Wolf Parade

Everyone is a bit of a screw up in the band, so we tend to lead pretty stupid lives. We make a lot of mistakes.

story by Gina Pantone
photo by Michael Doerksen

“If Zeus were a drummer, he’d play loud,” says Arlen Thompson of Wolf Parade, who seems to know a thing or two about mythological rock ‘n’ roll. “I think Zeus would probably be a drummer out of the Grecian gods. Hermes would probably play guitar. Thyestes would be bass, and Aphrodite would probably be Janis Joplin.”

As far as supergroups are concerned, the Montreal quartet is no stranger to strings attached. If their friends and former colleagues were displayed on a wall like family photographs, posed portraits of The Arcade Fire, Hot Hot Heat and Modest Mouse would be mounted above the mantel – Isaac Brock being the producer patriarch. “I think it [having connections] is a good thing; it definitely helped us move forward,” Thompson said of his Northern American brethren. “It’s interesting to me that a lot of people compare us to Modest Mouse or Arcade Fire, but I think we stand out musically. There will always be elements of that [friendly influence] in our music.”

A lot has changed since Wolf Parade formed in Victoria, British Columbia, although their beginnings were humble and slightly misleading. Singer/pianist Spencer Krug and guitarist Dan Boeckner created the band, even thought their first gig was organized under a slightly false resume. Krug agreed to play the show without having any material, and basically gave Boeckner three weeks to feverishly rehearse. The gig went well, and the duo decided to add two members to the mayhem – two hairy guys to be exact.

Thompson (drums) and Hadji Bakara (electronics) came onboard Wolf Parade and the wheels started turning. Their first EP was recorded and with a little help from their Seattle rodent friends, they had signed a deal with Sub Pop. Isaac Brock would produce their first record, Apologies to the Queen Mary.

The group suddenly found themselves relocated in Montreal and financially supported. Thompson discussed the new factors in the band’s development: “We recorded our first two EPs for about 30 bucks total, so having more money and more access to something better than the two tin cans that we recorded them [the first EPs] on definitely is going to be more polished. I mean, there definitely is that aspect of having to make the recording sound more commercial, to get on the radio and whatnot. I don’t know, it [the label] certainly didn’t have too much of an influence on it, we still got to make the decisions that we wanted.”

Despite the band’s fears of squeaky-clean production, Apologies to the Queen Mary is surprisingly gritty. Songs like “Modern World” and “Shine a Light” could’ve been recorded in Beck’s basement, with muffled drums and vocals reminiscent of Modest Mouse timbre. Wolf Parade’s finished product sounds generally uplifting, though Krug’s sound and words channel a sense of desperation and distrust hidden within. “Maybe there are moments of paranoia,” Thompson fesses. “I think a lot of thoughts contain doubts and uncertainty. Everyone is a bit of a screw up in the band, so we tend to lead pretty stupid lives. We make a lot of mistakes.”

Though not perfect, Wolf Parade has shown the world they are ready to compete with their Quebec class – and are armed with some mean facial hair to prove it. Thompson’s dastardly moustache has even taken on new form. “Well I’ve gone with the full beard now, so maybe that’s the good side of me coming out.”
Wolf Parade :: with Robbers on High Street :: Schubas :: Oct. 14.

The Dirty Things

The goal is to prove that you don’t have to go and be a lawyer to make something of yourself.

story by Jay Gentile

Rising high-energy Chicago dance rockers The Dirty Things proclaim that their Web site is “best viewed while wearing nothing at all.” So just how dirty are The Dirty Things? Chicago Innerview invited a couple of them over in an attempt to find out. Looking unsoiled and smelling decent enough, Chicago Innerview probed frontman Michael Scahill for answers.

