Dave Gutter

Rustic Overtones: New Way Out

Sam

Days of the New

The orchestral stylings of Rustic Overtones 2.0

When drummer Tony McNaboe delivered the burned copy of Rustic Overtones’ New Way Out, he tucked it inside the packaging of the re-released and re-mastered Long Division, the band’s first proper album, complete with horn section and keyboardist Spencer Albee. It’s fitting, as New Way Out is the first proper album by Overtones 2.0, post Albee and seemingly with a brand-new string section, present on each of the album’s 13 tracks.

It would seem that 2008’s Light at the End was just that, the end of an era, despite it having been released to trumpet the band’s reunion. There is no doubt that New Way Out is again appropriately named, a record that, for all its Dave Gutter-penned lyrics and Tony McNaboe-pounded skins and Jon Roods-plucked bass, is far from that core of primal energy that launched that band and drove it to its many heights (and then became Paranoid Social Club, though we’ll get to that in a bit).

In its place is a textured and dense amalgam of the collected band’s many tastes and endeavors – the funky soul of Zoidis’ Soulive; the gentle orchestral waves of Dave Noyes’ Seekonk; Jason Ward’s concert band roots; Gutter’s sedate solo work with Evan Casas – as captured in a practice space cum recording studio presided over largely by Roods. Finally endowed with a freedom to start from scratch, unencumbered by manager, producer, or label, and armed with some 15 years of experience as professional musicians, they have crafted what is clearly their most important artistic work, though it may be at the expense of some of the fire and brimstone that once drove their fans’ frenzy.

The band’s hits – “Simple Song,” “Check,” “Combustible,” “Iron Boots,” “Rock Like War,” “C’Mon,” even “Hardest Way Possible,” to an extent – have largely featured a Gutter at his most urgent and strident. I can barely picture him live without seeing his eyes smashed shut, his spine ruler straight and muscles taut, his fist punching the air.

That pose makes but few appearances on New Way Out. For me, the band have always lived and died with Gutter; now I and many others are experiencing him in a new sublimated role. Rustic haven’t quite become the Borg, but they are as much of a cohesive unit as you’ve ever heard them.

This may be because there are so many of them it can be hard for any one person to stand out. The liner notes list no fewer than 29 musicians that lend talent to the record (and you thought Spencer’s School Spirit Mafia was big…). And for that matter, the band members wear tons of hats. Roods alone gets credit for “upright + electric bass, keys, percussion, vibraphone, bells, guitar, vox, vacuum, wd-40, broom, delay.” I’m not even sure if a couple of those are jokes. The songs are so layered there could be virtually anything in there.

Rustic are fully invested and unapologetic, though. The opening track is the title track, coming to life with rising orchestral surge as from a Broadway musical and moving to a languid chorus: “I found a new way out/ If you don’t want to make a change, you should shut your mouth.”

With that statement made, however, they move into a “Drive My Car” Beatles take called “Everybody Needs to Be Somebody’s Friend,” where the horns again bleet, Gutter takes a more swaggering approach, and “whoo-hoo-hoo” backing vocals punctuate the verse. Here’s where you might notice Albee’s absence, though. He may have added harmony in the chorus, and probably would have pushed to popify the chorus as well, instead of ending it moving downward to make it more bluesy. As it is, the finish is dark and brooding, meditative before washing away into static.

“Nuts and Bolts” doesn’t get any sunnier, with a goth intro full of cello transposed with a fluttering flute, accompanied by a narrative of a woman who’s been caught in a car accident, and now has “sutures in her skin/ Like tracks for tiny little trains.” Nor does “Like the Blues,” a sprawling and lugubrious ballad that features a somewhat rare extended guitar solo from Gutter, crunchy and gritty against the purity of the backing strings. At just under seven minutes, it’s been trimmed significantly from the 10-minute-plus version they previewed for me in the practice space one temperate summer evening. “Can’t Shake You” has a bit of Wilco-style rock mid-song, and some soulful female backing vocals, but generally lounges out to five minutes of ballad.

Even the more upbeat tunes don’t exactly rock out. “All Together” is an us-against-the-world anthem, cool as hell as Gutter and Nigel Hall trade riffs in the verse to create a feel like Gnarls Barkley doing “Crazy” with the full orchestra at the 2007 Grammys. “Downside of Looking up” you may have heard on the radio, its trumpet trills and rising strings giving way to a bass-riffed bridge filled with ghostly chanting.

“The Same Does Not Apply” shows off reverbed Gutter strut and some “Start Me Up” guitar bits, but, seriously, is that the upbeat song?

With just about every tune here, the string sections, written about by Noyes and Zoidis, are downright lovely, but is that why anyone listens to Rustic Overtones? The string section? Maybe they will now. The band will have to hope their fans have grown with them and no longer thrive solely on those itchy ska parts, Gutter’s primal screams, the explosive choruses that send a crowd into a frenzy.

Because, if they did [in 2009, anyway], they’d probably just go see Paranoid Social Club: Gutter, Roods, and McNaboe playing some of the funnest rock music you’ll ever come across in a beer-soaked club.

When songs off New Way Out get finished, crowds will applaud genuinely, they’ll be awed and amazed, they’ll turn and hug their significant others and mouth, “can you believe that?” Which is great. It’s just that when “Check” gets finished people are bathed in sweat, hopping on the balls of their feet and screaming at the top of their lungs. The chorus of “Combustible” is one of my top-10 all-time favorite live-show moments. Every time I see it.

And there’s nothing that says the live set can’t have elements of both. I just have to admit I wish this new album had elements of both. I’m awed. I’m amazed. But I’m not bathed in sweat. Then again, I can get the swine flu for that.

