That’s What She Said: Deep Down We’re Shallow

Sam

Easy skankin’

That’s What She Said are no joke

It’s easy to dismiss, out of hand, these high school bands who play at the Well, the Grange Hall, the Elks Club. They haven’t been around long enough to have been exposed to enough music, enough experiences, enough learning. They’re naïve and idealistic. They’re kids.

But — you saw this coming — that would be a horrible mistake. There’s nothing like the creativity, the impetuousness, the bravado of youth. (Damn if that doesn’t sound old.) And if you can get those same kids to have a sense of history, and not lend an undue importance or originality to what they’re doing, it’s possible they can combine their raw energies and talent into an enjoyable, if not revelatory, band. It’s the recipe that has served That’s What She Said extremely well.

Talk about young, these kids were born in the mid ’80s. They’re variously arrayed as students at Deering, Gray-New Gloucester, and Cape Elizabeth high schools. They populate the Portland Youth Wind Ensemble. They really like ska.

It’s a young person’s music, after all. With a driving two-tone rhythm, there’s not much complicated about it, and the shout-out choruses and horn blasts cater well to short attention spans and exuberant energy. However, as with other “young music” — three-chord punk, beat-box rap, acoustic folk — it can be really bad and derivative if there’s not a spark of imagination and talent to drive it.

That’s What She Said display both of these necessary qualities on their debut EP, Deep Down We’re Shallow (ah, how excellently self-aware). It is fun, danceable, well-produced and recorded, and engaging for even the most calloused musical connoisseur.

This is thanks in large part to frontman Dan Lohmeyer. His guitar rhythm adeptly moves from the two-tone bop that is the backbone of each song’s verses to the crunching alt-rock nods that punctuate many of the choruses. But it is his distinctive voice and honest (if not particularly witty) lyrics that really drive the album.

The disc’s opener, “Just Friends,” plays on a theme that resonates throughout the EP’s eight songs, and one that must resonate throughout the band’s many teenage lives: This girl I like doesn’t want to go out with me. With a nasally, crisp voice tinged wýth irony, Lohmeyer calls to mind the best of They Might Be Giants’ John Linnell and John Flansburgh, or even a bit of the Creegan Brothers, singing simply that “I wanna go out with you/ And I don’t wanna be your friend.” With a hyper-fast tempo, frenetic horns jamming their way into the tune, and call outs of “just friends,” the song works well as middle-class suburban Skatalites — none of the soul, but twice the energy.

“Not the Same” proves they can mix it up like the best of the Toasters or Pietasters. Drummer Ray Gauvin and bassist Sam Burns competently lead the band through numerous time changes, moving from a ballad opening, to “hup, hup, hup” dance-hall bandleading, to an alt-rock chorus where we even get some quality harmony.

That same harmonizing, featuring the female voices of tenor sax player Laura Zukowski and trumpeter Carol Jumper, opens “She Doesn’t Care,” another lament from sensitive-guy Lohmeyer about being painfully neglected: “Well she acts/ Like everybody else I know/ And she doesn’t care about me/ And she’ll never go with me/ To the shows.” Though he didn’t get to be a teenager until the decade was nearly over, Lohmeyer sounds eerily like a ’90s man.

He’s got a literary feel, too. Both “Gun to My Back” and “Games” make good use of metaphor, the latter employing the nice Clue-inspired turn of phrase, “I didn’t do it to you/ Not in the billiard room/ With the candlestick/ You did it to yourself/ Hiding in the negative space.”

With a legitimate tight and focused, four-member horn section (rounded out by sax players Adam Jackson and Adam Tinkle), and a solid knowledge of forbears like Reel Big Fish, Big D and the Kids Table, and the rest of the two-tone army, That’s What She Said have little trouble qualifying as above-average ska. Certainly, they should make a run at staying together once they go to college.

Sparks the Rescue: Hey Mr. Allure

Sam

To the Rescue

A new EP Sparks renewed interest

Young bands come and go. As Reindeer Records’ 22nd annual Reindeer Rock-Off gets set to kick off this Sunday [May, 2006], it’s important to remember that for every Jeremiah Freed or Howie Day, who make it from the finals to the major labels, there are hundreds who melt into obscurity, as high-school bands are wont to do. Still, finalists Gloria Red, Norwood, Passing Lane, Rocksmythe, and the Shams have more reason than ever to be reasonably hopeful that hard work and good songs will pay off with at least a dedicated and loyal fanbase (thanks to the power of Internet marketing), if not fame and outrageous fortune.