Scahill says that the “dirty nasty dudes” of the Pretty Things were a favorite in his youth, and that he liked the idea of carrying on the sarcasm in reverse with these self-proclaimed “clean-cut guys.” And the name works with the type of music they play, which is often characterized with phrases like “new new wave,” “jittery,” “angular,” “post-punk,” “post-funk,” “art party,” etc. Basically it is fun, catchy, chaotic dance rock in the vein of the Rapture, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, Bloc Party, Radio 4, etc. And while this type of music has become immensely popular as of late, according to Scahill, the band isn’t interested in following trends or copying what’s popular.

“When I first started with this music, there was no Franz Ferdinand, no Bloc Party,” he says. “Just me digging through my old records. For years I was like, ‘I can’t play ’80s music. That wouldn’t work.’ Finally I decided to do it and now it’s this huge thing.” (The band cites the Clash, Wire, the Cure, Gang of Four and Talking Heads as influences.)

Following a stint in New York City, Scahill met up with former Lexington, Kentucky, high school classmate Paddy Ryan, who had just relocated to Chicago from London and was convinced by Scahill to pick up the bass. After snatching drummer J. Paul Lohr from the local punk scene, the band played a flurry of shows around the city in January of 2004, gaining their fair share of attention for their energetic stage presence and fresh sound. They cut a 5-song EP in July of 2004 titled Movement Making Noises, which included radio-friendly rockers like “Stop” and “New Dance,” both of which ended up on college radio after an unknown promoter contacted the band asking to put their stuff on the air.

“It’s really weird trying to sell yourself,” says Ryan. Luckily, The Dirty Things really didn’t have to. Through “this weird underground that I have no idea about,” Ryan says the songs got picked up across the country and, in January of 2005, they somehow made industry chart Tripwire’s “Next Level” list (at #5) along with bands like LCD Soundsystem, Louis XIV and Sons and Daughters. (They didn’t even know what Tripwire was, and still aren’t really sure.) They also attracted press from England to Chicago. “On songs such as the aptly titled ‘New Dance,’ the young quartet [now a 3-piece] easily betters the Rapture, if not bands like Franz Ferdinand and Clinic,” said Chicago Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis.

The group is currently enjoying attention from the A&R community and courting labels from local indies to majors, looking for someone to put out a more sonically-diverse full-length they hope to record by the end of the year. When asked what the goal of the band is, Ryan and Scahill responded in unison: “To beat the Beatles.” And, for once, they seemed serious.

In the meantime, the Dirty Things travel to Detroit for a slot at the Motor City Music Conference before heading to New York to play CBGB’s at the end of April as well as a Gang of Four after-party in mid-May. They will then return to Chicago to continue bringing the dance party to devoted (and, they say, mostly female) fans and pretentious hipsters alike.

“We came up with this horrible concept that we hate watching bands just stand there,” says Ryan. “The unfortunate thing is that we have to [constantly move.] After 25 minutes, we’re completely drenched in sweat. We don’t wanna be too-cool-for-school, especially if we want the audience to dance because if we don’t, there’s no way in hell they will…I don’t jog on the weekends, so I gotta get my exercise.”

“The goal is to prove that you don’t have to go and be a lawyer to make something of yourself,” adds Scahill. And Ryan closes the interview with a little advice for aging hipsters: “You’re gonna die real soon. Move a little.”

The Dirty Things :: with Assassins, The Cinema Eye, Midstates and Life During Wartime DJs Mother Hubbard and J2K :: Logan Square Auditorium :: May 20.

The Kills

It’s an incredible thing to find. We’ve both been doing these things all our lives and never found that thing you’re looking for. I don’t know if it’s in the back of everybody’s mind, but you’re always trying to find somebody that’s perfect to create art with.

story by Jay Gentile
photo by Shawn Brackbill

We’ve all suffered through the unjust experience of being forced to listen to loud guitar music pulsating through our ceiling and creeping its way down from the dwelling of some annoying neighbor in the apartment above us – invading our own little space below unannounced and uninvited. Such an experience has driven many men and women into uncontrollable fits of rage. But for Alison Mosshart, such an experience changed her life.

