SAD BABY WOLF
THE CHERRY TEMPO
EDITH
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Friday MAY 3, 2013
2823 2nd Street Northwest
Albuquerque , NM
doors 8pm
$5
No, I’m not going there. Sad Baby Wolf has garnered
a lot of ink because two of its members were in the most successful band to
come out of the ‘burque but this doesn’t mean they should be forever defined by
that.
And yet, Sad Baby Wolf’s premiere LP Electric Sounds does remind me of guitarists
Marty Crandall’s and Neal Langford’s earlier band, one that garnered acclaim
and made its mark on the scene. Okay. I’ll say it once and once only. Flake.
Flake had many of the pop sensibilities of that… other.. band but also was a
product of its time.
Also known as Flake Music -- depending on whether
one heard them in 1993 or 1997 -- Flake dispensed with the trashy punk
aesthetic of local contemporaries like Scared of Chaka and helped usher in what
we then called emo. In those days emo didn’t mean your sad bastard whining or
the über-sensitive suicide
fodder of your Elliot Smiths. We used it (somewhat disparagingly I’ll admit) to
denote a musical style more than a subject matter. Lots of minor chords,
turn-on-a-dime changes from soft to loud and back again and emotive vocals that
were not snarled à la The Drags but could be every bit as biting. On the
national stage, bands like Samiam and Discount brought emo wide recognition although
its fans took offense at that label. By 2000, the “punk” revival was dead and
emo --or whatever you want to call it -- was the predominant form, barely
edging out math rock . Many of us had had enough and local glam aficionado Zed
Stardust famously threatened to publicly hang himself from the decrepit heater hanging
over the Golden West stage if yet another touring emo band showed up.
Still, there were a few local outfits that did
justice to the form. For my money, Pilot To Bombardier was at the top of that
heap. Consider this a cheap foreshadowing trick of a cheaper journalist but its
noteworthy that Sad Baby Wolf’s bassist Sean McCullough was their guitar
slinger. McCullough was armed with an heroic array of pedals, the most I’d ever
seen (a feature he later brought with him to The Oktober People). Concurrently
, third Sad Baby Wolf guitarist Jason Ward was rocking local stages with with
Starsky’s workingman’s-core indie rock.
So here we are a decade and half on and Sad Baby
Wolf is cited as being influenced by everyone from Arcade Fire to Promise Ring when in fact
they’ve been in on the deal from the get go. My memory of those days is a bit
dim but there were shared stages and bills between any number of bands boasting
Crandall, Ward, McCullough and Langford. A bit later, drummer Maury Crandall
made his mark with his wife Connie in the fine and powerful pop of Giranimals
who are sorely missed but are valiantly raising a brood of Cowsill-like
musically knowledgeable kids.
Competing some sort of circle, Sad Baby Wolf is
hosting their official Electric Sounds
release show at Low Spirits, owned by
Starsky-alum Joe Anderson. Featuring Marty’s and Neal’s vocals, this limited
pressing of 300 records (with free download) is not stuck in the past by any
means but moves forward with a bit of swirl, a bit of jangle, a bit of pop and
a bit of soaring emo when that word meant more than it does now. Capably engineered
by McCullough, I hear in it snatches of Pavement and even Pete Townshend but
especially “old” emo’s hallmark:
intricate and deliberate progressions, here backed with Maury’s pop-styled
drums. And if you think there’s no such thing as pop drums you haven’t been
listening. Pay attention to his beats and you’ll see.
No one escapes their past I suppose. But I see no reason to focus on only one
past accomplishment when this band has a collective body of work of which to be
quite proud. From this point on I hope that Sad Baby Wolf’s worth is measured
by their considerable prowess and not by past laurels. If we can do that
locally, it can be done in the national press as well.
Not to dwell on the past but supporting act
Edith is particularly intriguing based on its members’ histories. It is fronted by one
of our most able and earnest songwriters
Billy Belmont (Bellemah, The Bellmont).
In a recent five-way Facebook message fest, he described the band as “Melodic
doom drone rock, A little southerny at times.” Singer/guitar player Ella
Brown ( Mother Death Queen, I Is For Ida, Unit 7 Drain) claims “We
are Black Maria's illegitimate and unloved step child. The kind of music a
shipping dock would make, if it made music.” Bassist Joshua Williams (St. Petersburg, Mindy
Set, Mei Long) and drummer Ben Levine ( Lousy Robot, 2bers, A Very Special Lie)
kept mostly quiet as Billy and Ella exchanged quips and pointed little love
barbs.
