It’s 8:10 on a Wednesday night, and West Hollywood feels asleep. The second in a five-act bill is about to take the stage to a nearly empty room at the Troubadour, a landmark club hosting a midweek smorgasbord of mostly anonymous bands.
But as the members of the Redwalls — a quartet from northwest suburban Deerfield — step to their microphones, it’s as though someone outside has blown a whistle announcing that cash prizes will be given away indoors. More than 100 people hustle into the club so as not to miss the opening chord at 8:15 p.m., and as the band sprints out of the gate heads begin to bob. The audience of twentyish adults cheers from start to finish: the maximum-R&B call-and-response of “It’s Alright,” the us-against-them political vitriol of “Falling Down,” a rave-up version of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” Forty minutes later, the place empties out again as the next band sets up, saddled with the impossible task of following the best set anyone will see that night.
The Redwalls — four skinny guys in jackets and ties whose fresh faces still don’t look as if they’ve been introduced to a razor — aren’t the toast of L.A., yet. But as the Troubadour set affirms, they’ve got the goods musically to get there. They place a premium on elements long missing from the rock landscape: blue-eyed soul harmonies, guitar breaks that ring out like little songs in themselves, and swinging grooves. And they echo a long line of Chicago-area power-pop and garage-rock bands, from the Shadows of Knight to Material Issue, who perfected the art of the melodically rich, guitar-driven three-minute single.
“I’m not sure this kind of music fit in with anything else when we started playing together [in high school],” says singer-guitarist Andrew Langer the next day, sitting in a conference suite in the Capitol Records tower. “Sometimes you’ve just gotta be part of your own scene.”
On June 21, Capitol will release the group’s major-label debut, “De Nova,” and the band will headline Metro June 24 and join Lollapalooza in Grant Park July 23-24. The Redwalls are part of the strongest wave of Chicago pop and rock bands to surface in a decade, since Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, Material Issue, Local H and Eleventh Dream Day gave the city a mainstream presence on the rock charts in the early ’90s.
Even without an album out yet overseas, the Redwalls’ fan base is growing internationally. Keyboardist Tim Rice-Oxley of British hitmakers Keane told the Tribune earlier this year that the Redwalls “have a great youthful enthusiasm and zest. . . . [They’re] a good kind of old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll band.” The quartet not only shared stages with Keane on its recent North American tour, it was handpicked to open for Oasis on its summer tour across England.
The Redwalls aren’t the only Chicago band making waves in recent weeks. Well-received albums have arrived from wiseguy popsters Fall Out Boy (whose “From Under the Cork” debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard album chart), orchestral-popsters Head of Femur (who debuted material from their latest album with a 21-piece orchestra at Metro last month), post-punkers the Ponys (subjects of a recent rave in Rolling Stone) and Sunday Runners (whose music premiered on the nationally televised teen drama “The O.C.” before its self-titled debut was released on the newly minted Machine label). In the pipeline are new albums of thumping electro-rock from the Assassins, exuberant Cheat Trick-style pop anthems from OK GO and pop-punk from Mest (which will play the main stage during the Warped Tour, arriving July 24 at Tweeter Center in Tinley Park). Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, the M’s and Frisbie are writing and recording new songs to follow up acclaimed debut albums, and Lite FM is returning with its second album of elegantly twisted songcraft, “Matchstick Suicide Camouflage.”
“It seemed like Chicago [rock] music was really good in the early ’90s, and died down in the mid- and late-’90s,” says Matt Focht, one of the founders of Head of Femur. “But now it seems things are picking up again. A lot of young people either in college or just leaving college are moving here, and more of these people are starting bands. It’s easier than ever to start a band because of home recording, and Chicago is so easy to maneuver compared to New York. There are lots of places to play. People will give you a show when you’re young and new, and it makes for an incredible scene.”
Focht arrived in town with fellow Nebraska natives Ben Armstrong and Mike Elsener in 2001, primarily because the city was centrally located. They soon tapped into a burgeoning network of musicians to flesh out the orchestral ambitions of their debut album, “Ringodom of Proctor,” and the even more elaborate follow-up, “Hysterical Stars” (Spin Art). Despite the grandeur of the productions, the band was able to keep studio costs relatively low; “Stars’ cost less than $25,000 to produce.
“It was nice going into this recording knowing we could write for whatever instrumentation we wanted, from a harp player to a string quartet, and not feel at all restricted,” Armstrong says.
“About the only thing we couldn’t get was a children’s choir,” jokes Elsener. “But we did end up getting Julie Pomerleau, who has a nice high voice, and her little son.”
Bands such as Scotland Yard Gospel Choir take a similarly expansive approach to recordmaking, incorporating classical instruments to flesh out their folk-rock tunes. Others, such as the Ponys, focus on jagged guitars in a more austere setting. What this new wave of Chicago bands shares is a love of the song, an allegiance to melody. It’s a Midwestern pop-rock classicism defined by Cheap Trick’s “Southern Girls,” Material Issue’s “Renee Remains the Same” and Shoes’ “Tomorrow Night.” Today, that sound has no greater exponent than the Redwalls.
Julian Raymond, vice president of A&R at Capitol Records, signed the Redwalls in 2003 and says they remind him of other Midwestern bands with a strong song-oriented sensibility. “It’s a great breeding ground for this sort of thing: songs, soul, roots,” he says. “In general, bands from the Midwest seem more connected to their music than people on the coasts, where there’s a tendency to be more trendy. In the Midwest, it’s what you grow up with, and you stick to your guns doing it no matter what anyone else says.”
