finds the time and wherewithal to rock out – when the guitars start chuggin,’ you know they’re gonna build to a massive, awe-inspiring melodic drone, one that perfectly complements the sophistication and craft on display. California Wives are nice, but not too nice – they do fuck shit up when it’s necessary.

Do you need any more reasons this is great? Okay, here’s one more: they are nice, normal-looking dudes that take obvious joy in creating music. They were not formed by accident at Hair Cuttery. I’ve taken to calling California Wives “the Walkmen of Chicago”; that might not be fair or accurate, but that’s the vibe I’m picking up, whatever they happen to be putting down. Affair makes me want to go back to college and major in poetry. This band is eerily precise and absolutely breathtaking in their ability to create polite, pretty soundscapes that dudes like me want to live in. In a world where everything seems crazy, California Wives make sense; they also make great music, and Affair is incontrovertible proof of that fact. I always say I want more when a band drops a decent EP, but this time it’s serious – my skin itches.

California Wives:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Last.fm

It’s hard to find solid rock ‘n’ roll these days. Everybody’s got a gimmick, everybody’s dressed in some weird clothes, everybody’s trying to be funny. It makes me feel like Bob Lefsetz some days. But, damn it, Welcome To Ashley play solid rock ‘n’ roll. No bullshit, no filler – just straight-up powersauce injected directly into your brain’s rawk-core. Originally from Nashville, the band calls Chicago home now, and the windy city is all over this record. Frontman Coley Kennedy sounds resolutely conflicted about his adopted hometown, spinning the everyday sights and sounds into snarled poetry – Beyond The Pale is a great record for anybody who’s ever walked around the city late at night feeling happily creeped out. It almost seems like it was designed specifically for that purpose, actually.

But it’s also the kind of disc that sends you hurtling down the highway at increasingly unsafe speeds. Listen to it once and you’ll be hooked – not just replaying it endlessly, but humming the melodies as you go about your daily, non-music-related tasks. The sound is warm and inviting; right from the start, huge guitars surround you, chiming and swirling like REM infused with alt-punk’s irreverent speed. Key to the record’s charm is its crisp immediacy – it doesn’t sound like it was recorded with a computer. And these analog sonic confines are a perfect match for Coley’s voice – his rich baritone betrays hints of Joey Ramone and Rhett Miller, but he’s got plenty of singular swagger. Nowhere is this in greater evidence than on the album’s final two tracks – “Thursday Afternoon” is a Petty-ish rocker that finds an emotional goldmine in the way Kennedy repeats the phrase “I fell in love with you” over and over on the song’s climax, and “End Of The Line” closes the record on a spare, lonesome note, delivered with so much honest feeling that it actually hurts. It’s probably the best song I’ve heard all year, in terms of raw craftsmanship; fucking Daughtry could sing it and I’d probably jam along. It’s just that awesome.

I’ve known Welcome To Ashley were good for a little while – I listened to their Absent Man EP last year and found a lot to like. And they made a convert out of noted nu-metal enthusiast Third World Timmy when he caught them at the Empty Bottle. But Beyond The Pale confirms the band’s actual greatness. Tracks like “The Catbird Seat” and “I Love Monday Mornings” sound equally fresh and timeless, like new standards in the great rock songbook. Using the simplest possible ingredients – brisk electric guitar, big melodies, Sherrlia Bailey’s precise old-school drumming – Welcome To Ashley have created something completely unique and absorbing. Beyond The Pale is the best straight-up rock record I’ve heard this year.

(Welcome to Ashley are playing a KEXP/Equalizer sponsored show at darkroom this Friday. The show starts at 9pm, and Ladies & Gentlemen are opening. The Assault Party Death Squad will be representing in full force at this event, so please come out and say hello. And pick up a copy of Beyond The Pale. It’s completely worth it.)

Welcome To Ashley:

• MySpace
• ReverbNation
• Bandcamp

You can learn pretty much all you need to know about Makeshift Prodigy from one particular line from their MySpace profile: they credit member Brandon Fox with “vocals and ambience.” This is a band that thinks about “creativity” in very specific terms, with a space-age vibe that places premium value on atmosphere and mood. And, for a band with such obvious and lofty goals, they pretty much nail what they’re trying to do, with a few caveats that prevent total transcendence. Their new album Mathematica expands the group’s palette a bit but essentially offers a revised, improved version of their debut (Welcome To The World), which is not  a bad thing -- the overall effect is pleasant and distracting, like Snow Patrol with some darker undertones and the drama dialed down to “manageable.”

