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CMJ Sonicbids Spotlight: Holy Boys Danger Club by Kathryn Nasto
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It isn't every day that a band comes together after already having an album under its name. But that...It isn't every day that a band comes together after already having an album under its name. But that's exactly what happened to Portland, Maine-based group Holy Boys Danger Club. Featuring Michael "Miek" Rodrigue, Dan Capaldi, Nathan Cyr and Zach Jones, the band took some time to get where it is now. "When I started the project, I was in college," Rodrigue tells CMJ. "I started writing for what I thought would be a solo album soon after I met Dan and Zach. After about a year I had enough material, so Dan and I set up shop in my basement to record the songs... Those sessions went unfinished, and Dan and I found ourselves in other bands in the coming months."
It was only a matter of time before Rodrigue began looking to finish what he started and called Jonathan Wyman to book studio time. "I called Dan and told him I wanted to finish the songs we had started in our initial sessions and throw in some new ones. We brought in our dear friend TJ Metcalfe to round out the line-up. The album that became Lessons For Liars was recorded in a week." Unfortunately, releasing the EP wasn't that quick; it took a year.
"If there were any difficulties at all, it was financially getting it out," says Rodrigue. "Also, [we didn't know] if there was going to be an actual band to play the songs." It was ironic, then, that it was the album's release that brought the band's current lineup together. "A friend from the scene had heard it and wanted us to open for his band at their CD release. Dan and I were [at a loss] for what to do. Luckily, the stars sort of aligned, as Zach was coming home from a stint in L.A., and I had known Nate since high school. He agreed to play the show, but the rehearsals leading up to it revealed that the band was worth pursuing."
Back in March, Holy Boys Danger club released its second album, The Boo Book, the first effort to feature the band's solidified official lineup. While Lessons For Liars offers an astonishing collection of pure blues-rock, its follow-up highlights refined song structures and new sounds that prove that the band has greatly matured. "If you look at our first record as a preface, The Boo Book is really chapter one," he says.
Catch Holy Boys Danger Club at this year's CMJ Music Marathon And Film Festival. The band will play October 22 at Crash Mansion as a part of the Re-Think Pop Showcase and October 23 at the Trash Bar in Brooklyn as part of the Portland, Maine, Official CMJ Showcase. Can't make either of those dates? The band has a number of other shows scheduled this fall.
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Nominated in The Portland Phoenix Best Music Poll for “Best Live Act”, “Best Rock Act”, and “Best New Act”
2010
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“There’s Passion and Safety in Rock” by Mike Olcott
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To the joy of Maine modern rock fans, the Holy Boys Danger Club is back for seconds with a new EP, “...To the joy of Maine modern rock fans, the Holy Boys Danger Club is back for seconds with a new EP, “The Boo Box."“Modern rock” is one of the more amorphous phrases we’ve got, but if we are in the era where the artist defines the genre and not the other way around, distorted guitar and big drum fans can rest easy. The future is in the capable hands of Nathan Cyr on bass, Zach Jones on guitar and vocals, Dan Capaldi on the kit, and Miek Rodrigue sounding a whole lot like gravelly Dicky Barrett from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones (with a pinch more sweetness) on lead vocals, guitars and keys. “The Boo Box” is built on ambitious hooks, and is performed with passion and gusto. If the squeeze put on independent music has resulted in anything positive for the artist, it’s that these guys are playing out of their heads to make good rock.
Notice how the effort is an EP, not an LP? LPs are barely viable to an artist in the iPod era, such are the production costs and time commitments.
The hunger shows. The record has the edge of performers who really want it, which is just about the most endearing quality a young band can have.
The Boys kick it off with “Better,” a track with exceptional torque, and the cohesive arc that only a seasoned songwriter knows how to draw. The organs sing, the drums rumble, and the guitars just about tear the walls down.
So too goes “The Pressure,” which surely has one of the sunniest choruses to come out of this town. I hope to be somewhere outside this summer, whooping and hollering to other folks while this tune is shaking leaves.
If the record has a weakness, it’s in the airtight production, which is maybe a little too CYY ready. It’s missing messes, which peers like the Hold Steady make an essential part of the songwriting process.
These songs are perfect and gift-wrapped with happy-ending closure, but there’s not too much new going on. The best rock comes from the cats who’ve been roughed up and can’t help but pour it out raw. Fine-tuned radio singles leave little room for that vulnerability. Perhaps that’s not what the HBDC was up to this go-around, but it is a creative direction that will add immeasurable substance to the craft. For now, though, go have a few and check out the HBDC live – it’ll do wonders inside your crunch-lovin’ ears.
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“10 BANDS TO WATCH” by Ray Routher
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This indie rock band, with members all in their mid-20s, spent the last year or so “playing every cl...This indie rock band, with members all in their mid-20s, spent the last year or so “playing every club in Portland.” But they took time out last fall to record an EP with producer Jonathan Wyman, “The Boo Box.” The EP-release party will be March 13 at Empire Dine and Dance in Portland.
The EP showcases the band’s influences, from Queens of the Stone Age and the Replacements to My Morning Jacket. Band members include Nathan Cyr (bass), Michael “Miek” Rodrigue (vocals, guitar), Zach Jones (guitar, not the same Zach Jones featured elsewhere in this story), and Dan Capaldi (drums). For more information, go to holyboysdangerclub.com.
