Rumble-ings

The Vic Firecracker Trio, plus Dave Davies

Cellars by Starlight by Brett Milano

Bob Logan of the Vic Firecracker Trio was at New Alliance Studio last week, mixing a song intended for a single later this year. The song is "The Closest Place," a haunting midtempo rocker with a sirenlike guitar part running through it. As we listen back to the bass and drum tracks he's recorded, what stands out most is the room ambiance: there's a lot of open space in the sound, you hear natural echoes instead of a million guitar overdubs. "I've been accused of doing too much of this," Logan points out. "Andrew [studio co-owner Andrew Murdoch] used to say that I was trying to capture what the walls in the room look like. But to me, the more ambiance the better. If you can get away with some open space, you're not just selling a song. People have to come toward it."

That's a good description of the approach Logan takes with his band (the rest of the line-up is currently bassist Pat Campbell and drummer Paul Lourenco). Wrapping moody guitar lines around innocent pop vocals, Logan creates a sound with a real modesty about it, a lack of big gestures. That's evident on a track like "Sevens," which opens the band's six-track EP, Mixed Not Mastered (on Orbit drummer Paul Buckley's Lunch label). It's built around an attractive "doot-doot" vocal part that Logan sings in falsetto. Most bands would put that hook right up front, maybe throwing some big chords and handclaps over it. But Logan sings it under his breath, making it reflective instead of anthemic. Likewise, "Connect the Dots" has a lurching guitar riff that makes way for a partly whispered vocal instead of breaking into solos. Even the outbursts are tempered, with "Ghost Notes" receding into a quiet loop of guitar echoes. At times Logan errs on the side of subtlety; more often he just avoids letting any cheap thrills distract from the songs' heart.

"It's hard to write songs that fall into a gray area, not hitting those oh-so-marketable polarities that appeal to A&R people -- which is fine, because that way we don't have to deal with them," he acknowledges. "If your music is going to be invisible to certain people, then maybe it will only get across to certain other people [i.e., the right ones] -- and I hope that doesn't make me sound elitist." The Trio were one of the more refreshing acts in this year's Rumble, where they made it to the final -- but the subject causes Logan a bit of embarrassment. "I'm going to try really hard not to be negative," he says, looking up from the mixing board. "You see some horrible bands going into the Rumble and you think, `But we're in it too -- does that mean we're the Stone Temple Pilots?' Put it this way: the bands I've always looked up to were the ones who maintained a low profile around town, bands you never hear much about so they never outstay their welcome -- people like the Vehicle Birth, the Wicked Farleys, and Karate. That's why I'm so hesitant, because I thought we'd be on the same level, that we'd play one round and disappear."

On the contrary, the Trio attracted the most vocal supporters I saw during the semifinals, a group up front who chanted "Vic!" during most song breaks -- much to Logan's dismay. "I couldn't even tell you who that was. Maybe everyone I hadn't seen in a long while happened to be hearing WBCN on the way home from work. I kept looking over the side of the stage, thinking `Don't blame me, I had no idea this would happen.' " And he's got no hard feelings about losing the final to the Ghost of Tony Gold: "No, they were the perfect band to lose to, because it was totally a genre thing."

It's easy to see Logan as a classic studio introvert, especially since he's spent so much time there (his engineering gig at New Alliance led to the Trio's early tapes, and he still produces other bands -- most recently Double Dong). And the Trio went through a number of incarnations before settling on the current line-up (Jocobono's Todd Perlmutter, Talking to Animals' Mike Levesque, and the Juliana Hatfield Band's Todd Phillips all drummed on the tapes). "It's getting more `bandular' as it goes on," he points out. "Playing live is the important thing, because that's where you can go with the feeling -- art is communication, after all."

Meanwhile, back at the mixing board, Logan is turning up a solo he played on "The Closest Place": with its grisly distorted tone, it's the closest he gets to Steve Albini skronk. "But I didn't play any illegal notes on it; it's still pretty melodic," he points out. "One of my instincts is not to play anything my mom won't like. On stage I play that part with the guitar against the mikestand. Everybody seems to like that, but to me it's a little cliché'd, kind of Kurt Cobain-ish." As he brings the vocal up, the song sounds less hopeful than it first appeared -- is he singing to a dead person? That's one of the few things he won't answer directly. "It's about me, but I'd rather not go there. I wrote a bunch of things at the time that were kind of gloomy, but I hope it's not morbid. It's good when someone understands a song, but it's kind of weird, too."