As the story goes, Mosshart, a Florida musician on tour in London with her band Discount in the late 1990s, checked into a room directly below that of British rocker Jamie Hince from the band Scarfo. She heard him playing guitar from his room, and actually dug what she heard. “We met each other and we spent a long time talking,” Mosshart told Chicago Innerview. “We talked about books and films and we sat around his house, making microphones and fixing broken four track machines. Just kind of getting to know each other. He’d play me loads of records.” She realized they shared nearly identical artistic tastes as well as a mutual dissatisfaction with their current places in the music scene. “We were living these parallel lives 4,000 miles away. It was really incredible.”

So they exchanged numbers and began collaborating via mail after Mosshart returned to Florida, sending tapes across the Atlantic. The frustration in the slow pace of the mail combined with Mosshart’s disdain for Florida’s sunshine and disillusionment with America aided her in her decision one day to book a one-way ticket to London, where she was reborn as VV. She started laying down some tunes with Hince, who was re-named Hotel. While the names themselves didn’t really mean anything (Mosshart said they came up with the idea while hanging out in their room drunk), the fact that they were being re-named did represent a mutual fresh start. Together they became the Kills, a super lo-fi, dirty, sexy, dark blues-based rock duo that quickly caught the attention of the British press and several record labels.

Minutes before stepping on stage for their first U.S. appearance in support of the second Kills full-length No Wow (Rough Trade/RCA), Mosshart (a.k.a. VV) expounded on the collaboration: “There’s just a freeness about him that I think he found in me, where we just showed each other all the things that we hadn’t showed the people that we had been in bands with. The stuff that we’d worked on quite secretly. We both opened up instantly and shared all these things. I’m making it sound smaller than it is. It’s an incredible thing to find. We’ve both been doing these things all our lives and never found that thing you’re looking for. I don’t know if it’s in the back of everybody’s mind, but you’re always trying to find somebody that’s perfect to create art with.”

But don’t mistake this for your classic fairy tale. On stage and on record, this boy/girl duo torment and taunt each other in a raunchy battle of the sexes catfight full of dirty tricks and seedy underpinnings. Their raw, simple, stripped-down sound is the music that they apparently felt was missing from today’s world – having titled their new release No Wow in reference to what they perceive as a lack of wow factor in today’s arts as compared to the ’60s and ’70s eras which they venerate. The album was recorded in just a few weeks spent holed up in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where the Kills traveled to track down a rare console/drum machine that used to belong to Sly Stone and was reportedly cursed.

It is tempting to write off the Kills since they rely so heavily on their image, as their shtick (not to mention their lyrics) can become redundant and seem a bit contrived. Yet while neither No Wow nor its predecessor, Keep on Your Mean Side, offer much in the way of innovation or thematic depth, the records do have the capacity to unleash some pretty damn good no-frills rock songs. And that seems to be exactly the point.

Creating a full band sound with just two members can be daunting, but that is the only way the Kills would have it. The entire band is in fact a documentation of their lives together, and bringing in another person would blow the whole experiment/experience apart. Mosshart is often compared to P.J. Harvey or Patti Smith (a comparison Mosshart finds flattering but off the mark), while Hince (a.k.a. Hotel) in his finer moments brings back shades of the classic Keith Richards guitar lick. But, according to Mosshart, none of this was intentional – not even the band itself.

“Maybe a year or two after I’d been there [in London], we played our first show, but it was by accident,” explained the 26-year-old Mosshart. “Someone just found out we’d been working on music and got over-excited and offered us a show. We didn’t know what to do with that. We didn’t have anyone else in the band, we didn’t have drums, we didn’t have anything. So, Jamie just taught himself how to play drums one day and we recorded it and we used it as a backing track and played with it. It sounded really cool, so we just did it and after that we’ve been on tour ever since. It’s kind of been a bit of a whirlwind.”

