Speed's the Name
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Speed's the Name

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States | SELF

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States | SELF
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""Things Are Different This Time Around""

Things are different this time around. With the addition of guitarist Joe Downing, Andy Bembridge has taken over synth duties for the band. This has proved to be the most direct catalyst for Speed’s the Name’s change in sound on their newest release, Strangers.

The synthesizer and extra guitar work (as well as more vocal harmonies, and plenty of delay and reverb) have undoubtedly filled out the band’s more groove-oriented sound. Speed’s rhythm section doesn’t seem to notice the added atmosphere; they keep things as tight as ever, with Andy Thornbrough providing some of his most complex bass lines to date. The melodies and lyrics have far greater depth as well, with Ryan McNally narrating the decay of his relationships on the opening and title track of the album.

The group puts its newly found compositional chops to even greater use on the second track of Strangers, entitled “Jewel”. The song starts off with a groove that one could imagine Spoon pulling off in their earlier days, while McNally presumably sings about another relationship at its end, until the song takes a swift turn into a guitar-charged dance rock anthem, and the lyrical content seems to shift with this change in tempo. Reverb-drenched guitars soak up the tail end of the second verse, while McNally pleads, “Show me what the bottom’s like”, and the band kicks into another dance-rock chorus. The bridge of the song makes excellent use of the band’s new textures, with brilliant guitar tones taking center stage, and proper backing from the always-power-house rhythm section of Thornbrough and Scott McVeigh.

The next track finds Bembridge’s synthesizer leading the way. In fact, Ryan McNally sings practically no actual words in the third track, “Birdsongs”. The only lyrics are “Bird songs, they’re waiting for us at dawn”. The textures created by the synth and guitars more than make up for the lack of proper lyrics, and the melody becomes so memorable as the song builds that the band gets away with resorting to harmonized “oohs” and “ohs” without it seeming like a cliché.

The rest of the album is filled with rhythmic and textural delights. The combination of these two elements of Speed’s the Name finds them transcending their more obvious influences in favor of ambiguity. Even when the group comes closer to some of its more guilty 80’s pop influences, the heavy thunder of the rhythm section pulls things off in another direction, while the Post-Rock and Surf Rock influenced guitar textures drag things in an entirely different way. Meanwhile, Ryan McNally acts as a far less aggressive American version of Morrissey; shedding light on some of society’s more disturbing social happenings, while keeping things personal, but often not even taking a side or expressing his feelings on the matters at hand. It seems he’s so unsure at times that he even asks someone to tell him how he should and should not feel.

Standout Tracks: “Jewels”, “Birdsongs”
- Banana Static Records


"Local bands announce 8hz collective"

Speed’s The Name, Economy Team, Me & My Arrow, Phantom Tails, Mux Mool and Old James recently announced that they would be forming a partnership (of sorts), falling under the name of 8Hz. Despite being described as “A brand spankin’ new local collective of musicians, artists, writers and appreciators of music, art and writing,” I felt that was a bit too vague of a description and wanted to get a little more information on how things came together. 8Hz’s Andrew Flanagan shed a little the inception and ongoing focus of the group.

“8Hz got started in a booze and drug-fueled bonding experience in a backyard tent city of about twenty friends in Austin, TX during SXSW. We got back to Minneapolis with a lot of momentum and butterflied stomachs and started talking to each other about what this thing could be, and what kind of goals we could realistically set for ourselves… the principal goal being to release vinyl records, the first of which is a 12? compilation we expect to arrive in early Fall. We are in the process of planning a gallery show for sometime during the summer, a book club that will probably end up being a complete shitshow because we’re barely literate, and some other big and small events and ideas that we’re still ironing out.” - Culture Bully


"We Like This, Volume 1"

A quarterly mixtape series of local music from the Twin Cities. This first volume features: Polica, Matt Latterell, PROF, Speed’s The Name, Dial-Up, Buffalo Moon, Savannah Smith, MaLLy, Demographics, Crimes, Danami, Seated Heat, and The New Monarchs. - MPLS.TV


""Speed's the Name""

I can hear that Speed’s the Name is onstage well before I see them- they have a particular rhythmic groove that is becoming their signature sound. Peter Remiger’s guitar parts are distinctive and Ryan McNally’s pedal-pushed vocals add another cool dimension to their sound. They are one of my favorite Twin cities-based bands to see live.

-Chris Osgood - Chris Osgood, Suicide Commandos


""Strangers""

If Brian Eno lived in The Twin Cities, this is the album he would make.

- Barb Abney, Radio DJ, The Current
- 89.3 The Current, Minnesota Public Radio


""Till the Wheels Fall Off""

The crowd is restless on a Wednesday night at the Uptown Bar & Café. It's not usually a pay-a-cover-on-a-weekday kind of place, but this particular night former Television guitarist Richard Lloyd is playing, necessitating a door charge worth two and a half beers. A few regulars bristle at the entry fee, while Lloyd devotees smoke and drink on the patio, waiting.

