self-evident
"Angular"
(Blue Worm Records; 2003) |
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Pulse of the Twin Cities
"Angular" (Blue Worm Records; 2003)
by P.J. Morel
What’s wrong with complex music? Rock snobs roll their eyes
with disdain at the mention of any band that happens to dig something
other than the usual verse-chorus-verse pop arrangement. “It’s
not rock,” they say. “Rock is folk music. It’s
not a symphony. These guys should learn to play violins.”
Granted, most of the bands they’re rolling their eyes at deserve
the treatment. Seventies monsters like ELP and Kansas took orchestral
rock to mind-numbing depths, drawing out a handful of guitar riffs
into flimsy house-of-cards “masterpieces” that were
easily recognized for what they are.
More recently, buy-it-in-bulk jam bands like Dave Mathews have
been equally egregious in their use of never-ending “interlude”
passages to pad otherwise brief, radio friendly arrangements. If
the complaint is that some bands need more editing, not less, then
I’m in complete agreement.
On the other hand, I sometimes feel like rock is a bit too smug
about its remedial status. Rock fans have turned “progressive”
into a dirty word and exile any would-be innovators to the netherworld
of dork rock. Bands like the Dismemberment Plan have been out to
prove that that’s not fair.
For the past few years there’s been a local band in your
midst that’s been doing the same.
Self-Evident is a trio of talented young musicians who obviously
take playing very seriously, but know how to make a song stand on
it’s own. Lately I’ve found their combination of jazz-quality
musicianship and pop song-craft quite inspiring. It’s a hard
thing to describe, because I don’t mean to pigeonhole the
band: I feel like any introduction that mentions their progressive
sensibility is bound to turn a lot of people off. But I hear that
sort of complexity in their music, and it’s important to note
that I like it because of that complexity, not despite it.
“I guess our angle on the whole thing is, yes we write some
complicated stuff, but we write music to write music,” guitarist
and singer Conrad Mach says. And it comes out that way. Self-Evident’s
most recent album, Angular, out this year on Blue Worm Records,
is testimony to that. It has elements of punk, metal, math rock
and pop, but it’s distinguished by the cohesiveness of the
songs.
You can tell by listening that Self-Evident's oddball blend of
styles depends in large part on the personal chemistry of the band
for cohesion. Guitarist Mach, bassist Tom Berg and drummer Brian
Heitzman have developed their signature style through countless
hours of playing together. "Back in ‘97 me and Brian
were playing in another project that wasn't really going anywhere,"
Berg explains.
"We were fresh out of high school, and we were at a point
where we were like, 'we should do something more serious.' And that
was when we hooked up with Conrad. So I guess it's been going on
for six years now. Weird."
As may be expected, the band's tight relationship weighs heavily
on the songwriting process, which begins and ends with instrumental
interplay. "One of us will write a part and we'll kinda jam
something out, work it into a part, and then we'll write a song
around that or write that into a song," says Berg. "It's
kind of a group effort, more or less."
What I find most impressive about the band is their playing. Like
a lot of people, I tend to dismiss musicianship beyond the obvious
fact that it takes great musicians to make a great band. And I certainly
don’t mean to imply that Mach, for instance, excellent guitarist
that he is, plays with drab Joe Satriani precision. But there are
parts of Angular that I find very moving just for the quality of
the playing, “Solidarity” for example: the song begins
with a lurching, sort of ominous riff that has all three members
rumbling along. The vocal drifts in high and plaintive, and the
song builds as it shifts between melancholy, melodic passages and
the gurgling verse riff.
You get the sense, just from the notes, that the song is articulating
a feeling quite different to the triumphal notion of “Solidarity”
that the lyrics suggest. It’s the sound of someone losing
the fight. The song comes to a head when the bass and drums drop
out, and Mach’s guitar lets loose with something that sounds
like a last gasp, a cry of defeat, before Berg and Heitzman return
to carry the song out like a wounded fighter.
I admit, some songs on Angular work better for me than others,
but you expect as much when someone is trying to come up with a
new formula, not perfect an existing one. And the lyrics, sparse
as they are, are sometimes a bit too nondescript, fragments of personal
situations that aren't quite unique enough to illicit much sympathy
from the listener. But there's a core of real emotion in the music
that does that, and some sturdy lyrics would take Self-Evident that
much further.
I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel like buzz bands, especially
local buzz bands, get attention because they do a well-known style
particularly well. None of us can go see the Buzzcocks at the Triple
Rock on a Friday night, but hey we can go see the...whoever. That
simulacrum earns some bands a big crowd. Self-Evident isn't one
of those bands. They're not doing anything terribly hip, stylistically
speaking. What they are doing is making compelling, moving music
from the notes up, making a conscious effort to avoid convention
and speaking with their own voices. If things sometimes get complex,
well...who said life was simple?
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