While Mosshart cites Velvet Underground, Suicide, Sonic Youth, Cabaret Voltaire and Patti Smith amongst her favorite artists, comparisons to Detroit’s boy/girl garage rockers The White Stripes appear inevitable. They also share the whole “are they/aren’t they?” sexual mystique. The Kills are reportedly not romantically involved, but that’s hard to tell from their entangled stage antics – and they don’t seem to particularly mind the confusion. Yet the Kills are neither as talented nor as musically diverse as the Stripes, and they don’t aim or pretend to be. Mosshart said that while she recognizes that Jack and Meg “kicked the door open for loads of guitar bands” and that the two bands are friends, “we’re not coming from the same place.” She cites the Fiery Furnaces and LCD Soundsystem as some of the most mind-blowing acts of today.

“I think that things are good for music right now,” Mosshart continued. “There are amazing bands coming out that don’t sound like each other. But generally there are loads of bands that sound like each other that are probably doing better than those bands. It just depends. From an artist’s perspective, as far as bands to play with and going to shows, this is the first time in a couple of years, especially living in London, that I want to go to shows again. It’s not like this huge garage sensation where every band sounds exactly the same and for ages, we were lumped into that. And when that doesn’t exist anymore in London, we’re not lumped into anything. We’re standing in the street by ourselves and I prefer it.”

It is too soon to tell what will become of the Kills in the end. But in the meantime, if you prefer an edgy, Velvet Underground meets Bonnie & Clyde-style tribute to seedy rock and roll, the somewhat voyeuristic experience of watching the duo threaten and entice each other on stage might just be the thing for you. They seem to want to fuck and fight at the same time, and they’ve even got a song about it.

The Kills :: with Scout Niblett :: Double Door :: April 1.

Widespread Panic

The spirituality is in the randomness. That’s where the inspiration comes from.

story by Jay Gentile

So what’s the deal with all these hippie freaks and their obsession with Widespread Panic? Why are these damn “Spreadheads” so emotionally involved in this band? And is it allowed to listen to other types of music, like say garage rock or dance music, or do you have to listen to nothing but WSP bootlegs for the duration of your existence? And what if you don’t want a fucking fatty kind veggie burrito in the parking lot?

Chicago Innerview rang up longtime Widespread Panic keyboardist John “JoJo” Hermann to try to get some answers. Hermann was in his usual good spirits, as the band was gearing up for its first tour since a self-imposed year-long touring hiatus that followed their New Year’s Eve 2003 rocker in Atlanta. And for Panic fans, a year without seeing them live is a year too long.

Hermann, who has been busy happily changing the diapers of his 8-month old daughter Julia, said the Athens, Georgia-based jam kingpins took the last year off “just to be with our families.” The group has been crafting its unique brand of psychedelic Southern rock boogie since the release of their debut Space Wrangler in 1988, touring hard ever since while amassing one of the most devoted and loyal followings in live music.

I personally have been following WSP for over a decade, having first caught one of their blistering live performances as an unsuspecting 16-year old in 1993. I have held on to my fascination with this band longer than any other – even longer than that ugly Motley Crue phase in high school. And even though I have mostly outgrown my “hippie phase” and listen to all kinds of different music these days, I still hold a special place in my heart for this band that goes far above and beyond all others.

And I’m devoting the rest of this article to trying to answer one simple question: Why?

It just gets in your blood. It’s powerful, spiritual and damn fun to dance to. Unsure what else to say about it, I threw the question at Hermann to see if he could better explain the Widespread Panic phenomenon: “We’re a party band,” he said. “People come and they dance and have a good time.”

Obviously, attempting to get to the heart of the matter was going to be harder than I thought. So I changed tactics, asking him what he thought of the ubiquitous “jam band” label that pisses off so many bands in the genre who hate being pigeonholed as repetitive Birkenstock-clad stoners. “I don’t mind it,” Hermann said. “We do jam. It’s a better label than other things.”