The lead vocals, from Anthony Bagnara, are generally strong, although he goes over the top once in a while with the manically chanted monosyllabic ululations. More often, though, the intensity of the vocals drives the music and pushes it into ever-higher gears, and on one song (“Sentimentalist”) he totally sounds like Rod Stewart for a two-minute span that ranks as the record’s absolute best. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s an ersatz and totally unnecessary rap tagged onto “Clockwork” that doesn’t add ambience so much as annoyance. It’s awesome to branch out and try new stuff, but sometimes expression desires limitation. Just sayin.’

For the most part these guys hold it together. People who like pianos will definitely enjoy that instrument’s prominence in many of the arrangements (courtesy of Bagnara and lead guitarist Jake Foy), and Foy has mastered a particular style of twinkly, shimmering guitar that’s totally impressive while also making me wish he’d kick shit into overdrive more and straight-out pummel my head with the real big riffage. But I always think this stuff works better with more aggression and less atmosphere, so you can definitely take my opinion with a grain of salt -- I can totally see this being the favorite new CD of anybody who really gets off on the faux-pomp grandeur of 30 Seconds To Mars. This is music that required talent and imagination to create, so I don’t fault it when it veers from what I’m personally wanting from my daily dose of firepower.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnFOv0SJNao

Makeshift Prodigy:

• MySpace
• Official Site
• Facebook
• Assault.it’s interview with Makeshift Prodigy
• Last.fm

From 1998 to 2004, Alkaline Trio was the best pop-punk band in the world. This is a fact. They did only one thing – springy, melodic songs with rubbery bass-lines, lots of chunky palm-muted riffs, and dark, soul-searching lyrics – but they did it awesomely. And then they started to do other things (play around with keyboards and synthesizers, let the drummer write songs, get married and become happy with their personal lives) and, suddenly, everything changed. They were still a good band, but Crimson (2005) and Agony & Irony (2008) are nobody’s favorite Alkaline Trio albums. They’re melodic and musically accomplished in ways that displayed “growth” and “maturity,” but they also felt somewhat forced lyrically, with singer/guitarist Matt Skiba relying increasingly on cliched and clumsy metaphors as his songwriting got less personal. The dudes (bassist/singer Dan Andriano and drummer Derek Grant, plus Skiba) scattered across the country and started doing aging rocker stuff like “surfing” and “having kids.” But about a year ago, everything started to change again: the guys started hanging out in Chicago more, they talked about “returning to their roots,” Skiba got divorced. All of this could mean only thing: COMEBACK! So, the first question: Is This Addiction a return to their glory days? Does it accomplish very much with, musically, very little? Is it superficially evil for fun with genuinely heavy emotional content for serious? Can it explode a unicorn’s boner in a great blast of pink stars and fairy dust?

Short answer: No, yes, sort of, and maybe.

Long answer: This Addiction doesn’t sound like Goddamnit, Alkaline Trio’s much-ballyhooed, now classic first full-length. And that’s going to disappoint some people, because some people are always disappointed that the band evolved from being a bunch of drunk-ass nineteen year-olds. And some people, like me, will never be entirely happy without Glenn Porter in the line-up; Derek Grant has always struck me as a weird fit for the Trio, and a lot of folks, myself included, hold him almost entirely responsible for trying to push the band in artistic directions they weren’t quite skilled enough to master. The Trio that most of us first fell in love with is never coming back, but that’s been true for years – we should all be used to it by now. Matt Skiba is never going to describe our emotions with profane, pin-point accuracy the way he did on “Radio,” and Dan Andriano will never be sad again, apparently. But This Addiction is a sharp, punchy addition to the band’s catalog. They don’t try anything they haven’t already mastered, but it’s an absolute joy to hear them doing these things that they are very, very good at.

