by joel chaffee
When Hollands took the stage on Saturday night at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg, a five-member crew seemed appropriate. What with the band’s two 2009 EP releases of a tight rhythm section, occasional strings (or synths) and bandleader John-Paul Norpoth’s power-chord/wicked lead guitar and sugary but wary vocals, five members seemed sufficient. Both EP’s — February’s Faces and October’s Mother — sound like a group songwriting effort, as opposed to a songwriter bringing a very finished piece to the group. The band’s recordings seem to offer a band that has gone over each song time and again, tightening, straightening, casting off.
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Surprising, then, that Norpoth was, after the show, to tell me how much of an individual effort the songwriting was for both EP’s. (And also that Faces was written long before Norpoth’s former band, Butane Variations, recorded either of their releases.) After the demise of Butane Variations (one LP, one EP, lots of wonderful shows) Norpoth spent time at his parent’s home in upstate New York, writing on the piano. This, too, is surprising, given the incredible guitar rock going on in Hollands’ songs, which more often than not sound like the excitement of a new band getting to know each other through new music — and each member wants the best part.
Opening the Pete’s show with four songs from the band’s upcoming 2011 release — the show began with only Norpoth on acoustic guitar and vocals, Jannina Barefield on violin, and Chris Loxley on cello. The songs were Norpoth’s customary rock form with pop melodies abundant, and were introduced with quick quips like “This one’s about a lawyer I put on retainer. He’s a stoner. A deadhead. Fucker.” (“Stoner Lawyer”) or, “This one’s about Mike Tyson” (“Defeat”) or, “This one’s about old people” (“Else”). Whatever they were about was less important than that they were.
Midway through the fourth song — bass player Jim Robertson and percussionist Kenny Grohowski joined their band mates on stage, with Loxley switching to a microkorg synth and Barefield to xylophone, and Hollands began the best song from Faces, “Over and Out.”
You’d better go back home
Norpoth sang in his frank but sensitive tenor,
You’d better leave it alone
I heard you once and I heard you twice…
Well hell no, hell no, hell no
the chorus rocking like you just want to jump in place and through the floor, it’s so potent (And I’m not even sure what he’s saying “Hell no” to…). These songs are, after all, more oblique than Butane Variations’ usual fare.
Faces opener, “Strong Arm,” came sixth, the simple rock-riff circling itself, similar in intensity to Yo La Tengo’s “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind.” Norpoth singing,
And the waves you have are so bland
And the strong arm I have I have to have.
Like much of his output, there is a current of authority in these songs, of violence, as though he grew up with the soldiers; or the Christians? Most intriguing about this stream of authority is Norpoth’s almost ambivalent (hopeless?) nature towards it, which comes through lyrically and in his deadpan vocal performances. Mother closer “Dirty Rum” wafts through prisons, guns, clones, all to end each verse with, “Expand, expand the trouble of a broken man,” as though this expansion of trouble is merely the nature of things, and there is nothing to be done about it — so might as well write some songs.
This awareness of the Beast (authority, trouble, mother?) plays well with Norpoth’s love of a hook. Mother opener, “Air Conditioned Heart” trembles between the dominating and the withering (Explosions in the Sky?), then singing a pretty little thing like,
Let’s move to Kansas
We’ll rent a tandem bike
You make the sandwiches
I’ll sing “O Holy Night.”
This hilarity is chastened by,
Warned my mother: Don’t let your heart beat so fast.
as the song stops, swells, resumes; with forty seconds remaining, it turns into some funk thang, and is something else again before closing.
Hollands’ music, whatever else it does, loves music. Mother’s best, “Just Like Them,” paints wonderful domestic/neighborhood scene after scene.
Trouble lurks when you smile
Playing brick with a friend
Who’s like an uncle when he’s high
Or later on “Lungs of Steel,”
My best friend, he’s got lungs of steel
I hung him in the backyard
You can’t find him here
We play the Stones, we play ‘em real loud
My neighbors are swell
They never find me out
But watch out,
We can’t save you, you’ll have to save yourself.
But no mind,
We came to mock you, ’cause we can never joke around.
Then it gets desperate, in the melody, the thunder guitar,
I danced all night, then I shivered all morn
Now I lay in the bath ’cause we are we no more.
There are worlds in a Norpoth song, and finding them amidst the rubble of the fine craft of the songs and the performances is difficult; how wonderful.
The band closed the Pete’s set with “Coughing Boy,” Norpoth introducing “This song is about coughing. And being a boy.” And sure enough, with his acoustic guitar picking and strumming notes, and the rest of the band patiently swelling, he sang,
All is fair when you laugh out loud
But how can you hit me when I’m down?
It is just like Norpoth — to lament being hit when down while acknowledging that, after all, it is “fair in love and war,” even if you wish it wasn’t.
The smell of sweat bringing my hands under the belt loops…
And you breathe just like me.
That sounds nice.
But don’t worry
She’ll just cough you out.
And there it is, the deadpan reminder that you’ll get hit when you’re down, even when she breathes like you; and it’s all related in such lovely melody. Hey,
“All is fair in love of war.” Well I heard you once and I heard you twice.
