U.S. Maple has a steadily-growing reputation as one of the more challenging avant-garde rock bands in Chicago or anywhere else, but drummer Pat Samson says the local quartet is “really trying to write rock songs.”
Instead of verse-chorus-verse arrangements and catchy melodies, though, U.S. Maple’s vision of rock incorporates weird guitar sounds, lurching drums, wheezy vocals and an ongoing tug-of-war between order and chaos. The Wallflowers they ain’t, but U.S. Maple, who perform tonight at the Empty Bottle, are daring, complex and worth the attention of listeners with a taste for the unusual.
The group of ex-Northern Illinous University students formed three years ago. “We lucked out,” Samson says. “Each player brings to the table something entirely different that works well together.”
“I bring suggestions,” says vocalist Al Johnson. “(Guitarist Mark Shippy) is completely crazy,” Samson adds, while he and guitarist Todd Rittmann (the band has no bass player) “keep everything within some kind of foundation.”
That foundation isn’t always apparent to listeners who encounter the band’s two records, released on the local independent label Skin Graft.
“A lot of people that come to see the band (in concert) . . . can’t believe that we can play the record,” Johnson observes. “A lot of people think the record is improvised.”
The challenge of recreating U.S. Maple’s songs live is even greater now, given the growing disorder of the band’s compositions. With its bursts of cacophony balanced by whiplash riffs and straightforward rhythms, the group’s debut, “Long Hair in Three Stages,” kept one foot in recognizable rock. On its second release, “Sang Phat Editor,” guitar pings and squiggles, frenetic drumming and blurted vocals seem to drift along haphazardly.
It’s the difference between being watching a condemned building being torn down and wandering through the half-demolished wreckage as walls and ceilings collapse without warning. “We’re good at evolving, or de-evolving,” Johnson points out.
The songs begin with Shippy, Rittmann and Samson exploring ideas — “finding little things that seem appropriate in the progression of the songs,” Shippy says — until they have an initial composition. “Then Al comes in and tears the whole thing apart,” Samson notes.
With his raspy voice and inaudible lyrics, Johnson says he’s trying to create the effect of “a lot of conversations at once, hearing shouting in the street that’s not articulated well, but has a presence. . . .”
Samson says, “I draw energy from the idea that we’re doing something that’s not going to get conventional (rewards). It kind of influences and spurs me on.”
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U.S. Maple play tonight at the Empty Bottle. TV Pow and VHS or Beta open. Music starts as 10 p.m. Tickets are $7. Call 773-276-3600.