The album kicks off with three fast, hard-charging tracks that all sound like they should have been b-sides. I say this is as a compliment; over the last couple years, all the best Trio songs have been ones that didn’t actually make it on to their records. “This Addiction” begins the record on an extremely high note – racing tempos, a bright melody, uncomplicated lyrics that equate love with, um, addiction in a way that’s not necessarily novel but still brutally effective. And then Dan Andriano gives the best vocal performance of the entire disc on “Dine, Dine My Darling,” daring to make a Misfits joke on a song that celebrates (once again) domestic bliss. “Lead Poisoning” features Skiba’s trademark “dun…dun-nun-nuh” riffing, but it sounds good, like hanging out with an old friend. Plus, a simple, cool saxophone solo sets the track apart from the roughly twenty-five others almost exactly like it in the band’s catalog. Things take a bad turn after that, though – “Dead On The Floor” cannibalizes both “Trouble Breathing” and “San Francisco” (from Goddamnit) and stops the album’s momentum in a tired and unforgivable fashion.

It gets somewhat hit-or-miss after that. “The American Scream,” the token political track, isn’t bad, but its central metaphor is a little corny. “Draculina,” “Eating Me Alive,” and “Piss & Vinegar” are a little too mid-tempo and interchangeable to run in a row, and they bog down the middle of the record. But This Addiction finishes stronger than any Trio record in recent memory: “Dorothy” blasts out of the speakers in an explosion of double-time drumming and eerie David Lynch references, by far the most exciting song Skiba’s written in six years. And “Fine,” Andriano’s gentle closer, is a tearjerker that builds to epic status without over-reaching. Maybe the songs in the middle only feel like filler because they’re book-ended by such powerful material; in any event, I ain’t complaining. This is definitely the best Trio record since Good Mourning, and it might end up ranking along with Maybe I’ll Catch Fire and From Here To Infirmary when all is said and done.

Let’s face it – these guys are getting older, and they can’t do this forever. But This Addiction is an excellent, full-bodied reminder of why we started loving them in the first place, and if they never made another record, their legacy would be secure. This is the way you grow up – not with intricate piano parts or relentless overdubs, but by knowing who you are and what you do, and then doing it the best you know how. I’m glad Alkaline Trio are doing their one thing again, and doing it perfectly.  

Alkaline Trio:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter

It’s not too often I hang on to the flyers that get handed to me when I walk out of a show here in Chicago. I’ve even written about a better way to stand out from the rest of the unsigned bands. (One thing was to not hand out flyers.) It just so happens that in this particular instance, my hands were full, and so I stuffed all the flyers in my pocket before heading down the street to the Black Rock after a solid showing at The Metro by The Fold and Lucky Boys Confusion.

When I got home, I found a flyer in my pocket from The Delivery Boys, and to say they had the odds stacked against them from the get-go was an understatement. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised at the production quality and overall sound of The Delivery Boys’ EP after my initial listen on their MySpace page. When you’re listening to 20+ albums a week it’s easy to forget the names of all the songs and especially the bands, but every once in awhile you find yourself humming the words, or remembering parts of the hook in your head while you’re in the car, when you first wake up, or maybe even in the shower. (If you’re Oswald Hobbes that’s where you do your best performing too.)

This is exactly what happened to me this past weekend, and after some considerable searching I realized that the song was, “Special Delivery,” by the guys of TDB. I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of any upcoming shows in the Chicago area for the band either. It’s not the only song that’s catchy coming from TDB, they also recorded a holiday song, “You’re All I Want For Christmas,” which is just as delicious. According to their latest MySpace info they’ll have some more music out soon, and I’m personally hoping to get a chance to see the guys live out here in the big city sometime soon. Let that be a notice to you local Chicago rock venues. (I’m looking at you Reggies, Metro, Lincoln Hall, and Shuba’s.)

The Delivery Boys

• Paul Holloway – vocals/guitar
• Eric Olsen – bass/vocals
• Ryan Bennett – guitar/vocals
• Matt Dailly – drums

More from TDB

• The Delivery Boys on PureVolume
• The Delivery Boys on MySpace
• The Delivery Boys on ReverbNation

Pop-punk is one of the easiest genres to get wrong; the ingredients are simple enough that anyone can give it a shot, and fan expectations are famously low. That’s what makes the new Swellers record, Ups And Downsizing, so refreshing: these guys absolutely nail it. The songs are catchy, the riffs are chunky, and there’s enough wit present in the lyrics to satisfy the discriminating pop-punk fan. After undergoing numerous lineup changes and the usual amount of toil and trouble, The Swellers seem to be on the cusp of breaking out and getting the recognition they deserve.