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“HOLY ROLLERS” by Sam Pfiefle
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Ten pounds of rock in a six-song Boo Box…
The second EP from Holy Boys Danger Club comes with only ...Ten pounds of rock in a six-song Boo Box…
The second EP from Holy Boys Danger Club comes with only two real deficiencies: 1) The name. The Boo Box? Sounds like something my six-year-old made in art class. It just doesn’t convey the swaggering, guttural rock this band are capable of; 2) Not nearly long enough. After the tease of 2009's Lessons for Liars, I was more than ready for a full-length, and the six songs here leave me consistently wanting more.
That’s not all bad, I realize. Plenty of records struggle to hold your attention for 40 minutes. This record grabs you by the throat from measure one, though, and I want them to flex their muscles, show their range. Frankly, I’d be plenty happy with just more of the same.
Frontman Miek Rodrigue has emerged as a force with his vocals, a weighty rasp like a jagged-edged weapon, capable of conveying real emotion and harsh detachment. I haven’t heard anything like it since Richard Butler was fronting the Psychedelic Furs (in fact, I’d pay good money to see these guys cover “Pretty in Pink,” but that’s the nostalgia talking). Add to that some of the grimiest, wide-open guitar sounds producer Jonathan Wyman has ever elicited and you’ve got something like the Strokes covering the Hold Steady, smart and swaggering, frothing at the mouth and hearts on their sleeves.
The two openers, “Better” and “The Pressure,” positively breathe, sucking all the air out of the room and then exhaling a torrent of sound. The first moves from muted guitar with just bass and high-hat time-keeping to frantic dueling guitar strums backed by manic organ riffs. Spencer Albee guests here, actually, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him play with such wild abandon, cymbals crashing in the background. Then it’s nothing but snare work from Dan Capaldi and Nathan Cyr’s bass bouncing on a single note, lying in wait for a full-on jam. As the song finishes in lingering feedback you can almost see the sweat rolling down from their temples.
“Pressure” follows similar dynamics, but the guitars are more to the fore, Rodrigue and Zach Jones (not the Zach Jones who used to be in As Fast As) snaking and coiling around one another. There’s a great contrast between the languid vocal delivery of the verse, “Heard all those bastards from downtown/They won’t leave you alone,” and the staccato pop of the chorus: “It’s going up, up, up/It’s going down, down, down.”
Most impressively, these songs are really tight, without a note wasted, a trait they’re evidencing for the first time. Their debut Lessons for Liarswas recorded before they were really a band, and it showed. The ideas were great, but the execution wasn’t quite there. On Boo Box, the execution is worlds better. On Liars, the acoustic closing song was “Tri-State Heartache,” a six-minute opus, more than a little bit aimless, with a clumsy moment or two and lots of big-room effect. Here, the requisite acoustic track is “Bedsheets,” a piece that shows off a nice call and response between the guitar and piano, is under two minutes, and merges effortlessly into the closing “Letter to the General,” where Rodrigue ups his register and hints at Perry Farrell, backed by a wall of sound.
Last time around, Rodrigue’s vocals were mixed back into the band and lacked confidence. Here, as on “Her Vampire Scab,” they’re right up front and Rodrigue’s phrasing is impeccable: “Have you seen her/Brand-new vampire scab?/My solution’s intrusive, but she can’t take the abuse.” Capaldi drives this song, leading the band in and out of verse, chorus, bridge beautifully, and Jones’s late-song solo is downright sultry. For “Nevada,” they go vampy, a bouncy Paranoid Social Club nod, and they borrow the pessimism of the Sophomore Beat: “My generation is doomed . . . I need another illusion.”
Another illusion? I need another four or five songs. My standard for reviewing a disc is five listens. I have this at least 15 spins this week. Couldn’t get enough of it. It’s got energy equal to its emotion, depth equal to its heights. As long as they’ve got plans for another EP in six months — better yet a full-length — I’ll be okay. If it takes another year for another six songs, I’ll be disappointed.
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Spring Cleaning : Three discs you should hear as the weather warms
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Dangerous Debut
Holy Boys Danger Club are a bit of a supergroup, featuring frontman Miek Rodrigue, ...Dangerous Debut
Holy Boys Danger Club are a bit of a supergroup, featuring frontman Miek Rodrigue, who's been a sideman in Glory Trap, the Posters, and the Black Tie Affair, along with Dan Capaldi (there he is again!), and TJ Metcalf, who currently also plays with Lady Lamb the Beekeeper and was part of the excellent Cosades. Plus, here on their debut EP Lessons for Liars (seven songs, 30 minutes — three are over six minutes, plus there's a little secret track at the end) they get help from Spencer Albee on a couple tracks.
"City Kid Town" is the potential single, like a grittier early Springsteen — until the spacey keyboard-heavy bridge. Like most of the tracks here, it's original enough to be interesting but still has solid echoes of the past. "Kindest Regards" opens like a Spouse tune, heavy on the whiny guitar and breathy vocals, but finishes in a wide-open, crunchy jam, held together with a pretty melody line. "Criminal" is 12-bar blues, with a great organ backing and Rodrigue dropping the lyrics like they're bleeding from him: "Last night I was gonna kill a man, but my baby stole my gun."
Unlike some of Jonathan Wyman's more polished productions, he keeps things pretty loose here, to good effect. Sometimes they sound downright live — Neil Young and Crazy Horse live — and it completely works.
This is a young band (under 1000 plays on MySpace), but they've recently added Zach Jones on guitar and Nathan Cyr (Dominic and the Lucid) to play bass for live shows, and you'd be wise to keep them on your radar.
supersonic
