The Significant Figures

I came to music at a very early age. I got my first Michael Jackson album when I was 5 years old, and my first guitar a few years later. Between elementary school and highschool graduation I played, at one time or another, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, drums, and piano. Which is not to say I’m some sort of prodigy. On the contrary, I lacked the attention span necessary to really master any of those instruments. I mostly just wanted to play drums in a rock band. Clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone were forced on me by the crotchety, old, and disgruntled music teachers from the Oakland Public School District (translation: no way were they about to set a fourth-grader loose behind a drumset.)

Sometime around the sixth grade, my friends and I started having “jams” at my house after school. We had recently found a working tape recorder in the back of the garage, and my friend Nate had been given an electric guitar with five working strings. I had a pair of drumsticks and some heavy-duty cardboard boxes that made a drum-like sound. A couple of my friends thought they could sing. As the weeks wore on, we moved from open-ended noise jams to fully composed songs, complete with lyrics about fire, cars, and the girls in our class who had started to go through puberty. Naturally we decided that our incipient musical genius needed to be committed to tape.

After my friends went home, I would spend hours listening to those tapes on my boombox. I was totally impressed that we had had managed to make a noise which kind of sounded like music which sounded a little bit like a song which, I thought, meant we were destined for rock stardom. I was all, “Screw you middle school! We’re going on tour!” I played the tapes for anybody who would listen (read: my little sister and our babysitter). The babysitter was kind enough not say anything disparaging. Of course, she was getting paid. My sister, on the other hand, was brutally honest. “That sounds like Nate playing a broken guitar, you hitting some cardboard boxes, and a lot of screaming about explosions. Wait, did somebody just say ‘boobies?’ I’m telling Mom!”

I was reminded of those tapes when I first heard Significant Figures. Apparently the band was born of a similar experience - a Realistic two-track recorder found in a basement somewhere in New Jersey. According to the band’s promo material “its motors could not maintain a consistent speed throughout the length of any of the early epic rock anthems” and the first recordings from the group were scrapped. Since that time, the boys in the band have upgraded their technology and learned how to use it. Despite the fact that the band’s various members are spread across the eastern seaboard, they still manage to record at a prolific rate. With the help of a couple laptops, some vintage microphones, and the power of the internet, Significant Figures have built a large catalogue of lo-fi pop songs.

Imagine The Pixies and Paul Simon recording two minute pop songs in a basement apartment in a rainy little town outside of a big city. Imagine that they woodshed for a couple days, individually writing a bunch of new songs. Then they get together on Thursday night and record all of them. Then they go watch a movie, hang out with their girlfriends, and come back the next week and do it again. If you can actually imagine what that sounds like, then you’ve got a very impressive imagination. Sadly, that’s probably not at all how it happens. But that’s what I hear. Of course, I used to play the cardboard box in an after school jam band. Hey, do you wanna hear the tape?

Update: You can now stream/download the whole album here.

MP3: ‘The Kid With No Heart’

MP3: ‘Ray Borg Blues’


Boston, New York, acoustic, analog, indie rock, lo-fi, pop | 31.03.2008 21:45 | No Comments

Ghosty

Don’t you think it’s time that indie rock got its own radio station? Classic rock, oldies, top 40, etc. each get their own radio stations. As you flip through the dial, you know which of these stations you’ve landed on because each of these genres has a distinct sound, one that can be identified exclusive of song or artist. Likewise, as we’re fond of saying here at TC headquarters, indie rock at this point is as much a description of style as it is a declaration of sovereignty. While it may be broadly defined, in most cases you know it when you hear it (like pornography - yay!).

While out listening to music the other night, I was again reminded of the idea of indie rock as a simple genre description. The band (whom I’ve already forgotten) was just ok . You know the type - good enough not to offend, bad enough not to impress. I wasn’t that disappointed though, because they were just a band I was checking out based purely on speculation, which I do several times a week. I had dragged some friends along and, over drinks afterwards, they asked me what I thought. “Meh,” I shrugged, “it was just some indie rock.”

In this case I was using the generic indie rock label as an indictment, but it can also be an endorsement. It’s kind of like jazz. I sometimes like to put on a jazz station and let it dictate the soundtrack of, say, a late night drive or the first few hours of daylight before the coffee kicks in. Of course, I have my favorite songs and musicians, but it mostly serves as a pleasant sound, like waves crashing on a beach.

This is why we need an indie rock radio station - so we can have a simple FM depot for the specific songs as well as the general sound. If this station ever comes into existence, one the bands sure to go into heavy rotation is Ghosty from Lawrence, KS. In the two-and-a-half years they’ve been together, Ghosty has certainly recorded some stand-out tracks. Mostly though, they make a nice sound. Their new album Answers is the kind of record you could listen to three times in a row without it bothering you. And it’s a good thing too, because if indie rock radio turns out to be anything like the other stations, there will be a lot of repetition.

MP3: ‘Junior Grows Up’

MP3: ‘You Are A Big Screen’

KS, Lawrence, indie rock | 25.03.2008 18:49 | No Comments