Boston's Alternative Source!
     
Feedback

[Cellars]

Wheel deals
Six Going On Seven and Piebald, plus the Rumble final

BY SEAN RICHARDSON

With two albums on the prestigious New York indie Some Records, the local rock trio Six Going On Seven have carved their own sophisticated yet melodic niche in the national underground scene. They may be a familiar name on the emo circuit, but their music falls into a more time-tested pop vein, with little of punk’s volume and velocity. On the new American’t (or Won’t), their first disc for the Boston label Big Wheel Recreation, the band experiment with softer soundscapes and densely layered vocal harmonies, inching closer and closer to the classic pop ideal.

“It’s a poppier record,” says frontman Josh English when we meet up for lunch at Thornton’s Grill in the Fenway. “I wanted to try some different stuff. You’re going to fail sometimes and you’re going to succeed sometimes, but I feel it’s important to have some sort of evolution after three records. In a natural way, though — it’s not as if you couldn’t recognize the band from the first record. We’ve always just tried to make the record we wanted and write the songs we wanted for the time we went into the studio, without worrying about the scene.”

American’t is a logical progression from Six Going On Seven’s previous release, the galvanizing ’99 disc Heartbreak’s Got Backbeat, but it’s far less homogenous. Surprises include the jaunty Sgt. Pepper homage “As Is” and the silly psychedelic romp “Finish Them Off.” English sings with understated melancholy on the title track, accompanied only by drummer Will Bartlett’s sparing brush work and some eerie tremolo playing from guitarist James Bransford. It’s a quiet distillation of the band’s signature sound, much of which derives from the innovative combination of English’s chord-heavy bass style and Bransford’s clean, arpeggiated guitar work.

“Everybody thinks of it as this conscious role-reversal thing, but I don’t think either of us was aware of it,” says English. “That’s just the way we play off each other. So much so now that it’s more of a conscious effort for us to do a straighter song, like ‘Readying’ on the new record. To do something where I’m actually playing a traditional bass line, rather than chords. I have to think about that, ’cause that’s not my instinct.”

Another defining element of the band’s sound is English’s scratchy, soulful voice, which adds heft to the bruised romanticism of driving anthems like “Readying” and “Lately.” He also adopts a breakneck delivery that at times recalls Elvis Costello. “I take a lot of my phrasing from rap music. I’m into cool rhythmic stuff. If I had to pick a favorite instrument, it would probably be the drums. I definitely spit a lot of stuff out. ‘Television Snow’ is a perfect example of that, where it’s so speedy that it’s almost too much. But there’s also ‘American’t,’ which isn’t like that at all. There’s a little of both on there.”

With Some main man Walter Schreifels currently focusing most of his energy on his own band, Rival Schools, Six Going On Seven decided to work instead with their long-time buddies at Big Wheel. “We’re friendly with the guys from Some still, and they were pretty up front about what they would and wouldn’t be able to do. The Big Wheel thing just seemed to coincide at the right time. I liked the idea of its being local, and I also felt they had stepped it up a lot. We get what we need from them, and hopefully we gave them a good record.”

Six Going On Seven’s CD release party, with special guests Lovelight Shine and Moods for Moderns, takes place this Friday, June 1, at Bill’s Bar. Call (617) 421-9678.

THE OTHER BIG NEWS from the Big Wheel camp is that the label’s biggest band, Piebald, are up and running again after a year off. They broke up last spring when guitarist Aaron Stuart quit shortly after the group released the EP The Rock Revolution Will Not Be Televised. “Aaron’s a wimp,” cracks singer/guitarist Travis Shettel. “He got tired of touring. It was actually probably a strain on all of us, so we decided to take some time off. I still talked to Aaron when we didn’t play, and Jon [Sullivan, drummer] and Andy [Bonner, bassist] and I played together a couple of times. Eventually, we started playing with Aaron again and writing new songs. Things are a lot better now. We just needed time to get away.”

