Bound Stems are above the fold on the front page in this morning's Chicago Tribune Arts section:
QUOTE
Maybe not `set for life,' but Bound Stems thrive
By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic
Published September 17, 2006
Bands don't arrive at an album as dazzlingly complex as the Bound Stems' "Appreciation Night" (Flameshovel) by chance.
The album is beyond intricate: Tricky time signatures, fragments of songs and studio dialogue grafted into a Frankenstein pop collage, nine distinct cello parts crammed into a 15-second space, even a bit of text borrowed from novelist Kurt Vonnegut (who is credited). Yet it's easy on the ears, with strong melodies, surprise hooks and the voices of Bobby Gallivan and Janie Porche turning complex metiers and rhyme schemes into conversational patterns.
"It's a long process," Gallivan says of the push-pull songwriting and arranging in which all five band members share. "But that's the fun of it. To explore things, and yet make them flow."
In many ways, the Chicago quintet's full-length debut has been gestating for nearly a decade, through a handful of EPs, countless rehearsals and concerts, and surprisingly few personnel additions.
"We've been doing this since we were 17," says Gallivan of himself and his high school pals Dan Fleury and Dan Radzicki, who all lived in Naperville and attended Benet Academy in Lisle. They're now all in their mid-20s. "After college, we'd get together and have listening parties at each other's apartments, figuring out what we wanted to do."
They evolved from playing fairly conventional three-chord punk into increasingly elaborate pop-rock songs, jazzed by their mutual love of Pavement and early Built to Spill. The recruitment of drummer Evan Sult, formerly of the West Coast band Harvey Danger, proved to be a crucial addition, as he introduced the quirky rhythms that would soon become one of the band's strong suits. Then, in 2004, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Porche, recently arrived from Texas, was brought in after vocalist Kate Gross departed, and the band's identity was set.
Porche says she was attracted to the band's music because "it's very sincere."
"It's challenging music that's sometimes difficult to play," she says. "There are so many layers to it, and there's always room for more. If I say, `I want to try this,' the response is, `Let's go.'"
But she says Gallivan's lyrics are the emotional glue. "They're about a particular time in our life," she says. "We're all in this postcollege phase, trying to figure out our space, our place in life."
All the band members had decent postcollegiate jobs. All but one of them quit those jobs over the summer as the band prepares for the release of "Appreciation Night" on Tuesday and a national tour that includes two album-release concerts Friday at Schubas.
Gallivan walked away from a relatively secure job teaching history at Glenbrook North High School. "When I got the job, someone said I was `set for life,'" he says. "That was a scary idea. I was 25 at the time, and didn't know what the hell I was going to do." That moment of clarity resulted in one of the new album's best songs, "Rented a Tent (A Tent, A Tent)."
"I loved teaching, and I hope to do it again someday," he says. "But right now the goal is to make this band our job."
The bandwagon is filling up. Those Schubas shows may be sold out by Friday. Get your tickets now.
I'll see you there! I'll take a dirty kettle one martini with olives. haha!