Pretty much nobody is paying attention when openers Speed's the Name take the dark, deep-set stage in the back of the room and break into "Over and Over," the opening track from their latest album, Swell. One by one, drinkers peel themselves away from the bar, and passersby drifting in from the patio get tangled up in the overlapping guitar riffs and thickets of drum fills. A crowd congeals around the stage. By the time the band rolls out "Guadalajara," the new disc's most mixtape-ready track, reformed skeptics bar-wide are propelled into motion by the haunting surf-guitar moans, which echo through filters of acid rock.

"This rhythm section is great!" an aging hipster in a preposterous hat exclaims to his buddy. "These guys aren't local."

But Speed's the Name are local, and that's not even their regular rhythm section onstage. Bassist Scotty McVeigh is joined for this performance by the band's soundman and producer Jeff Marcovis, who's filling in for drummer Andrew Thornbrough while he jaunts around Puerto Rico. The hipster in the questionable chapeau is right about one thing, though: Speed's the Name do indeed rock.

This weekend the band will release Swell, their second album, when they headline a show at the Hexagon Bar. It's a hell of a record—energetic, elegantly produced, and reminiscent of groups like the Cars and the aforementioned Television, who pushed the evolution of '70s guitar rock without giving way to Reagan-era synth-pop. And, according to everyone in the band, it's the record they always wanted to write.

Singer and lyricist Ryan McNally formed the first incarnation of Speed's the Name in 2006, but there was an obvious flaw: "It was me and a drummer, and all I do is sing, so we pretty much had to bring other people in," McNally says.

McNally initially intended to make dance music. He wrote and recorded an entire album's worth of songs, then scrapped them and started from scratch with a different rhythm section. By this time he was joined by guitarists Andy Bembridge and Peter Remiger, plus rhythm section number two. In just a few short months they wrote and recorded a second batch of songs, which would become 2007's self-titled EP. But all three core band members quickly grew disenchanted with the record. Eventually some of the backing tracks were junked, leaving the disc raw and infused with low-fi energy. Guitarist Bembridge refers to the EP as their "party album" and says he prefers to listen to it in the car so he can roll down the window, letting the ambient noise outside fill in for the missing layers of sound. "It wasn't thought out enough," says McNally.

Apparently, the third rhythm section is the charm. Not long after the self-titled EP was assembled, McNally, who works as a sound engineer at McNally Smith (no relation), was blown away by performance major Thornbrough. The young drummer was so good that McNally knew he had to snatch him up immediately—it's a particular perk of his job, he adds, getting to see all the new talent. McNally then brought in McVeigh, and although the bassist had never previously met his 22-year-old drummer counterpart, the two struck up an instant rapport.

"They're in love now," McNally cracks, to which Bembridge adds, "They're just gazing into each other's eyes onstage."

The boys also got a helping Vampire Hand from Colin Johnson, who plays additional percussion on the album and lent his input to the recording process. Johnson initially planned to produce the disc as well, but his duties in Vampire Hands kept him from full-time participation. "It's more like he was a member of the band for two days," Remiger explains.

The influence of the two newest members of the band resounds not just in the performance of the tunes, but in the songs' very construction. The tracks on Swell are more open and intricately arranged, with carefully timed pauses and lulls that accentuate frenzied bursts of percussion and electric guitar. And while that allows for a greater range of emotion from track to track, the album is more cohesive than their last effort. A guitar line from a previous song might echo in another one minutes later, or a riff might briefly emerge on the soundscape like a ghostly prediction, only to vanish before dominating two tracks later. (The effect is reminiscent of Wilco's magnificent Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but with a completely different sonic agenda.)

"We were trying to write this way," McNally says, "and it took the new guys to let that flourish."
- City Pages


Discography

3) "Strangers" (2011)
"...filled with rhythmic and textural delights. The combination of these two elements of Speed’s the Name finds them transcending their more obvious influences in favor of ambiguity. Even when the group comes closer to some of its more guilty 80’s pop influences, the heavy thunder of the rhythm section pulls things in another direction, while the Post-Rock and Surf Rock influenced guitar textures drag things an entirely different way. Meanwhile, Ryan McNally acts as a far less aggressive American version of Morrissey." -bananastatic.com

2) "Swell" (2009)
"...open and intricately arranged, with carefully timed pauses and lulls that accentuate frenzied bursts of percussion and electric guitar. A guitar line from a previous song might echo in another one minutes later, or a riff might briefly emerge on the soundscape like a ghostly prediction, only to vanish before dominating two tracks later. (The effect is reminiscent of Wilco's magnificent Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but with a completely different sonic agenda.)" - Bryan Miller, City Pages

1) S/T (2007)

Additional / Features :
- 8hz Collective : 12" Compilation Vinyl LP (2009)
- We Like This, Volume 1 : MPLS.TV (2011)

Photos

Bio

Started in 2007 in Minneapolis, Speed's the Name makes music that balances an extraordinary camaraderie of close friendship with elements technical, experimental and organic.

With 6 members, it's a full sound, but never crowded. Flesh and blood tight rhythm, focused songs derived from jams, all built from the ground up. Guitars create a full bodied sound, modern synths bridge the rhythm and melody, and all is fronted by a lead singer who vocalizes emotion, sometimes anthemic.

With 3 recordings released and a 4th ready at the start of 2013, the band has incubated a sound that they are ready to take on the road in the new year.