Paranoid Social Club: Axis II

Sam

Join the Club

Paranoid, Social, and otherwise

In their secret location, on the outskirts of Portland, among blue-collar types and rotting cars, the Paranoid Social Club conspire. Though their plans hint at world domination, for the time being they’re happy with small bits of mischief making: cold-calling studio execs and management possibilities; setting up elaborate treasure hunts whereby fans can find their first recorded effort, Axis: II the Demo buried in the ground fronting the police station, behind the counter at the Treasure Chest, or behind the bar at Platinum Plus; debating whether to play a show at UMaine/Orono for $80.

“Everybody who wants to play the show raise your hand,” says Dave Gutter, ringleader. No hands go up.

There’s an interesting dynamic at work here: The three members of this rock band (prone to industrial wash and illbient snippets) want desperately to succeed with their music — but they just don’t give a fuck.

They do a promotional gig on a local radio station prior to a show to help turnout, then drunkenly storm the station’s studios later in the week. They write their multi-tracked songs to include a DJ’s live performance, but they’ve performed with at least three different guys, one of whom is now in jail. They’re on time for the interview, but when I get back to the office there’s a message I missed asking me to bring beer.

Their history as Rustic Overtones — which would have morphed into Paranoid Social Club eventually — makes Gutter, bassist Jon Roods, and drummer Marc Boisvert aware of the cold music-biz realities and the responsibilities that come with them. But that experience has also left them profoundly jaded, insular, and a little bit crazy.

Hence the theme song.

“At the Paranoid Social Club / If you didn’t make the cut, make the grade, maybe if you’re just afraid/ At the Paranoid Social Club / Open up and discuss the pain, get it off your chest, I know sometimes you feel like there’s nothing left, but you’re not alone.” Gutter’s voice is soothing, comforting, inviting, understanding, and, well, creepy. The music is a sort of post-lounge, with a bossa-nova swing tied to a Bloodhound Gang (think 3-2-1 Contact) bass line.

It’s a far cry from the Monkees’ happy-go-lucky clubhouse tune: “We’re just tryin’ to be friendly / Come and watch us sing and play / We’re the young generation / And we’ve got something to say.”

PSC are the young generation, too. Except this one is asking you to “save me from the guns and the bombs / Or the ones I thought were friends to me now we just don’t get along.” Or try the chorus from “Save Me”: “Save me from the Policeman, from Mother Nature, from the government / Can you save me from what I have become? / Can you understand?”

Disaffected by the establishment (read: the major labels that have used them up like juice boxes), PSC turn inward. With a recording set-up provided (somewhat ironically) by ArtistDirect to Poverty (whom Gutter deserves some credit for discovering) and thus to PSC, Gutter, Roods, and Boisvert put in long days — “15, 20 hours a day,” says Boisvert, and I can’t tell if he’s kidding — crafting songs on the now-ubiquitous Pro-Tools, then figuring out how to play them live.

This leads to introspective songs like “Soul Demolition,” containing the obvious Rustic reference, “We built a house then we all moved out / We burned it down.” Locked up with each other, they seem to be exploring just where it is they’ve found themselves.

“It’s like when Jon and I had just got out of high school,” says Gutter, “and we were calling up clubs every time we needed a gig. Then we’d get one and our dads would come along and take us in their mini-vans.”

Maybe that explains the youthful exuberance tied with detached irony behind “Wasted,” which is quickly becoming the drinking game of choice amongst the college crowd. As is a Paranoid Social Club writing theme, it opens simply enough with the chorus: “We all got wasted, all fucked up and wasted.” (If you’re wondering about the game, try taking a sip every time they sing the word “wasted,” and you’ll understand the challenge.) Meanwhile, DJ Shade cuts in snippets of Beastie Boys (“It’s time to buy ale”) and Eminem (“Man, you’re wasted”). It’s not too hard to envision scantily clad spring breakers with their hands in the air.

What starts out as a party anthem, however, quickly devolves into self parody. “We all got wasted on 99 bottles of booze,” sings Gutter in his best Adam Sandler impersonation, “I only danced with your friend cuz I thought she was you / We got wasted / Cuz there was nothing to do / I must of had five drinks but I thought it was two.” As will become his trademark with PSC, Gutter’s clipped delivery is an excellent mix of hip-hop precision and rock growl on most of the disc, but here his nasal whine is mocking and cajoling. It’s fun, but it’s also quite depressing.

As is much of the rest of their demo. “Headphones,” led by Roods’s sinister bass, details most of the kids you see strolling down the street, staring at their feet, cut off literally and metaphorically from the world at-large. “Evolution” references heroýs gone, like Kurt Cobain, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and John Lennon. “I always thought that when I grew up, I’d be just like you,” Gutter wails, “Just like rock ’n’ roll / Just like evolution,” as Boisvert desperately keeps time by the bell of the ride cymbal.

Like the best kind of first date, the pretty face of PSC’s layered sounds belie a deep and tortured soul worth working to discover. “You kind of have to be bitter and jaded after what we’ve done for the past 10 years,” admits Gutter. “But if we were really jaded, we wouldn’t be playing anymore. We’ve got something good going here and we’re appreciative.”

Maybe that’s why they only sell these demo discs at shows: The fans who care about the music, “who have some kind of attachment to the band,” can get their PSC fix. (“And we tell people with no money to just go download it off the Web site,” says Roods.) Or maybe it’s because they’re savvy enough to know that sound-scanning a couple hundred discs at local music stores can actually work against them in their quest for a “deal.”

It’s hard to tell with these guys. They’re paranoid.