Liquid Jungle jam-band inspires thirst for PBR
August 17th, 2007 by Brian Gilton in Backstage PassI’ve always thought highly of Vinyl. I suppose that’s because of the sheer number of times I’ve heard it mentioned by friends and acquaintances. Figured it must be something special.
I had never actually been to Vinyl, though, until Friday, Aug. 3, when I went to check out Liquid Jungle celebrate the release of its first album, Tiny Heaven.
Vinyl was packed with the prettiest suburbanites around. It was as if class at Dawson Creek High had just let out. Sneering, turf-claiming blondes dressed in skimpy AE halter tops eyed my friends and I as we cruised through the front doors and made our way toward the bar. And this is where my opinion of Vinyl started to dwindle: $4 PBRs.
OK, now, hold on. Four dollars for a PBR? “Good one,” I said to the bartender. “Now seriously, how much for a PBR?”
Four dollars.
We claimed a table in the back and talked about how we wished we had drinks.
The crowd was already mostly hammered when opening band Stokeswood took the stage. I couldn’t help but comment, over and over again to my friends, how much the lead singer’s head resembled Jack Johnson’s — you know, that elongated, big-jawed, surfer-head? This guy had that goin’ on, except with a full, black beard, too.
Stokeswood is a five-piece from Milledgeville that does the jam-band thing. I like jam bands — love them, in fact. But it’s a dangerous genre to try to play in (whether you mean to or not) — and Stokeswood demonstrates why. The guys are not untalented musicians; lead singer Adam Patterson has a fine voice and the band members mesh well. The problem is that there’s nothing too special about them. Maybe I caught them on a lackadaisical night, but instinct tells me I didn’t. They laid down some funky rhythms, sure, and lead guitarist Mark Godwin played a wicked, crowd-pleasing harmonica solo, but they came off, as a whole, as too formula-inspired: “We’re trying to do this, but it’s coming out sounding like that.”
Hence the danger of jam bands. Stokeswood, whether it means to or not, sounds like an attempt at capturing OAR and Perpetual Groove mushed into one. The songs, although interesting, sound typical; and Godwin’s alluding to tripping on LSD every couple of songs didn’t help fans’ tendency to stereotype, either.
“Everybody Loves Raymond” was playing, muted, on the television above the bar. Many opted to watch that and have conversation while the background music in the club played.Liquid Jungle is definitely a different story. I like me some Liquid Jungle. Here’s the deal: LJ does the jam-band thing in a much more subdued way — to a much less explicit, exclusive, obnoxious degree. Just looking at these four guys, you know they’re not trying to run any bullshit past you. Identical twin brothers and founders of LJ, Josh and Graham Yoder, embody no pretension. They’re slight and humble with their instruments. But lead singer Graham is uniquely and sincerely jam-band frontman caliber; he stomps around on stage like a deranged monkey while Josh looks on, amused.
It’s an amiable-appearing band, and the music is just as benign. I love the shit out of the set opener and featured track on Tiny Heaven, “The Hound.” The verses operate with the foreboding tension of a Tool riff, and then the choruses absolutely explode into lofty, beautiful melodies that shout Radiohead (whose fans are not assholes) inspiration. Yeah, Graham sounds a bit like Thom, but not in a desperate way (like the embarrassing Scott Stapp to E. Vedder).
The boys of LJ did a spot-on cover of “Paranoid Android” near the end of the set but it didn’t come off as desperate, either. In fact, the effect was just the opposite. It’s cool to see a band take a cover and make it its own; but it’s also cool, sometimes, to see a band cover a song note for note, exactly how it’s originally done. By doing so, LJ demonstrated its admiration for the brilliant musicianship of Radiohead, and probably earned more respect (from me, anyway) than it would have by botching the song and making “a statement.”
Doing the jam-band thing can be dangerous, but Liquid Jungle gets away with it, or rather, excels at it because the band is not trying to be a jam band. The songs are genuine, intriguing and cover a lot of ground: there are shredding, fast guitar solos, and ambient, warm ones; there are wide-open, airy verses and choruses, and menacing, pounding ones; there are funk, jazz and hard-rock elements at work at all times. Liquid Jungle is a hands-down tasty listen for those who like to dance and like surprises. The inclusion of a saxophone also kicks ass.
We ended up leaving the show a little early, though. We were getting thirsty, and 24 PBRs with my name on them were siting in my backseat.
God bless that beer, seriously.
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August 18th, 2007 at 2:38 am
great review! however, i think you meant to say that josh was the deranged monkey stomping around stage. :)
August 18th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I love sneering turf-claiming blondes!
August 18th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Heh.
Right you are, hg. Josh WAS the deranged monkey. Maybe I didn’t need that PBR as much as I thought I did.