There are many ways to begin an adventure, one of which involves the consumption of a peanut butter, honey, banana, raisin, and jelly sandwich. The PBHBR&J sandwich does a good job initiating an adventure because it is, in fact, an adventure itself. Every bite is like a whole spread of flavors, gripped together with (chunky) peanut butter, leaking marmalade spread from the toasted corners of oats-and-honey bread.
So began my adventure with St. Louis, MO’s So Many Dynamos. My personal adventure would be far more positive from theirs, which sounds ominous. It’s just that the four Dynamos have been the victims of two thefts and two transmissions on this tour, and the second transmission basically gave up outside my apartment. That’s a lot of loss for a band paying rent with the money they make on the road, where they’ve been non-stop since June. Dynamos told me upon arrival that band moral was low, a good thing to be open about when (and only when) A) your band mates are around and agree, and B) when you don’t let it effect your live performance. I’m developing a theory that suggests that the intensity of a live performance in times of drooping moral hints at a band’s integrity. The theory became sturdier during Dynamos fiery set last Monday night at Club Pow.
I don’t think this band could be held back. Not by rain, sleet, or ten thousand transmission saboteurs trying their collective hands at stealing guitars. This band is aware of the energy their music produces. That music is raw: it’s Fugazi’s End Hits and At The Drive In’s In/Casino/Out and Q And Not U’s No Kill No Beep Beep all cooked into one amazing PBHBR&J sandwich. A better way to think about Dynamos is to consider the space Dismemberment Plan covered in their whole career, from ! to Change, one of my Favorite Albums Of All Time (FAOAT). That was a whole lot of namedropping, but also a whole lot of FAOAT’s. What do these albums have in common with each other and with Dynamos? Certain elements are audible. Dynamos use familiarly technical riffs and tones, especially comparable to the fuzzy treble assault of both ! and No Kill No Beep Beep. Griffin Kay’s and Ryan Wasoba’s dual guitars are balanced in their creativity and effect; there are no leads, only tandem good ideas. Norm’s (Dynamos chrome drummer who is credited on their album under a name he doesn’t go by) drumming goes that extra mile to frantically seek unexpected accents. Dynamos have no bass player. Vocalist Aaron Stovall rocks two blurpy keyboards. They are used tastefully so that the band neither sounds like The Faint nor exactly like The Faint.
The real meaty thing about all these adventurous bands is that Dynamos sound less like them and more like the new bearers of the same torch. Dynamos seem concerned about advancing all of the pop-songwriting renovations Dismemberment Plan attempted. Examples: take the quirky, personality-heavy lyricism, or the strange time signatures that were fun to get familiar with, or the quality sound engineering, or the involved instrumentation that reminds us that rock music actually has evolved beyond “Satisfaction.” Dynamos use these serious tactics to excel on their excel-lent (count it!) second full length, Flashlights. In the next five years there won’t be many tracks as instantaneous as the second track, “Search Party,” which the band opened with live. The song’s bookend-hook is sung first by Stovall alone and then later as a choral vocal. The lyric is, from where I’m sitting, the finest admonition of artistic ambition this year. “There will be no search party for us,” Dynamos sing. There will be no search party for us! It’s worth mentioning that Mr. Stovall’s voice sounds like Travis Morrison’s (D-Plan’s singer), which I find more comforting than anything else. (I always thought Tom DeLonge also sounded like a ninth grade Mr. Morrison.) Like Mr. Morrison—and maybe more so (we’ll see)—Stovall grounds his band with melody, especially while they’re being dissonant or feedback-y. The end product is total outsider-pop-genius.
So go buy Flashlights right now. That’s the moral, though there’s still more adventure to be had. Dynamos rocked Pow Monday, but with heavy eyelids/consciences. The band had been awake until 5 a.m. in Portland, OR with one of the tours many life preservers, Christopher Walla. Many awesome people have told me that Mr. Walla considers Flashlights one of the best albums of the year. In July he will be involved in the creation of Dynamos’ next album. This is exciting in a lot of ways, namely considering the space Hot Hot Heat covered between the cool-kids-punk of Scenes One Through Thirteen and the Mr. Walla-produced Knock Knock Knock EP. Fewer cocoons could better nurture Dynamos potential. I also learned that the band has a national tour lined up with Horse The Band in the spring, a great opportunity for Dynamos to show off and expand. Alas, robbery, a dead van, and $700 in the band till can temper future excitement, especially when the band has $700-worth of rent due back at home. But Dynamos beat back their despair and kicked ass. Half of them crashed at The Backstage (my house) and half were down the street at a friend’s place. I didn’t expect to see them again until SXSW.
