Rustic Overtones

Rustic Overtones: Light at the End

Sam

There is a Light

Is it at the end, or just the beginning?

The shows are starting to pile up. What started as a pair of Rustic Overtones reunion shows at the Asylum has turned into what you might call a tour: “Yep,” confirms drummer Tony McNaboe, as if he can’t believe it himself, “we’re going to all pile into the van again…”

In a world where supply and demand are intricately linked, the Overtones — McNaboe, guitarist and vocalist Dave Gutter, keyboardist Spencer Albee, bassist Jon Roods, and horn men Dave Noyes, Jason Ward, and Ryan Zoidis — have got the factory running at full steam to crank out enough product to please the newly teeming masses. Exhibit #1 dropped Tuesday, July 24 [2007, which is when this review initially ran], in the form of Light at the End, which was initially advertised as an effort to bring some old tapes to light, but sure feels like a cohesive and impressive album, and certainly isn’t a reason for a kick-ass band to go back to not being a band at all.

This Saturday and Sunday, Rustic Overtones will play their first plugged-in, full-band shows in more than five years for a crowd that bought up all the tickets in less than a week, forcing the band to add two more shows the following weekend, if only because they felt bad for the kids ponying up as much as $50 (possibly more!) on eBay and the like. They’ll also now play shows at old haunts like Harper’s Ferry in Boston, a new haunt like the Stone Church in Portsmouth, then a gig in Albany for good measure.

Why stop there?

In answer to that question, McNaboe sounds a lot like Terry Francona — let’s not get ahead of ourselves, folks. But the man who got this whole thing going again sounds positively ecstatic about what they’ve accomplished in just a few months, “and things are going pretty well — who knows?”

What I know is that this is likely the band’s best album, with all apologies to Rooms by the Hour, which, judging by Bull Moose sales, is being discovered for the first time by plenty of new fans despite the fact that it was released first in 1998. (How popular are Rustic in this town? The manager of Beal’s Ice Cream tells me people even there freak when she plays Rooms over the cone joint’s tinny speakers.)

First of all, Light’s got the best version of “Hardest Way Possible,” which was on Rooms and Viva Nueva, the Tommy Boy release that ended a years-long odyssey from label signing to CD release in 2001. Why release this song a third time?

“This is the way we’ve always wanted to release it,” says Albee, “and now we finally can.” Featuring vintage, five-year-old Gutter vocals and a full string arrangement, it’s the most R&B of the three versions, and least aggressive, but don’t worry: They left in that crazy falsetto that finishes the tune. There’s a test for Gutter, should they choose to play the song live. His voice has definitely aged, gaining a smoky, world-weary quality that allows him to convey more emotion than ever before, but doesn’t keep him from grabbing you by the throat when the occasion arises.

Other old favorites are here as well, including live favorite “Rock Like War” (the inspiration for fan-blog www.rocklikewar.com [sadly, this no longer exists…], to which I am forever in debt for supplying me with an unbelievable live track of Rustic playing Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”). “Rock” is basically a song in two parts, a war and peace, if you will. In the front half, digitally enhanced horn blasts pound through the speakers in the chorus, just after Gutter has asked us to “wake me up in the summer, not the winter” (how’s that for fitting, what with the whole reunion in the summer of 2007 thing? Maybe I’m pushing it). In the second half, “we can stand out in the storm and fill this bottle full of rain and sing along” with a gentle keyboard bounce and horns that “sing” a “nah, nah, nah.”

Then get ready for a bang-up transition into track three, “Dear Mr. President,” a song that confers incredible power with nothing but a ukulele, acoustic guitar, and a simple bass line. In a nuanced and narrative collection of verses typical of Gutter’s hip-hop flavored writing we are introduced to a stinging indictment of the war, care of “a soldier with the 82nd Airborne stationed overseas/ My family and my friends are praying that God is watching over me/ Even God can’t save us now.” The chorus runs reggae just enough to remind you of Marley’s best populist moments. It’s thrilling, really.

To put this track in such a prominent spot on their first disc in six years, to reintroduce themselves this way to a fanbase that’s had plenty of time to move on, shows real guts and conviction. And lest you think this smacks of piling on, remember that Gutter and Roods’ Paranoid Social Club was one of the first local bands to write and perform anti-war material following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Later, in “Oxygen,” we’re implored to “make love not war” in a track that was recorded while the invasion of Iraq was just a Bush daydream while he whittled away hours between executions in Texas.

Other new tracks include the uber-singalong “Troublesome,” the biting and sarcastic “Black Leather Bag” (listen for Gutter’s high harmony on the bridge), and the title track, which comes last at track 10, punctuated by piercing horns and a swirling keyboard part. As with many songs here, Rustic finds a way to take dark material and infuse it with hope. Though “this wicked world is twisted sideways,” “all things will turn around.”

Oh, and speaking of hope, let me just say this: There is a hidden track, and Rustic nerds are going to freak out. Freak out to the point where you “can’t stop laughing,” maybe.

The song here that gets me in full freak-out is “Carsick,” with fat-bottomed horns and the single best chorus on the album, a wonderful mix of pleasure and nostalgia: “The radio is loud, but nothing’s on.” There’s an extended instrumental break that shows you what the seven-piece band can do without a single player soloing, and then we’re reminded, “If we drive slow/ We won’t get there at all.”