The Swellers – Fire Away Video

Ups and Downsizing in Flint, Michigan

The Swellers prove they have the essential down pat right away; opener “2009″ finds singer/guitarist Nick Diener wallowing in the kind of new year’s misery that’s fueled great tracks in the past from Alkaline Trio and Motion City Soundtrack, although the tone here never slips into negativity or ugliness. And, though the riffs may be familiar enough, they keep circling around in interesting ways, dropping out and then coming back harder. This is the formula for most of Ups And Downsizing, and when it works, The Swellers make a case for themselves as a more masculine Paramore; this is friendly mall punk you can blast in your car without feeling like a teenage girl.

The Swellers consistently go deeper than the average pop-punk concerns; the title track features smart lyrics about the recession (the band is from Flint, Michigan, so they know a thing or two about economic downturn) and closer “Dirt” is an enjoyably vinegary missive aimed at anyone attending Dienen’s funeral. “Feet First” and “Stars” switch up the tempo; the former is a pretty standard ballad entry, but the latter runs six minutes and features a Slash-worthy guitar solo as it reaches its super-cathartic climax.

Ups And Downsizing is a big step forward for the Swellers; their previous full-length, My Everest, traffics in much of the same thematic and musical territory, but the delivery is more pungent and forceful this time around. The rest of the band is almost impossibly tight . Think Fall Out Boy’s Take This To Your Grave: Standard elements recombined in an interesting way, with some studio sheen to help the medicine go down but enough rawness to keep the energy popping. And the flawless rhythmic interplay on these songs showcases a precision that probably is only possible when it’s your brother on drums (Jonathan Diener handles the skins).

If you’re a fan of the typical pop-punk sound, Ups And Downsizing is worth more than just a listen. It’s worth memorizing as a textbook example of exactly how this stuff sounds when it’s done right. I’d place it in the mighty pantheon right alongside Alkaline Trio’s Goddamnit and Green Day’s Kerplunk, and that’s about as high of praise as you’re likely to hear around these parts. And, just like those records, telling your friends about Ups And Downsizing amounts to sharing a wonderful gift. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in twenty years, up-and-coming punk bands instructed their producers to “make it sound like the Swellers.” That’s how fine their command of pop-punk principles truly is.

The Swellers are opening for Less Than Jake at Metro on Tuesday, November 24; if you’re in the Chicago area, I highly advise you check these guys out. (Both myself and “Third World” Timmy will be at the show.) This is real, no-bullshit rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s a rare commodity these days. Buy tickets now!

More from the Swellers

• The Swellers Myspace
• The Swellers Twitter
• Nick Diener’s Twitter
• The Swellers on iTunes

By the time their last album dropped in 2006, most of Brand New’s early-aught emo peers had already flamed out on major labels and retreated to the warm embrace and low standards of Vagrant Records. The band makes it clear with their new record, Daisy, that they’re just now getting started. Following the heavy, multi-layered gloom of The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, Brand New have rejiggered their formula yet again.

Album opener “Vices” begins with a snippet of gentle piano-driven gospel music before exploding into riffs sharper and more vicious than they’ve ever showcased. The album gets continually better from there, especially on repeated listens. Daisy is a difficult and complex record that must be absorbed before it can be fully appreciated — and like Brand New‘s past releases, it’s well worth the effort.

Daisy clocks in at an initially underwhelming 40 minutes. That brevity works to the band’s benefit. On an album this full of dynamic shifts and strange experiments, its welcome could have easily worn itself out if they pushed much further.

Instead Daisy is a compact and nuanced thrill ride, with nary a second of bloat. The band cranks up the amps and adrenaline on aggro showpieces one minute (see the riotously charging “Gasoline” for an example of how hard these fellas can hit) and then turn the heat down to simmer for “Bed” and the title track, which both remain relatively quiet while harnessing big power, threatening at any moment to lurch off track and become something else entirely.

Lead guitarist Vincent Accardi’s riffs have a spooky, bent quality — it sounds like he’s been studying early Modest Mouse records. That influence is never as obvious as during the two-minute interlude “Be Gone.” It’s nothing but a gnarled blues riff and some super-distorted vocals, but it’s one of the most distinctive and effective tracks the band has ever recorded.