Okay, but what do they think of all the neo-hippies who flocked to the band after the demise of patchouli-scented icons like the Grateful Dead and Phish? Do they feel as if they are meant to carry on the traditions of these live music legends and lead the jam band faithful to the Promised Land? “That’s probably the last thing on our mind – is trying to live up to anyone’s expectations except our own,” replied Hermann. He said the band encourages people to listen to other types of music and when told of all the Panic freaks and obsessives who worship the band from the aisles at shows, Hermann declared that “they must be relatives. They must be my mother.”

Fair enough. Nothing wrong with a little humor, but he’s still not answering my question. Maybe I should start talking about the tremendous energy of their live shows, an energy so intense and all encompassing that I have never seen it replicated to such an extent by any other band on stage. Ever. When asked what energizes Hermann on stage, his reply consisted of one simple word: “Beer.”

Uh, okay. Then could he maybe describe what they themselves are feeling on stage? “We just kind of bury our heads in our instruments,” Hermann said. “I’m surrounded by the keyboard. It’s my own little cubicle.” Hermann said that he still maintains the same level of excitement about the live shows as he had since first joining the band in 1992, “as long as we bring in new songs…for our own sanity.”

The sanity of the band was tested in August of 2002, when lead guitarist and founding Panic member Michael Houser died of cancer at age 40. The band made the decision to follow Houser’s wish that they continue to play on as a band. So the surviving members of WSP got Hermann’s friend and former Beanland bandmate George McConnell to fill in for the rest of the shows on the tour before he became a full-fledged member – later helping contribute to the band’s eighth and most recent studio album, 2003’s Ball.

While McConnell is a true guitar talent and one hell of a nice guy who stepped in when the band needed a friend the most, some longtime Panic fans still resent him and cling to some idea of a Panic utopia under Houser. “You can’t replace Michael Houser,” said Hermann. “The band is different now. As we record more new songs, the band develops a new sound. There’s no way you can re-create the magic that was happening before Mikey died. There’s nothing you can do but move on.”

And moving on is just what Panic is doing, with plans to unleash a smattering of new songs on audiences while touring heavily this year before releasing another album that Hermann said is tentatively planned for the early months of 2006. Hermann said that the band started rehearsing again last month and did a “round robin,” going around the room and hearing all the new songs that each individual band member had been working on over the past year.

Then they put the songs in action, in true “jam” form. “It’s like a jazz ethic…a spontaneous conversation,” said Hermann. “The spirituality is in the randomness. That’s where the inspiration comes from. It’s like we’re sitting around the table talking, except we don’t have to smell each other’s breath. Once you’ve been around a person so long, you almost start reading each other’s minds a bit. You can almost predict what the other guy is doing almost telepathically. It doesn’t get boring, something happens.”

And that would be as close as I would get to an answer to my question about what makes this band so powerful and so important to so many. My conclusion? It is not a contrived effort. It is not the result of pursuing an agenda. It is not the product of men with big egos like Trey Anastasio or Dave Matthews. It is a bunch of good friends sitting around talking to each other. It’s the band’s good friends in the audience that are interpreting this conversation, making individual personal connections with it and then combining their collective energy with the energy of the band to create one hell of a firestorm of chi. But then again this is pretty much what all bands do, isn’t it? So still I am left wondering why the feelings are so particularly intense with these modest Southern dudes.

You could say it’s because of the Panic family or community of like-minded individuals who follow the band, the friendly vibes from people around you, the drugs, shit like that. And while the show’s environment and the collective energy of the crowd surely has something to do with it, the feelings elicited from listening to Panic can be just as intense listening to it alone in a car. And I know it’s tough to walk from sore dancing feet after a Panic show, but I may never really know why. In the end there may be no way to really explain it, outside of experiencing it…

Widespread Panic :: Chicago Theatre :: April 7, 8, and 9.