Bad Breaks

If one musician could be considered the nucleus of indie rock in San Antonio, it’s probably drummer-for-hire Chuck Kerr. His resume reads like a roster of every unique rock act you’ve seen: We Leave at Midnight, Tiago Splitters, Nicolette Good and Black Magic and the Full Expose most recently. But he’s also contributed to Marcus Rubio and the Gospel Choir of Pillows, the Angel Headed Hipsters and may be best known for co-leading a meticulous album covers project with Chris Maddin.* Being as in-demand, on-the-scene and, well, cool paints Kerr as something of a local celebrity (especially when considering his position as Art Director with the San Antonio Current), but to hear his debut LP Bad Breaks, he’s as washed up as the rest of us.

Each of Breaks’ 11 tracks are snapshots of a relationship in melt-down and Kerr (drummer, vocalist, creative force) wouldn’t be able to keep up the trick if he weren’t so damn good at injecting every texture with self-deprecation. Just his voice—jumping for Spoon’s Brit Daniels and but landing on Elvis Costello—makes impolite truths sound like apologies (see “Red Lips,” where he accuses, “You’ve got a lot of nerve/one for every curve”). As Kerr warbles along, his fronting band—consisting here of Alex Wash (keys), Marcus Rubio (electric) and Ryan M. Teter (bass, trombone)—bring Kerr’s testimonials into cheeky, macabre focus. It all coalesces into a springy indie pop whose polish doesn’t necessarily betray its origins. “I'm not going to sing something 25 times when take two was probably the best it would ever get,” Kerr said recently via e-mail. With as much experience in jazz as with any incarnation of rock, it should surprise no one that he has a no-nonsense approach to recording. Kerr cobbled together Breaks on weekends and evenings across seven months with producer Jaime Rader (Morris Orchids).

His “fuck this, roll the tape” approach flies in the face of nearly every one of his local and national contemporaries, but on Breaks it works like a jackhammer. None of Kerr’s personnel are in the same room together, but you wouldn’t know it listening to them marry breakup with soaring groove on harder rockers “Seppuku” and “Get It Right.” Meanwhile, Kerr’s musical approach is often convergent, academic and daftly simple. Opener “Victoria” channels the same beat that opens “Billy Jean” because Kerr thinks one of the best pop songs of all time proves all you really need is a kick and a snare. Similary, “Good for Me” hawks half of Spoon’s catalog with piano lines that sound pounded out with only index fingers. He also built yacht rock slow-burner “The Way Things Are” around the bassline from Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.”

All this scholarship doesn’t come at the expense of emotional heft either. On “Won’t Come Home,” Kerr tells a lover that if she leaves, he’s not chasing her. But the following soft rock passage—with its somber keys and ghostly falsetto vocals—indicate a night spent drinking regret, eating crow and staring at the phone. Also, album center piece “Something True” drives a simple stomp clamp into a spiraling carnival of the absurd. Kerr’s voice and lyrics belong to a revenge ballad, but the dissonant waves of tenor sax (Alex Sutherlin) and cello (Meg Lobasso) reveal he’d rather get horizontal (even for pity’s sake) than even.

Kerr re-wrings heartbreak successfully across this LP’s 53 minutes because he’s willing to cast it in every possible light. He’s frequently sardonic, taking no issue with addressing the silliness of lovers’ quarrels along with their very real pain (often within moments of each other). But Break’s best moment is still a singular one. Closer “Only Distance” climaxes with Kerr and a haunting female chorus chanting “move on,” with the drummer coming as close to losing it on record as he’ll likely get for some time. It’s a Jack White moment for Kerr, keeping that which causes him pain close as a modus operandi. And like that blues-rock icon, Kerr may enjoy a bit of notoriety, but he’s as subject to humanity as the rest of us. - Stomping Grounds Blog by Adam Villela Coronado

“With his whole life up until now (he’s 28) being filled with music, particularly drumming and various collaborative work, Chuck has developed a hyper-keen sense of musical movement and song form- both of which are hallmarks of this album. There’s a night-crawling, smoky-room-surveying, almost groove-surfing cockiness to these songs… a sense of busy darkness alive with possibilities, but never chaotic. These elements spring in part from Kerr’s jazz roots, but this is far from a jazz record. Bad Breaks is full of shifts in tempo and genre, organically rhythmic at its core and singularly precise in terms of arrangements and lyrical content. With this debut release, we are treated to a cool and calculated brand of chameleon-like indie-pop.” — James Courtney, Learn to Labor and to Wait - Learn to Labor and to Wait (blog)

“‘Chapter and Verse‘ features a simple electric-keys riff that the San Anto outfit uses as a vehicle to shred. There’s brutal, honest emotion latent in the lyrics (‘I don’t want to hear the words you carefully rehearsed/ Still you give them to me chapter and verse’) that the band reflects in their visceral approach towards the song’s ending, when all lets loose into one of the heaviest highlights of the album.” - KRTU 91.7FM Indie Overnight

“Indie-rock that pretty much ignores categories while drawing from pop, jazz, straight-up rock and combinations thereof. Songs including ‘Victoria,’ ‘Won’t Come Home’ and ‘Red Lips’ are clever and catchy and prove Kerr has done a fine job of nurturing his musical baby.” — Jim Beal Jr., "San Antonio Express-News" - San Antonio Express-News

"Bad Breaks" really captures my attention at the moment of transition into "Seppuku," the album's second (and best) song. It's a jarring transition that reminds me to pay attention no matter how much the opener sounds like a lost Spoon B-side. This record is full of such moments, exhibiting real molten life and an excellent musical intuition teeming beneath a self-imposed rigidity. "Won't Come Home," "Something True," and "Keep My Promises" shine as examples of Chuck Kerr's (Bad Breaks' mastermind and "Current" Art Director) uncanny agility as a musician and potential as a songwriter. At its best, "Bad Breaks" is dangerously sexy grooves, precise playing, and a naively weary narrator caught between glimpses of love and waves of stultifying heat. — James Courtney - San Antonio Current

There is no escaping the specter that looms over Bad Breaks, the recently re-invigorated project helmed by drummer/songwriter Chuck Kerr (art director for the Current). Bad Breaks sound a helluvalot like Spoon, from the minimalist arrangements and earwormy hooks to Kerr singing like a bassier Elvis Costello. In this "mission statement" release of a single-take live show (preceding a forthcoming studio release), Kerr injects the songs with a looseness and urgency lacking in other indie pop. On "Won't Come Home," Marcus Rubio's guitar ends the song with a noodly wall of sound as Kerr zealously embellishes the beat. "Get it Right" is a soulful slapper that finds keyboardist Alex Wash fingering wrong notes that sound oh-so right. The epic hokey ballad, "Let Me Tell You Something True," features a final minute of carnivalesque rock noise circling a methodical stomp-clap. Kerr channels straight-ahead rock 'n' roll on "Chapter and Verse" by assaulting the track with downbeats. He rises above the bands that inspire him by building on what they've already done; his willingness to be more aggressive and loose-limbed than his contemporaries makes this an engaging, excellent debut.

— Adam Villela Coronado - San Antonio Current