Daisy is a rare beast in the oft-uninspiring alternative rock genre. It can clobber and caress in equal measures, and at no point does the band consider those qualities mutually exclusive. The experience is as pleasant as stroking a unicorn’s lustrous fur — and as shocking as having that same unicorn impale your heart with its horn. It’s serious business, and fans of sharp and innovative guitar rock should hope lead singer Jesse Lacey’s recent hints that the group might disband prove entirely false. I’m crossing my fingers there’s plenty more where this came from.

Lookout for The Alumni Club. They're touring, and they're one of the best local power/punk/pop bands I've heard in awhile.

It’s not too often that I get to plug bands before most people find out about them simply because there aren’t that many that are pluggable--but about once a month I stumble across a band in the Chicago area that seems to be a bit ahead of the curve for their genre. In 2000, it was Thrice. Shortly thereafter, it was Thursday, before them it was Saves the Day, Dashboard Confessional, Boysetsfire, and I think I may have just found my most recent potential break out band…

The band is The Alumni Club, and they’ve just posted a music video from their newest album, Up Early and Out Late called, “About Last Night”. Fallout Boy seems to have revolutionized the power pop/punk genre, and I think the guys from The Alumni Club give them a pretty good run for their money--Even Sans Jay-Z to do their intro.

Their new EP is just $5 on Amazon, or you can surf on to those communists over their at Apple and pick it up on iTunes. Check out the video below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgSHqY5GHec

They mentioned being a “top 40 band in Chicago” on their Myspace. I think they can go alot higher than that.

From the Broken, tough Chicago metal at it's finest.

It’s been awhile since we’ve recognized a local band that we’re excited about, and mostly that’s because there really hasn’t been any that have caught my attention–that is until recently when I got a chance to listen to some From the Broken.

Like many of the other bands we find on Twitter and Myspace, From the Broken is just getting started and is currently touring locally in and around the Chicago area. They’ve got a 3 song EP out now featuring:

• Today’s The Day
• One Time Hero
• World’s End

You can listen to (like I have many times) on their Myspace page. If you’d like to contact the band directly, I’ve found their Twitter page to be the best way. Their next show is July 26th at the Walter Payton Roundhouse in Aurora.

Seven Day Sonnet in Libertyville, IL.

After spending 45 minutes digging my car out of 12 inches of heavy plow-packed snow this past Friday I headed out to a venue I had never heard of called, “The Fuel Room”. To my delight, “The Fuel Room” is built onto the side of a sports bar called Austin’s Saloon. I had my reservations about the place, but in the words of John Majors, this place was, “A Diamond in the Rough”.

The band I was there to see was called Seven Day Sonnet. Checkout their Myspace page to hear a sneak preview of what their debut album is going to sound like.

Like many other bands on Myspace, Seven Day Sonnet is still unsigned, and I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you about them unless I thought that they were one of most talented unsigned bands I’ve seen in a long time. I think one of the things that makes me most excited about them is the fact that they have such a unique, developed sound in a market that’s saturated with unpolished Nickelback rip-offs. I was even more surprised to find out that they’d only been together since March!

It may sound like I’m blatantly plugging a new band from the area, and the truth is that I am–but I’ve been pretty heavily involved in the independent and underground music scene for awhile now, and from what I’ve heard from Seven Day Sonnet, their first few songs rank among some of the best for a debut album. I’d feel completely comfortable comparing them with the likes of Brand New, Avenged Sevenfold, and even Thrice.

If you haven’t yet, head over to Myspace and listen to the four songs the band has on their page. More importantly, subscribe to their blog so you can be notified of when their debut album hits the shelves. (I know that we for one will be writing about it)

Here at Assault we’re always trying to stay up to date with the music scene, and I thought it was time to share with you my most recent rocker chick lead singer crush. Paramore is by no means small/underground as they’ve been just about everywhere lately, but I’m fairly sure most people don’t know how talented they really are outside of normal studio rock.

I highly recommend downloading some of Paramore‘s music off of iTunes. They’re some of the most talented rockers around right now. (Plus they’re all in and around 20 years old!) Check out a few of their other videos at the links below the video.

Here’s a video of Hayley Williams of Paramore singing “Misery Business” acoustically at 97X in Tampa, Florida.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiR838VOCrA

Paramore Related Links

• Paramore -- Hayley Williams sings Misery Business on acoustic guitar
• Paramore -- Videos of acoustic songs from the album Riot!
• Tim’s email in case Hayley Williams would like to go out sometime