Month: January 2005

The year 2005 found Kate and I about 10 minutes behind schedule, counting down with my favorite Twin Cities band, in otherwise-dead downtown St. Paul (they’d been sound-checking at actual midnight, but Kate observed that time is arbitrary anyway, valued only instrumentally as we grant it the power to measure). Olympic Hopefuls are undeniably great, plus whip-smart and catchy as hell, becoming an irresistable musical force something like the Cars crashing into Weezer’s Blue Album.

After seeing the Hopefuls a few months ago with the Transit Librarian, I brought expectations generated by the first show to New Year’s Eve and left happy. Live, the band understates everything save their music itself. Showmanship is limited to their matching red polyesther track suits, and stage banter is one notch above nonexistent. Playing and singing away on original hooks and huge choruses, properly sloppier than on record, is enough to satisfy both band and fans. The Fuses Refuse To Burn, tastily layered and perfectly warm-sounding, is the essential album of my first six months in the Twin Cities scene. The show included three cuts that aren’t included on the record (I’m guessing on the titles): “She’ll Get What She Wants”, “On The Edge of Medicine”, and “She (something else I can’t remember)”.

Olympic Hopefuls’ side-project status is almost revealed in their unification of wounded self-deprication (“Shy”, “Whisper”) and optimism of a delerious sort. This collision is seen most clearly in the face of terrible circumstances; “Imaginary” – an ode to a ficticious lover, or “Motobike” in which our protagonist crashes repeatedly, only to ride again faster and faster, singing “I’ll never slow down!” Only musicians with nothing to lose can create such intelligent, fearless pop. Dual songwriters Erik Appelwick (of Vicious Vicious) and Darren Jackson (Kid Dakota) are obviously having a great time being away from their real (?) selves. Their joy from rocking with abandon, and pain from knowing that fulfilling their world-class hopes for love and motobiking skills are one-in-a-million at best, is entirely infectious. I feel both with an authenticity and depth that seems surprising given the bright bounce of the Hopefuls’ music; their freeing lack of gravitas becomes in me enlightened innocence, more poignant by accident than greater effort would ever achieve.

Sometimes the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems slip through your fingers.

Ran into Courtney Yasmineh at church; she was chatting with John (works here – good friend), I saw them and joined the conversation. She said some things about her CD release show in November that echoed my thoughts; mostly, it’s hard to perform and be a bandleader at the same time. I know from leading Scott through some tunes we hadn’t rehearsed much, and she was trying to sing, play, and conduct four guys, not one.

Sidenote; I’ve done some heavy listening on Courtney’s record Sufi Line and love it more than when I first blogged about it, except I skip “Perfidious” always and “Billy Collins” sometimes.

Courtney said something that turned my ear about the ego-centric attitude of people who write/record music and don’t share it. She’s sensitive to a responsibility to be a voice out there and create an opportunity for her music and words to have their impact on others. It seemed counterintuitive; on the surface, it appears that a non-sharing kind of musician is humble about their work. But after thinking for a second, I see what she’s driving at; there does seem to be something selfish about creating, then hoarding one’s creation. Maybe a creation itself has a right to be released, to take a chance to achieve its potential and be allowed to live what life it may have.

Rising from Blacklight Sunshine like a phoenix from Icarus’ own cremation, More Than Yesterday‘s aesthetic is still in-process. When it coheres, the band’s weighty contradictions give their music a kind of tensile strength. It is a new thing.

Seeing MTY at home, in Nebraska, revealed the foundation they are building on; melodic metal for the Midwestern bar set. It may seem obvious, but having followed the band from a distance I hadn’t remembered the frame in which they play; a frame where Harley-Davidson t-shirts, smoking onstage, and hardcore emoting resonate with big crowds. “We’ll Wake Tomorrow” and “Breakdown” crunch and burn in all the right places, like a Camaro driven through a chase scene. You know the moves, and their familiarity only greases your urge to rock.

But MTY aspires to higher things than endless shows for the greek boys & girls at the local dive. Revealed through the wearing of white belts, progressive playing from all 3 instrumentalists, snaky hip shakes, and in a hundred other ways this band’s horizons transcend the Missouri to the east and the Rockies the west. In Chris’ (BLS’s re-located guitarist) absence, Blake is blurring the line between playing rhythm and lead in his riffs. He’s also taken a page from the book of Edge, transforming the echo pedal from nifty trick into essential atmosphere – the very air MTY breathes at times. Dan (bass) and Jeremy (drums) combine hive-mind tightness with a sonically expanding, fluid orignality in the rhythm section. The chorus of “Somebody Saved” epitomizes this new angle; it blows up by becoming suddenly bigger and airier then the verse at the very second I expected thick metallic chords, the space between a guitar line and the rhythm occupied only by Russ’s vocal plea. Or, listen to everything about “Bodies,” a song that’s closer to grasping and expressing a kind of heaven than anything I’ve found in a Book.

Lest I sound like I’m pushing my friends’ band too hard, there are times when More Than Yesterday’s contradictions seem more like a train wreck in the pages of a slick magazine than the yin and yang achieved in “Somebody Saved.” Some of Russ’s lyrics are overly self-indulgent (“Savior”) and structural repetition takes the drive out of “Not Enough” (AB could be moving; ABAB is overkill).

Upshot; apply the 20% scalpel, and MTY is on the brink of fulfilling their chosen name.