Riviera

On Milwaukee
When Chicago singer/songwriter Derek Phillips was looking for a guitarist for his new band Riviera, Milwaukeean Mick Radichel probably wasn't who he had in mind.

Before Radichel joined the Chicago quintet, he was a member of the successful Milwaukee/Minneapolis ska band The Pacers. After that band parted ways, Radichel found studio work in Memphis, but quickly grew tired of working in a repetitious and mechanical fashion and returned to Milwaukee to form the garage punk band Men from Mars. Despite their success, Radichel became restless. He once again left the Cream City to find a musical refuge in The City of Big Shoulders, where he joined Riviera in 2001.

At first glance, Radichel's background in punk and ska really doesn't fit the mold for a band that has a firm foundation in folk music. But when Phillips formed the band a year earlier, he was looking to create music that would build upon that foundation. Its members would add their own signatures to the songs. Radichel was able to apply some of the southern flair he learned in Memphis to give the songs some much-needed structure.

The band also includes bassist/guitarist Matt Usner, drummer Joshua Rogers, with whom Phillips worked with before, and vocalist/keyboardist Josh Boisvert, the band's newest member.

Their different styles of writing make things colorful, says Phillips.

"My lyrics are more like abstract images," Phillips explains, "I really like it open-ended. Josh and Mick have a good way of keeping their lyrics more concise and optimistic."

Songs like "Democratic Déjà vu," penned by Phillips, don't paint a pretty picture ("Here we go again/it's all the same old game/despite this déjà vu/this broken window view"), especially when compared to the slightly sunnier lyrics of the Radichel-penned "Such Sweet Sorrow" ("Now I'm a better man and when you think of me/I hope you never doubt a single thing I said or did to make it real"), but it prevents the group from being pigeon-holed into the often cynical "alt-country" genre.

"We've been letting some of our influences seep in," says Phillips, "(The 'alt-country' label) can be limiting. Being compared to Wilco is fine with me. With a band that great being so close, it's hard for them not to rub off on you, but we don't try to rehash the same old images. We have been experimenting to develop a sound that is uniquely our own."

The result of the band's experimentation is the debut EP "Broken Hearted Dreams," six melancholy tracks that bring some atmosphere to a traditional folk sound.

Critics have quickly caught on to what Riviera is trying hard to accomplish, with Johnny Loftus of the All Music Guide saying that the disc "is a hideaway of bungalow anthems and bedroom door confessionals inspired by the wisdom in a hollowed-out bible...But their debut EP never lets its influences lead the dance, instead dizzying them with literate doses of absurdist humor and liberal doses of the hidden hooch in that hollow bible."

Riviera begins work on first full-length album next month, and it will use the opportunity to once again pull its music in a different direction.

"We're trying to make a statement on this album," says Phillips, "There is a mood that we're establishing. The songs are going to be a little more concise and traditional, with not as much atmosphere."

It's creating that unique sound that made Phillips excited about making music with Riviera in the first place.

Mick Radichel makes his triumphant return to Milwaukee when Riviera appears with The Vega Star and Telectro at the Cactus Club, 2496 S. Wentworth Ave., on February 14 at 10 p.m. For more information on Riviera, please visit www.riviera-sound.com.

- OnMilwaukee

Chicago alt. country outfit Riviera has a diverse musical palette, boasting three strong singer/songwriters backed by bass and drums. Derek Phillips, Mick Radichel and Josh Boisvert contribute to a cohesive sound with its share of a rich variety of colors. Their collective wit is literate and wry, backed by rock swagger and a willingness to let a tinge of rock noise creep in occasionally (as on the leadoff track, "Petrified Possessions"). Harmonica fuels the straight-up Americana pleaser "Your American Past," bleeding into the 70s-era, southern-tinged ballads "Stranded" and "Changing Channels." Their recent appearances opening for Jeff Tweedy are well deserved, as a bit of Van Morrison and Wilco sweep across Riviera's breezy, yet gritty soundscapes. - Miles of Music

Riviera's Broken Hearted Dreams is a hideaway of bungalow anthems and bedroom door confessionals inspired by the wisdom in a hollowed-out bible. Over six songs, the Chicago quartet maps the routes between American Music Club, the Rolling Stones, and the more intellectual wing of insurgent country's brokedown palace, discovering in the end that everything leads to the same blind alley. "

Friends in California" dangles the dream of the golden state as a refuge from pain, and features a sunlit country-rock chorus as proof. But its characters are embittered. "You don't remember how we got here," Derek Phillips sings. "But I can tell you it was luck."

The narrator of the gorgeous "Such Sweet Sorrow" is just as hopeful for the future, but seems more concerned about the voices in his head. It's a weary, bluesy number, and plays out like "Sister Morphine"'s schizophrenic cousin. Riviera has definitely stayed a few nights in Wilco's Americana hotel. But their debut EP never lets its influences lead the dance, instead dizzying them with literate doses of absurdist humor and liberal doses of the hidden hooch in that hollow bible. -- Johnny Loftus
- All Music Guide

April 01, 2005
Riviera Keeps Rolling Along
The second album from both Chicago rock quintet Riviera and its label Glorious Noise Records gets the big-time release party treatment this Saturday. We’ve been grooving on a preview copy of At The End Of The American Century... for the last couple weeks and it should come at little surprise to those who’ve been following the story that it's a pastiche of the various cultural touchstones that get hashed out on the GLONO bulletin boards every day.