DAVE DAVIES

Is it possible to see an aging English rock legend play a weeknight gig at the Sit 'n Bull Pub in Maynard without thinking Spinal Tap? While his big brother Ray does the dignified theater/VHI circuit, Kinks lead-guitarist Dave Davies has been doing low-key club gigs on a tour that's yet to bring him to Boston proper (because it's not a big college town, right?). A member of the night's opening band, Slide frontman Shaun Wortis, even reports a Tap-like moment that happened during the afternoon soundcheck: having just arrived in Maynard, Davies plugged in and sang "I Don't Know Where I Am" to the tune of the Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand." As Wortis told me later, "He's just the way you'd hope -- like Spinal Tap, but with a gleam in his eye."

There was nothing Tap-esque about the show that Davies and his band did Thursday night (well, maybe just a little: his between-song exhortations had a touch of "We love you, Cleveland!" about them). Still, let us not forget that the occasional songs Dave wrote for the Kinks have been a touchstone for garage bands over the years -- our own Lyres have covered a bunch, including "Love Me 'Til the Sun Shines," which Dave did last week. And instead of playing long guitar solos all night, Dave made a case for himself as a songwriter, dipping just occasionally into his brother's catalogue (and even the Ray Davies songs he played -- "She's Got Everything," "Picture Book," "I Need You" -- were more fan faves than obvious hits). Ray's name was never mentioned, but Dave took a playful swipe at his brother when he joked that he was going to stop playing and read the entirety of his autobiography.

Most of the night was a treat for Kinks kultists, with Dave going deep into his catalogue for songs the band never perform: "Susannah's Still Alive," "Creeping Jean," "Hold My Hand," and the exquisite "Strangers" -- all obscurities from the Kinks' creative heyday in the late '60s/early '70s (though his one solo hit, "Death of a Clown," was surprisingly missing from the early show). Avoiding the big Marshall-amp sound of recent years, he sported the raggedy guitar tone of the early Kinks records; his singing still has that high-pitched teenage quaver; and the back-up band -- all LA pop types who've been in the Muffs, Wednesday Week, and the band Andrew -- had their Kinks licks down pat. If not quite as moving as Ray's solo shows, this was at least as much fun. The band are expected to hit Boston when Dave's CD compilation comes out on Velvel this fall.

SLUGHOG

Major shocker on the new Slughog album, Ungodly Amounts of Meat (Wonderdrug): the opening track, "Answer: The Best Kind," has an actual tune, actual harmonies, and a Nirvana-like sound. Has one of Boston's grisliest bands gone pop? As it turns out, nothing of the sort: Slughog merely put the closest thing they had to a wimpy track up front to get it out of the way. Once that's done, "Mars, the Angry Red Planet" dumps a bunch of nasty guitar whomps on your head; and Andrew Schneider makes the pronouncement that sets the album's tone: "If I could give a shit, I would!" The album manages to out-brutalize Slughog's previous output, in part because the production (by Schneider and Carl Plaster) captures both the switchblade slice of Firestone's guitar and the pummeling of the band's two basses. But mostly it's because Slughog were in a particularly homicidal mood this time around: they avoid any semblance of finesse, and the album's centerpiece, "A Man Called Ass," gets into sonic gang-war territory. For light relief there's "Monkey Fly Plane" -- a sublimely goofy shout-along -- and a hidden track of one of their live audiences shouting for Black Sabbath.

COMING UP

Conceptual glitter-rocker Fan Modine plays the Works Theatre in Davis Square tonight (Thursday); and the Fat Possum revue, headlined by blues maniac Hasil Adkins, begins two nights at the House of Blues. Seka Bomba and the Kaisers are at the Middle East, Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin brings his country band Farm Dogs to the Paradise, Two Bones & a Pick have a disc-release party at Johnny D's, and Squeeze bring their timeless pop to Avalon . . . Blues harmonica great James Cotton is at the Regattabar tomorrow (Friday), the Pills are at Bill's, the Flying Nuns and Cheerleadr are at Mama Kin, New York ska rulers the Toasters are at the Middle East, and J. Geils plays with the Gerry Beaudoin Trio at Cool Blue's . . . The long-awaited X reunion hits Avalon on Saturday, Quintaine Americana and Roadsaw are at the Middle East, the eternal Fleshtones are at T.T. the Bear's, and Figgs member Pete Donnelly plays Harpers Ferry with Chick Graning opening . . . Elegant popsters Ivy share a bill with Komeda at the Middle East Sunday . . . Honkyball hit Mama Kin on Monday . . . Supporting one of their best albums ever, Pere Ubu play the Middle East Tuesday, and Australian cult hero Paul Kelly is at T.T.'s . . . Curve and the Dandy Warhols are at the Middle East Wednesday.