About 60 people trickled into Du Nord by the time Dynamos went on stage. The band looked pretty spent. As fate would have it, the power went out on one side of the stage during the first song. As Mr. Stovall and Mr. Kay tried to determine what was wrong, Mr. Wasoba and Mr. Norm played “Search Party” twice as hard. “What was that song called?” the girl next to me asked. I told her. She would tap my shoulder four more times during the set asking me for song titles. I suppose most attendees were there to see THIS band, the mediadarlings that they are. Good choice for those attendees, who were drenched in the Dynamos experience. The dance floor filled up by sets end.
Dynamos ended both nights with the amazing song “Progress,” which, along with “Search Party” is available for download on the band’s Myspace. This track seemed appropriate by the time we cruised back into Sacramento early Wednesday morning: Dynamos had successfully (and profitably) rocked SF, sampled some killer Mission burritos, and met a curious sample of the Bay Area wildlife (namely a crazy dude in camouflage who said “Just let me finish…” 48 times during a five minute chat). They slept in the next day and ended up getting a temporary fix on their transmission—just enough to get them back to St. Louis (they made it back fine and have already junked their van).
I can’t say enough about Dynamos’ music. They cash in on so many of my favorite moments from so many of my favorite albums that they are now one of my favorite bands. I’m posting two MP3’s. “How High The Moon” is possibly my favorite-est song from Flashlights, and I think it sounds like the entire history of rock and roll music in four minutes. The other track is called “When We Were Machines” from Dynamos’ first record When I Explode. The band was just as great a year ago, though Mr. Stovall’s vocals are more confident now. These songs slay live and should aptly illustrate the spectrum of Dynamos clever party-punk-pop-rock.
The band starts touring the east coast this Wednesday (November 1) and should be announcing late winter/spring dates soon. They are also taking donations for their recent gear and transportation troubles via Paypal: email skrilla to octipod@gmail.com.
Click to download “How High The Moon” from the album Flashlights by So Many Dynamos. Click to download “When We Were Machines” from the album When We Explode by So Many Dynamos.
Visit So Many Dynamos’ WEBSITE. Visit So Many Dynamos on MYSPACE. Visit So Many Dynamos on LAST.FM. Visit So Many Dynamos at ALL MUSIC. Visit So Many Dynamos’ LABEL. Buy When I Explode from Amazon. Buy Flashlights from Skrocki Records. Read about Flashlights at PITCHFORK. Visit So Many Dynamos the consultant firm. (Unrelated to the band, but still palindromic and fascinating. Go figure!)
One of the coolest moments at a good Popscene—San Francisco’s place-to-be, 18-and-up weekly indie rock dance club—is when the band has to peel through the crowd to reach the stage. “Pardon me,” I imagined Jonas Bjerre, Mew’s feather-haired singer, saying as he slid between scenesters still echoing the first of this evening’s requisite five Cure songs. The crowd reaction for Mew was only a little less atomic than for Hot Hot Heat, who I saw take the Popscene stage last year. HHH came on from the right, so all the girls and girly guys in front totally lost it for Steve Bay’s Elevator-era Sideshow Bob perm. Mew get bonus points for just coming straight through the crowd like their management didn’t know any better. They looked bewildered and excited.