Piebald plan to record in the fall for an early 2002 release; meanwhile, they’re back in stores this month with Barely Legal/All Ages, a two-CD retrospective of pretty much everything they ever recorded before hooking up with Big Wheel. It includes the out-of-print releases Sometimes Friends Fight and When Life Hands You Lemons, plus a truckload of rarities, demos, and live tracks. Priced as a single disc, the anthology traces the group’s progression from the screaming melodic hardcore of their youth to the tongue-in-cheek arena emo that’s become their stock-in-trade; it’s worth the price for disc two alone, which consists mostly of the classic Lemons (originally released in ’97 on Boston’s Hydrahead Records). There’s plenty of other wackiness for diehards, including two covers that sum up the band’s absurdist, hook-laden approach to rock: the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” and Slayer’s “South of Heaven.”

“I personally wouldn’t recommend either disc,” says Shettel ruefully. “We’re really a bad band — now we write bad songs, but before we wrote even worse songs. Our first demo was when I was 16. I didn’t even know how to mute strings at that point. In Aaron’s speaker, you’ll hear muting, but with me, I’m just like, ‘Uh-oh.’ But it is really cool that everything that we’ve ever released you can find in one place, ’cause you can’t get that stuff anymore.”

Shettel is also releasing his first solo album, Totally Travis y las Marianas, under the name Totally Travis. It’s a largely acoustic collection of four-track home recordings with lots of songs about every emo boy’s best friend — his mom. So what does Shettel’s mom think of her son’s work? “I just gave her a copy the other day. I think she’d appreciate my solo stuff more than Piebald, but I still don’t think she’ll listen to it. She always tells me, ‘Travis, I’ll support you, I think it’s great how far this has gone, but I’ll probably never listen to your band.’ ”

Now Shettel’s focus is back on Piebald, who were in fine form at their sold-out reunion show at the Middle East upstairs a few weeks back. After Stuart opened the proceedings by squirting an entire bottle of mustard into his mouth on a dare from Shettel, the band ran through a nice collection of oldies; they took their shirts off one by one before closing with AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” To judge by the rabid response from the crowd, they just might be in line for the indie version of a Weezer-style comeback. “Right now, we have five songs,” says Shettel. “We have to finish the rest by September, which we will. My brain’s working overtime.”

WBCN’S ANNUAL ROCK N’ ROLL RUMBLE is no stranger to controversy, but the chorus of boos that greeted the victorious Bleu at the Middle East last Thursday night was harsh by anyone’s standards. The talented pop dude had to face the wrath of the two equally boisterous groups of scenesters assembled to cheer on the night’s other two contestants, Crack Torch (who brought along most of Allston Rock City) and the Kings of Nuthin’ (who drew the biggest crowd and received vocal support from last year’s winners, Darkbuster, during the latter’s closing set). With precious few fans in his corner, Bleu conceded that he probably should have come in third and sheepishly walked off the stage.

Really, though, his victory shouldn’t have surprised anyone. His debut disc, Headroom (Lunch), is well-written, funny, and way more commercial than anything by the other 23 acts who competed. It’s got a clever sit-com-theme-in-waiting that gets annoying after the first time you hear it (“That’s Life”), plus at least one new-wavish power-pop gem (“Feet Don’t Fail”). The man’s also got the look: with four nondescript pop guys backing him up, he hit the stage in a faded jean jacket and a Dokken T-shirt. But his set was too professionally low-key, even with its guitar-smashing finale. I got the impression the judges voted for Bleu’s album rather than his performance, and that was too bad for the other two finalists.

Rockabilly standouts the Kings of Nuthin’ were a little on the flat side, but they’ve got the look, the songs, and a great frontman in alkie-voiced singer Torr Skoog. By all sane accounts, though, the night belonged to Crack Torch, the upstart star vehicle of Quintaine Americana bassist Marc Schleicher. Coming on like the bastard child of Aerosmith and Motörhead, they played by far the loudest set, and they showed off an impressive variety of Ace Frehley guitar poses. Schleicher sang entire verses while he was crowd-surfing (this isn’t hardcore or anything — he was actually singing); he even howled most of one song hanging upside down from the rafters. Hey, it’s how you play the game, not whether you win or lose . . . right?

Issue Date: May 31 - June 7, 2001