That’s right, as Twisted Roots would say, “Brick on the gas.” Next stop, Albany.

Rustic Overtones: Let’s Start a Cult, Part II

Sam

The show must go on

The Cult of Rustic Overtones continues

In the basement of the Franco Center in L/A this past Saturday [this was November 23, 2013] , various of the Rustic Overtones are signing CDs and T-shirts, posters and packs of Rizlas. Jeff Beam is upstairs opening their benefit show for the Good Shepherd Food Bank and the guys are eager to chat about their new album, a second volume to follow on 2012’s Let’s Start a Cult.

Jon Roods: “What do you think?”

Sam: “We were just listening to it on the way up. It’s so well orchestrated…”

Roods: “Yeah, we’re grown-ass men, now.”

Later, watching the seven-piece band, augmented by a four-piece string section, there were certainly signs of maturity. Some gray hair, maybe thinning in places. Frontman Dave Gutter’s daughter gamboling about. Dave Noyes’ epic Cosby sweater.

You’d never know it from hearing them play their hits, though. They opened with a huge “Hardest Way Possible,” a song they’ve released on three of their now eight full-length records (it’s worth noting that next year will be the 20th anniversary of their first album, 1994’s Shish Boom Bam). The singalong that marks the second movement of “Rock Like War” was soaring. And “Gas on Skin” – well, from the extended, rippling jam to Gutter’s crisp and powerful delivery, it was as easy as ever to see why it’s been a live favorite since Viva Nueva in 2001. I’m not sure how you could stay in your seat for that tune.

Except there were plenty of fans sitting in the Franco’s Center’s plush red seats.

Hey, the fans are getting older, too. Just as there were plenty of kids who couldn’t help but crowd the stage, there was an equal contingent content to nod their heads in relative comfort. Similarly, while the Overtones may be playing live with as much passion and precision as they ever have, on their albums they have exchanged some of their youthful aggression and fire for a mature and worldly approach.

Be glad they did. The result of years of experimentation with ska, R&B, hip-hop, rock, and Latin sounds is some of the most progressive and interesting music being made today. While almost all of popular music can be bucketed into electronic/rhythmic, country/stringband, and radio rock, the Overtones continue to forge new ground with intricate horn parts, layered keyboard lines, and lyrical work from Gutter that shows he’s never been more inspired.

The biggest departure from the rest of their oeuvre on Let’s Start a Cult, Part II, though, comes in the form of Gary Gemetti, who has now truly settled into the drummer’s spot vacated by Tony McNaboe and brought with him a jazz-influenced, quick and light hand that drives the eight songs here with a skittering urgency you haven’t heard from Rustic before. What he’s doing live sometimes sounds like the programmed beats from the Postal Service. Good God is his cymbal work impressive.

He’s best on “Martyrs,” where the horns match his Latin vibe and help introduce a guitar solo from Lettuce/Soulive’s Eric Krasno. Gutter is quiet in the open, but lets energy seep into the first taste of the chorus and then consistently delivers the hook with evolving couplets. Best is this one: “We don’t need no torture/ We get obsessed over pleasure or pain/ Oh, we could be mothers and fathers/ We don’t need to be martyrs.”

Fans of his vocal work should notice that he’s still got the chops, delivering trademark screams on stage with everything he’s got while his work in the verses has tended to sweeten as he’s become more contemplative with age. It’s also worth noting, as on “Bedside Manor,” that Matt Taylor has finally filled the keyboard/harmony vocals chair in a way that hasn’t happened since Spencer Albee left the band half a decade ago.

Gutter’s wordplay on “High on Everything” is at its most agile and poignant. There’s a touch of “Gas on Skin” in the intro, and a better version of the low-down sulk of “I Like It Low,” and then Gutter insistently right in your ear: “They gave us alcohol, it made it hard to focus/ They gave us Adderall, it made us smell the roses/ They gave us Claritin, they gave us Ambien/ We woke up in the ambulance.” Gutter to delivers, too, a guitar break in the style of ’80s Jeff Beck.

At its core, though, this album is all about bassist Jon Roods. Not only did he engineer it, as he’s done since New Way Out, but his playing has become a highlight of the band’s songwriting. He’s present right from the get-go of “The Show Must Go On,” with a dynamic line that is the ultimate mood-setting for a song that, itself, is designed to set the mood for the album as a whole, with Beatles-style backing vocals and vibrant horn lines.

If Roods isn’t the most musical bassplayer in town, I don’t know who is. On stage, he and Gutter have become inseparable, always set up in tandem to the front, with Roods acting as an unflappable melodic foundation that allows Gutter to be emotionally pyrotechnic.

Such is “Us Vs. Other People,” with spacey keyboards, congas, and an ‘80s vibe like an R&B version of Alphaville. Combined with the horn lines, Rood’s bounce creates something like a fusion base that supports an aching descending vocal riff from Gutter in the chorus: “Still, in essence we’re the same.”

Which is all there is to it. This is a band with talent that has brought them into more side projects and opportunities than is worthwhile to recount. That has had every opportunity to abandon a big-band rock effort that hardly makes sense anymore in today’s music industry. While most bands pare into duos and trios to make the the finances work, Rustic goes ahead and swells to 11 pieces with the strings, as they did on Saturday night to magical effect.

Yet, still, in essence, they’re the same.