So let’s get this out of the way now: yes, there’s a Wilco influence to be found here. But there’s also equal parts Beatles, Stones, The Band, Ryan Adams, and Neil Young. Yet those expecting a barroom cover band will be disappointed...then thrilled with what ends up on record. It’s a gamble to go for that world-weary traveler vibe on your first full-length album. But the life-as-seen-from-a stage details like the “broken strings and colored lights” of “Unsatisfied” are typical of the band’s savvy grasp of hours spent behind the wheel and inside greasy spoon diners.

Perhaps we’re a bit biased. So let’s turn to that zenith of rock crit, the Illinois Institute of Technology’s TechNews, which described the “sense of shared experience and purpose”, that drives the members of Riviera. Spending four years evolving your sound will do that for ya. Listen to the results streaming here in Real Audio (check out the begging-to-be-a-single “Ashes On The Moon”) or download some mp3s here.

Then follow the rest of the story at Schuba’s tomorrow at 9 PM with Paper Airplane Pilots and labelmates Quasar Wut-Wut. Get yourself an advanced copy of the album that night, online, or find it in better record stores on April 5th.
- Chicagoist.com

Riviera
At The End Of The American Century
Glorious Noise
2005
B

Riviera has a dirty secret. It’s not that their sound is vaguely reminiscent of many alt-country originators; that wouldn’t be dirty as much as it would be obvious. It’s that the band has a love for the boundary-less classic rock sound. And that, my friends, simply is not cool despite the fact that it remains the foundation for just about everything we hear today. The very title of the album seems to call attention to Riviera’s backward leaning sound. Is the band leaving something behind or struggling to hold on to an era that ‘s being rapidly viewed as irrelevant? If a generation of listeners can only embrace The Darkness as a relevant starting point for classic rock, then Riviera is on a noble mission to show that those influences can still be translated into something that’s neither cartoon nor parody.

The immediate question is: are they sunk before they begin? Their press actively uses the phrase “Chicago alt-country outfit” and depending on where you stand that’s either a kiss of death or the very reason to run out and buy At The End Of The American Century. Working the Chicago rock scene since 2001 Riviera has been dogged by comparisons to Wilco. Is there truth in that comparison? Sure, if you stopped really listening to Wilco after the release of Being There, parallels are easy to draw. Like early Wilco, Riviera definitely mines a traditional American folk rock sound that’s infused with enough modernity to make it appeal to an audience more concerned with the “alt” portion of alt-country. It’s the audience that was always a bit more concerned with the next Old 97’s album than investigating The Flying Burrito Brothers or Willie Nelson. Fortunately Riviera distinguishes themselves nobly on At The End Of The American Century echoing The Grateful Dead and the countrified blues of The Rolling Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet more than the more obvious touchstones of alt-country.

When you put on At The End Of The American Century for the first time be prepared for Derek Phillips’ voice. It bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Tweedy and that’s all I’ll say on the subject. It’s not like Tweedy and company have an exclusive agreement with the ghosts of American music. Album opener “Petrified Possessions” is guided by a plodding piano line that’s backed by a tremulous guitar adorned with tines of feedback. As the song builds towards its crescendo the elements start to coalesce into a loosely swinging noise pushed forward by Josh Boisvert’s organ. The whole swirling melodic mess recalls The Band more than Uncle Tupelo.

An album this clearly indebted to a bygone sound would often sound self-consciously aware of its underpinning elements. But Riviera is able to sound sincere in its wholesale borrowing of classic rock elements. I imagine it’s much easier to divine in a live setting, but Riviera never seems to labor during their songs. They trigger a certain satisfying déjà vu but through it all there’s an awareness that they’re operating on a platform well trampled by many bands, a certain self-effacing approach that keeps the focus squarely on the songs and not on the band’s influences.

Whether it’s “In The Stands”’ “Sympathy For The Devil” hoot-hoots and drawn out guitar solo or “Blue Eyes” pervasive piano, steel guitar and harmonica, many of the songs distance Riviera from the simple alt-country tag. The band is playing more the role of revisionist than follower, as they eagerly embrace sounds and styles that have been neglected, discarded, or both. In fact the final four songs on At The End Of The American Century, “In The Stands,” “This Missionary Life,” “Blue Eyes,” and “The Hardest Thing to Say” are enough to earn the band either a headlining slot at Bonnaroo or win over rural country fair goers who are more interested in the beer garden and the prize pigs.

It’s to their credit that At The End Of The American Century avoids the pitfall of sounding like mere homage. There’s clearly more here than the mere updating of a sound that’s been marginalized by a music industry eager to define sounds by demographics. I like to think that every copy of At The End Of The American Century that’s sold is a bit of a fuck you to the current status quo. No matter what, it’s never overtly bad to inhabit a specific style or sound as long as it makes a good record, honest in intention. - Stylus Magazine