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On the rise
The Lot Six and Runner and the Thermodynamics
BY MIKE MILIARD


In the summer of 2001, the Lot Six headed north to Maine, where they camped out in a recording studio for almost a week. Toiling and tinkering into the wee hours each night, they emerged with some 30 varied songs, most of which were released on two albums, Gwylo and Animals (Espo), a few months apart.

The down-and-dirty recording of their latest, Major Fables (Tarantulas), is a different story: it was put to wax in just 48 hours of frenzied live-in-studio activity. The idea was that the songs would be demos, says guitarist/keyboardist Julian Cassanetti over the phone from Los Angeles, where the band were filming a video and playing some gigs before heading out on a tour with the Distillers that brings them to Axis this Friday. "We didn’t go into the studio to put the final tracks down, we went to bang out every little part see how they could be better. But they ended up being put out anyway, because Tarantulas liked them so much. The fact that they were so stoked when they heard the demos was all it took for us to be like, okay, if it’s good enough for you, that’s fine with us because that’s how we like to do it. We don’t do too many overdubs, we don’t do things we can’t do live. We just threw a mike on the amps and the drums and just recorded them. And that’s an æsthetic that we like."

That rawness and immediacy gives Major Fables a visceral punch. Vocalist/guitarist Dave Vicini’s excoriating screams and guttural growls dip in and out of the fray as Cassanetti and Will Kerr flail and stab with jagged shards of guitar and bassist Dan Burke and drummer Aaron Sinclair tame the chaos with a tricky but unyielding centripetal rhythmic force. Things explode from the get-go with "Autobrats," a lightning bolt of throttling psychobilly that conjures the New Bomb Turks at their most ballistic, its feral, stomping beat and Vicini’s febrile sputtering calling to mind a fire-eyed backwoods snake handler speaking in rapturous tongues. "No UFO’s" starts with atonal air-raid-siren guitars before kicking into a vortex of swarming noise and dive-bombing drum fills. Major Fables may have been conceived as a demo disc, but its focused fury is undiminished by the speedy recording.

"This was our attempt at making one serious record of short-but-sweet all-good songs," says Cassanetti. They are that. What’s more, the band continue to push at the boundaries of their muscular but cerebral music. Although corrosive distorted guitars are never far away, Major Fables expands on the electric eclecticism of the Lot Six’s prior releases. "I Was You" skitters along over a buoyant bass line and punchy piano chords, with finger snaps and trumpets punctuating Vicini’s sore-throat emoting. "Go to Sleep" slides from Cassanetti’s majestic Eastern-key synthesized strings into a torpid, dreamlike lounge reggae. "Out of Control" is a flat-out rocker, furious and frenetic; "My Baby’s Gone" is straight-no-chaser country, a well-lubricated late-night lament with high-lonesome harmonies and pedal steel sliding slovenly off the barstool.

"Music, like art, means freedom," Cassanetti explains. "You can take a blank piece of paper and draw anything you want. From a raccoon with boobs to a flying elephant. There’s no rules or boundaries, nothing you can’t do. The same goes for music. It’s just where we are that day. Have we been listening to Wings and Huey Lewis? Or have we been listening to Minor Threat? Is it cold outside? Am I broke? Everything comes into your songwriting. We embrace that. If it’s a good song, it’s a good song."

The past several months have seen the beginnings of bigger and better things for the Lot Six. In Tarantulas, which was founded by their pals in the Boston punk quintet the Explosion, they’ve found a peer-run record label that knows where they’re coming from and will push hard to get them where they want to go. "We did these demos and [Explosion guitarist] Dave [Walsh] came in and heard them. He was immediately like, ‘I wanna put this out.’ He didn’t even hesitate. ‘Can we put this out?’ Any other offer we had seemed like there was a little bit of hesitation, or it might have looked good on paper but no one was calling us or coming out to see the shows. But Tarantulas have been there for us every step of the way, and they’ve gotten us more than they’ve even promised. They’ve been angels."

With Major Fables in stores nationwide and logging well on the college charts, Lot Six stock seems to be on the rise. Sharing bills with "it" bands like the Distillers and Mars Volta (with whom they’re slated to play Avalon in June) doesn’t hurt. This is the second time the group have gone cross-country with the Distillers. Any wild and crazy tales from the road? "Not really," says Cassanetti. "You wanna hear something ‘crazy’? There were 400 people in front of us when we were playing the other night. To us, that’s crazy."

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Issue Date: April 2 - 8, 2004
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