April 8, 2006 – Vaudeville Mews

{it’s all in there: Beloit, Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte, Manassas, lifted guitar rack, a solitary mention of James Mercer, a comparison to Beulah, RIP, visible Daytrotter T-shirt, dropped stick, cowboy boots, maple syrup tears, hints at shut-eye}

By Sean Moeller

It was no Beloit, the boys would be quick to agree, but it wasn’t their Waterloo either. It probably falls – just to get the reign (or fall) of Napoleon Bonaparte shuffled in with the start of the American Civil War (this band doesn’t shy away from historical references so give it a rest) – somewhere closer to what we could consider a Manassas show, a Battle of Bull Run, where the cannon powder is still freshly floating in Virginian air and the regiment’s uniforms are still predominantly spot-free. Beloit, Wisconsin a few nights prior became the show upon which to measure all other shows against, a night when all the cosmic tumblers clicked into place. But this is just the beginning of an extended charge toward wider acclaim and more measurable regard. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is just getting the hang of this. They didn’t even have guitar stands until the night before this show when they white lied about a multi-guitar rack being their own. Owning a guitar rack is the first step to the big time. Well, the first step is actually having the songs and SSLYBY have the songs coming out of every pore. The stage presence may be a work-in-progress and the bantering with the crowd may be sparse (though Julian Casablancas and James Mercer don’t say much of boo between songs either) but the cohesion that singer/guitarist/bassist John Robert Cardwell, drummer/guitarist/singer Philip Dickey, guitarist Will Knauer and bassist/drummer/mysterio Jonathan James form in delivering their tuneful, Beulah-meets-Paul Simon pop sensibilities in winning new ways to think about the boy-girl relationship, among other things.

Oftentimes, the term workmanlike is taken to mean a sort of unfeeling run-through – a man on the assembly line installing the same lug nut a thousand times in a day, getting it absolutely perfect every time, unconsciously, but it doesn’t have to mean that during a live musical setting. Precision counts – just like spelling and grammar – and what SSLYBY may lack right now in its performance know-how, it makes up for in crafty harmonies, consistently attractive live workings of songs that now seem too pedestrian on record and laudatory lyrics that could stun a wordsmith and make a charming gentleman out of a measly gent, were he to commence quoting lines to a would-be admirer. Dickey, who proudly donned a Daytrotter T-shirt for the Mews gig, believes that live shows are meant for dancing and headbanging, while records are meant for headphones and it comes across that this is not supposed to be flawless like a record, good live music isn’t. That’s why it’s live. For instance, when the drum kit was shifting during “Pangea,” Dickey dropped out as he fumbled to fix things. The rest of the members flipped a look over their shoulders to see what the matter was and then simultaneously shifted the tempo and dynamic of the song, growing softer. And as if it was planned, Dickey was back just in time to ramp up into a booming surge of a chorus. It was completely unplanned and unwanted, but it was then, with Cardwell’s neck veins popping out at the sides and the return of a lost piece, that you got the best side of the band.

SSLYBY Daytrotter Session Songs