As far as I can tell (and with the exception of Legoland) Mew are Denmark’s finest export. Obviously enormous throughout the rest of the First World, the quintet rolled up to Popscene in an alley-slimming tour bus. They have a bunch of albums, two of which are now available in the colonies. The American marketing team (Sony/BMG?) trying to make Mew viral this side of the Atlantic is doing a confusing job. This summer we encountered a stack of Mew stickers and promotional CD’s at a Guitar Center in Tempe, AZ. While I hoped the “Smoke On The Water” crowd was ready to learn the chords to a track like "Saviours of Jazz Ballet (Fear Me, December)," the promotion seemed a little Dada. Still, it was cool to spot any promotion for a band that’s been a Masonic mystery in my iPod for the last year. Until recently, I’ve been jamming to the band’s 2003 release: Frengers. This last summer I picked up And The Glass Handed Kites, which came out in Europe in September of 2005. Mew’s Danish merch guy told Nave that the band has a bunch of albums recorded. Wikipedia lists 21 B-sides. It will be interesting to see if the powers that be ever allow Mew to release an album worldwide on the same day.
As far as I’m concerned, Mew couldn’t possibly release enough material. Not at this quality, at least. The 300 or 400 fans at Popscene would probably agree. The crowd treated the band like Metallica, calling out obscure songs every chance it got. That was appropo of the band sounding like Metallica, guitars and drums crunching jugulars like sissy oyster crackers. Mew sounded colossal on the Popscene sound system. The drum triggers helped. The best bass tone ever helped (Nave wrote down the pedal settings). Bjerre’s princely falsetto and weird posture helped. The whole band sounded phenomenal. They played a perfect mix of material from Frengers and Glass Handed Kites. Certain highlights included “She Spider” and “156” (from Frengers, I’m posting the latter below as an MP3), as well as medieval anthem “The Zookeeper’s Boy” (Here’s the goofy-ass music video) and every other song they played from Glass Handed Kites.
Mew pulls off hi-fidelity experimentation in league with Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips, Bends-era Radiohead, or Melancholy-era Smashing Pumpkins. It’s beautiful and loud; it’s beautiful because it is loud. Experimental bands can be roller coasters, but Mew is a theme park; they make me feel six-years-old inside Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. It’s a very Technicolor experience. Mew’s childhooded-ness almost intrudes on the experimental maturity. I think this dichotomy is what makes the songs so cinematic. They justify and actualize musical escapism. For example, Coldplay’s great songs are visual enough so that it’s easy to imagine watching the music played out onscreen. Mew’s songs (they are all pretty great) come to life in many of the same ways. If a Coldplay scene might be imagined as a genuine moment between Braff and Portman, Mew’s scene conjures any situation ever animated by the “Japanese Walt Disney,” Hayao Miyazaki. I didn’t really know how to justify this until Youtube presented me with the answer. Watch these back to back and, even though they don’t look the same, see if they feel the same (the fact that they sort of sound is all bonus):
That’s all I got. Check this band out. They told us they’d be back to America in February. I told them to have locals open up for them in every city. Here’s the promised MP3 for “156,” as well as “Apocalypto” from Glass Handed Kites.
Click to download “156” by Mew. Click to download “Apocalypso” by Mew.
Tera Melos is the third local band I’ve become intimately, freakishly, ridiculously, obsessively attached to since moving to the Sacramento valley in 2001. These are the othertwo, which I’ll justify in the future. By no means do these three bands limit my interest in the area’s talent pool, but they do form the barbed spears of Sacramento’s fiercest trident. If you’re like me, then these bands will reorganize your expectations.
Which is what Tera Melos accomplished twice last weekend. After a four-month hibernation the band returned to play a basement in Grass Valley, CA on Friday and then The Boardwalk in Orangevale, CA on Saturday (the first date of their week-and-a-half-long tour opening for The Fall Of Troy and Schoolyard Heroes). These were two of the finest shows I’ve seen the band play. There were over 200 kids the second night and they all acted like relapsing addicts, cheering and laughing as though they were enjoying The Museum of General Amazement with new eyes.
I first met Melos in August of 2004. They were familiarly gung-ho band dudes, explaining how they just wanted to play as many shows as they could. Unlike most gung-ho band dudes, they bought a van for $99 (it was $100 but they found $1 in the glove compartment), ran it into the ground, bought a nicer van, and proceeded to play over 200 shows in 18 months. Each show helped establish a religious following. Some part of that cult might swear to the spectacle of Tera Melos, the band that monkeys across ceilings, sends kids to the emergency room (after said kids buy merch), has fans with tattoos, and does all sorts of weird post-handstands, anti-cartwheels, and un-guitar twirls. But the spectacle wouldn’t exist without the music, which most appreciators—like Wayne and Garth before them—will kneel before.