The band members, ranging in age from 20 to 22, had already played a string of record-company showcases in Los Angeles by the time bassist Justin Baren and guitarist Andrew Langer received their diplomas from Deerfield High School in 2003. Back then they were known as the Pages, and they attracted major-label attention on the strength of the songs written for their self-financed debut, “Universal Blues” (Undertow). It was a collection that got by on sheer exuberance rather than originality, with its heavy debt to mid-’60s British Invasion rock. Justin Baren and his older brother, guitarist Logan Baren, had discovered the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding and Motown before they were teens, and their course as songwriters and singers was set.
“Those records had more soul,” Justin Baren says. “We don’t like just old stuff, we like good stuff. We’re big fans of melody.”
“We were into the modern things going on, and then I heard the Beatles `blue’ album [`The Beatles/1967-1970′ hits compilation] when I was 12,” adds Logan Baren. “Then we discovered Dylan, and it was obvious to us that the [stuff] coming out today couldn’t compare. In high school, we were surprised that no one else could see that.”
Not afraid of work
The brothers’ voices have a grainy, cutting quality that can send a chill up a listener’s neck, and Langer also sings the occasional lead. All three write songs. Drummer Ben Greeno packs a wallop, but without stinting on the swing. The quartet’s work ethic — relentless touring and songwriting — enabled them to up the ante when it came time to record “De Facto” with producer Rob Schnapf (whose credits include Beck, Elliott Smith and the Vines) last summer in Los Angeles.
“We never turned down a job,” Logan Baren says. “We felt the only way to get good was by playing. We even played a wedding in Evanston once.”
Despite their determination, the Redwalls’ youth was rarely an advantage. They found themselves standing outside in the cold waiting for some gigs, because they weren’t old enough to enter the bar.
And when major labels came calling once a demo for their debut album began circulating in 2003, they acknowledged they felt overwhelmed.
“It was a process of learning who we could trust and who we couldn’t,” Langer says. Capitol Records’ Raymond finally reeled them in because he didn’t want to tamper with their approach.
“Their audacity was just amazing,” he says. “I heard a song [on their demo] called `Colorful Revolution’ that was as if Bob Dylan had gone to London in the late ’60s instead of making `Nashville Skyline.’ It was humorous, bold, an I-can’t-believe-they’re-pulling-this-off feeling.”
Though the label wanted the Redwalls to re-record a half-dozen tracks from their debut album for “De Nova,” the band succeeded in winnowing the number down to two so as to make room for newer songs they were more excited about.
“We learned pretty quickly you have to fight for what you want,” Langer says. “If you’re passive, you’re gonna get screwed.”
No trend-hoppers
“They’re smart, headstrong, stubborn individuals,” says Raymond with a laugh. “They’re not trend-hoppers, and their roots are firm in what they like and what they want to do. If we had advice on things they should do differently, we had to come prepared to make the case because they’d have us for lunch.”
Horns, keyboards and Mellotron-powered strings were added to a handful of tracks, accentuating the soul-fired grooves, but otherwise the album is straight-up Redwalls.
The songwriting has outgrown some of the more obvious retro references on the debut, and the anger flashed in “Falling Down” (“In times like these, you better watch what you say/Watch them take your [expletive] rights away”) is a welcome addition. But political commentary isn’t the band’s focus. They’d rather be known for rocking the house. And if national success follows, as it did for Midwestern bar bands such as Shadows of Knight, Cheap Trick and Material Issue, that would be just fine.
“The last thing we want is people standing and watching with their arms folded,” Logan Baren says. “It’s physical music. It’s about good songs, good melodies. It’s about having a good time.”
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A brief history of Chicago rock
1966: Shadows of Knight. A garage-rock cover of Them’s “Gloria” reaches the top 10.
1967: Buckinghams. The horn-inflected single “Kind of a Drag” hits No. 1.
1969: Chicago Transit Authority. Later known as Chicago, the jazz-rocking CTA bows with a top-20 album and the hits “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and “Beginnings.”
1975: Styx. After its debut album fails to chart, the progressive-rock quintet hits with the single “Lady.”
1977: Shoes. A homemade recording by this Zion power-pop band, “Black Vinyl Shoes,” presages punk’s do-it-yourself spirit.
1979: Cheap Trick. The Rockford quartet scores an international hit with an album that wasn’t even supposed to be released in America, “Live at Budokan.”
1981: The Effigies. The “Haunted Town” EP becomes the first key recording of the Chicago punk era, paving the way for Big Black, Naked Raygun and countless others.
1982: Survivor. “Eye of the Tiger” becomes a massive hit from the “Rocky III” movie soundtrack.
1986. Big Black. “Atomizer” is a noise-rock masterpiece.
1987: Richard Marx. “Don’t Mean Nothing” begins a string of seven straight top-10 hits.
1988: Ministry. “The Land of Rape and Honey” becomes a template for industrial-rock.
1993: Smashing Pumpkins. “Siamese Dream” debuts in the top 10 and becomes an alternative-rock touchstone.
1993: Liz Phair. “Exile in Guyville” changes the course of indie rock.
1994: Tortoise. Instrumental soundscapes on self-titled debut usher in post-rock era.
2001: Wilco. “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” rejected by Reprise Records for supposed lack of commercial viability, debuts at No. 13 and becomes national cause celebre.
— Greg Kot
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gregkot@aol.com