I am reminded of this by a great new EP by Sparks the Rescue, a band I saw as part of my judging duties at Reindeer Rock-Off 20, back when they were the three-piece band Pozer. They had matching unis, a cool banner behind them, and the bassist jumped off the top of his stack and nearly killed himself. I liked them quite a bit. But their songs were a bit lackluster, they couldn’t generate quite the sound they needed, and the vocals were a bit weak, so I didn’t put them first (nor, however, did I put in for Sammie Francis, the eventual first-female, first-solo-artist winner – I was a Stillview man).

Luckily, Pozer have addressed all of these perceived deficiencies in fine fashion in building Sparks the Rescue, a leader of Maine’s all-ages scene. Original members Toby McCallister (guitar and vocals), Ben Briggs (bass), and Nate Spencer (drums) first added vocalist/guitarist Pat O’Connell and Marty McMorrow (keys/other stuff) to fill out their sound and upgrade their vocals a bit. This worked pretty well. Their debut self-released disc (we’ll call it a full-length at seven songs), Stumbling Skyward, was an unexpected hit, selling well for the past year-plus on the local front and helping them to build a loyal following.

Since then, however, the lead vocals of Pat O’Connell and Toby McCallister have been augmented (not quite replaced) by the addition of Alex Roy, who’s simply a more polished and confident frontman. Plus, that’s all he’s got to do, leaving the guitarists to rip – especially on stage, where Sparks are known for an impressive performance, full of flailing about that’s just short of self-mutilation. The result is personified by Hey, Mr. Allure, a three-song statement that should propel the band into the ranks of Maine’s best-known bands.

Not that they’re unknown. Not by any means.

Between Myspace and PureVolume the band have more than 100,000 song listens under their belt, which isn’t exactly the same as going platinum, but is pretty impressive nonetheless and suggests success as the band embark on an east coast tour later this month that puts them in Virginia Beach, Nashville, Roseville (Michigan), Elizabethtown (Kentucky), and Glen Cove (New York), among other places, with shows likely to be added along the way. Like Killing Moon (nee Animal Suit Drive-by), among other local young bands, Sparks have utilized the ’Net’s immense power for disseminating information, paired it with good songwriting, energy, and a willingness to develop relationships with their fans, and turned it into a tangible musical career.

Two of Mr. Allure’s tracks, “Nurse! Nurse! (I’m Losing My Patience)” and “The Scene: Your Bedroom,” are featured even now on the band’s Myspace page, so purchase of the limited-run disc is as much show of support as anything. But for those who like to hear great music in full CD quality, it’s probably worth the buy even if you’ve heard the tracks five times a day for the last few months.

First of all, the band have this time enlisted the talents of Jonathan Wyman (Skyward was recorded by the able Terry Palmer at Dizzyland), and he’s employed his close-mic’ing techniques and big-sound sensibilities to create a much fuller sound, more Foo Fighters, more immediate. “Nurse! Nurse!,” too, shows off frontman Roy’s wonderfully crisp and reedy tenor, full of irony and sneer. It’s contrasted here with deranged screaming to good effect. It’s something the band feature often, and gets them past rock and roll and into a realm of emo and hardcore. On Skyward they possibly over-utilized the delivery technique, pairing it with the lead-singing like a form of harmony on many of the tracks, stripping some of the impact.

Also, the lyrics are easier to discern here, and they can be pretty good: “Oh, can we call the hospital?/ I’ve been sleeping with the nurses/ For medication.”

Later, Sparks kick off “Saco Boys Have No Class” with an old-school “let’s go” and then reach back again for the whininess that made the early Cure my high-school girlfriend’s favorite band. They employ the screaming again sparingly here, paired with some sour notes in the bridge to emphasize the pit of despair we’re meant to sympathize with. Also, they pair it with the lead vocals in the final reprise of the chorus, which is fairly stellar, but instead of harmonizing, the scream sings a different part with different lyrics entirely.

Add that kind of creativity to a song like “The Scene,” which features five of the six band members with vocal parts, and the band’s evolution is pretty evident. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be sharing 21+ stages with bands like Lost on Liftoff any time now. Which would be appropriate. Liftoff frontman Walt Craven’s old band, Goud’s Thumb, was once Illegal Jam, which, of course, performed in Reindeer Rock-Off 2, way back in 1984.

Some young bands just don’t go away.