Tera Melos make ambitious instrumental punk rock. Until late in August they were a four piece, when guitarist Jeff Worms left the group. Worms’ contributions to Tera Melos were profound and irreplaceable, but he was in a genius band, not a band with a single genius. Though it doesn’t directly relate to the band, I can’t resist mentioning that Worms built a motorcycle with his hands and his mind and that while he worked in his garage he kept track of time by listening to Mars Volta albums all the way though. (Four times through Frances The Mute means it’s time for lunch.) His legacy is sealed into the band’s self-titled debut and their handful of bootlegs, demos, and early recordings. (There is also a Youtube of Worms just after taking a bass tuning peg to the head; he plays ventriloquist with the gash, using it as a bloody dummy-mouth.)
The necessity of bootlegs speaks to the bands talent. The music tracking website Last.fm.com shows hundreds of user listens to the bands’ official release. There are also dozens of listens to unreleased and live tracks. The track titles have even been inputted in Japanese.
The band has lamented that the spectacle is too often the focus of reviews and promotional material. They may or may not be taking into account how complicated their music is and, consequently, how hard it is to describe. Perhaps they want people to try hard to describe it; perhaps they don’t understand what the big deal is. Tera Melos is a big deal, however, and that's largely because the music is so challenging. The band has little concern for compositional structure and frequently plays the most face-smelting riff you’ve ever heard for eight counts and then never looks back. They also don’t care for genre, though math-rock might please some pigeonholers. My favorite elements in the Tera Melos atmosphere remind me of jazz and, more specifically, the best Frank Zappa album I’ve heard, the Grammy winning Jazz From Hell. Tera Melos riffs are often long and solo-like, except with flushed out (non improvised) bass and drums that emphasize the smartest catch and release points of the guitar. The string-slinging is somehow conceived by Nick Reinhart, the only member of the band who I haven’t heard a nickname for (“Vince-anity” drums and “Mister Nathan,” a.k.a. “L Train” takes care of the bass, and Worms is often referred to as “The Worm” or “Youth Pastor Jeff”). I’m sweating my way back into vagueness with Reinhart’s guitar work, but it’s pretty wild. A prodigy with his fingers, Reinhart alters between squelching out neck-encompassing Dillinger Escape Plan-esque post-metal with two-handed, four or five fingered fretboard tapping. The rest of the band provides a Ritalin landscape for Reinhart to explore, emphasizing the shower of effects, notes, and strange samples with consistent virtuosity. That last sentence would be hyperbole in the hands of AP describing most of the bands AP might describe, which basically means it will be interesting to see what AP says when AP finally comes up for air and sees the Merry Melos dangling the coolest life preserver ever invented over AP’s floundering head.
Even without Worms Tera Melos are technically mystifying. Their set in the Grass Valley basement was well recorded by my roommate and supreme confidant, NAVE. I’ve endured a 48-hour personal struggle in an authentic tribal sweat lodge deciding which tracks to post here. It’s tempting to post the first song they played, but instead I’m going to keep that experience to myself and post the last song they played. As far as we can tell it’s called “Cosmetics.” For good measure, I’m also posting the track that just about made me cry, and it’s called “Driving To Mt. Hood.”
Support Tera Melos. They tour a lot. They warm up to Hella songs. They eat dirty children without any seasoning. They will outlast your party and destroy your jam box at 5:30 a.m. the night before all your final exams. You’ll wake up with blisters on your eyes thinking the same thing as your roommates: We’re not worthy.
Visit Tera Melos on MYSPACE.
Visit Tera Melos on LAST.FM.
Visit Tera Melos’ WEBSITE (live mp3’s available).
Visit Tera Melos’ LABEL and get on the wagon already.
The Greater Mekong... is also home to striped rabbits, bright pink millipedes laced with cyanide and a rat that was believed to have become extinct 11 million years ago.
