Meat Wave’s band name might make you chuckle (or gag a little), but its sound is hardly a joke. The group’s post-punk sounds a little mean, even, with its skronky, sinewy, anti-pop angles and singer/guitarist Chris Sutter’s vocals, which often sound like he’s sneering in disgust. The group has built a robust local fan base, due in part to its ubiquity; a glance at a local concert calendar shows them on shows with punk bands, garage bands or aggressive guitar bands like themselves. The trio is a familiar favorite, with a sound dexterous enough to place it in several scenes at once. Drummer Ryan Wizniak spoke to the Tribune last week from Avondale while his bandmates were at work. This is an edited excerpt of that conversation.
Q: How did Meat Wave get together?
A: Chris and I, we played in another band as well but wanted to do aggressive music, something more aggressive than what we were doing in that band, just something different. We wanted a bass player, and Joe (Gac) was the first person to come to mind because he is such a presence and really great guy. He had recorded some of our other bands, and he plays pretty heavy.
Q: Did you want to play in a more aggressive band in order to express a different energy, or just a different sound?
A: The other bands we play in are energetic in different ways, but this one is more primal, and they were more pop-oriented. This is more negative (laughs).When the three of us got together, it was different, it transformed into this primal and aggressive thing.
Q: Tell me about the most recent recording.
A: These first five songs we had originally planned to release as singles because we didn’t think we had a record in us, but they ended up coming out on cassette first, and then it got released on vinyl. We didn’t have any expectations, but things picked up pretty quickly.
Q: Where do you see yourself fitting in the local music landscape? Where does Meat Wave find community?
A: It’s been fun being in Meat Wave because we can play with a lot of different kinds of bands, though most of them are in the punk realm. But I love the scene in Chicago right now because there are just so many good bands.
Q: What do you think makes this such a fertile time for music here?
A: I think that there is no overarching big music industry, there is nothing big going on in Chicago. No one has any expectations of making it big. It’s a big city in the middle of the country, so you get a lot of people moving here, and then they meld or collaborate with people from here, and then you have something new.
I think being able to play here and have people respond so well, you think, “I guess we are doing something people enjoy” and we enjoy — and that’ll push bands. We just did a West Coast tour, and I doubt we would have done it if we had not gotten that feedback. We just really like playing together and we all have jobs, and sure it would be nice to just be able to make a living off of it, but if we had to depend on the band to make a living, it would make it less fun.
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When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake St.
Tickets: $13-$15 (all-ages);bottomlounge.com
