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Ingram Hill
Wednesday · 20th Century Theater
Ingram Hill is one of those rare bands populated with cute guys guaranteed to inspire swooning among the younger female set, yet still maintaining a musical integrity with a no frills, rootsy style that finds the musical intersection between Pop and Southern Rock while utilizing insightful and introspective lyrics. The Memphis quartet came to fruition five years ago when vocalist/guitarist Justin Moore and guitarist Phil Bogard left their previous band of three years, The Bamboozlers, to join up with fellow University of Memphis students Shea Sowell and Matt Chambless (on bass and drums, respectively). Rallying around their mutual influences of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Gin Blossoms, The Black Crowes, Tonic and Cracker, Ingram Hill spent the next two years building a rabid following across the South with a relentless touring schedule. The roadwork paid off in 2002 when the band finally put together their debut CD on their own Traveler label, an eight-song EP entitled Until Now. After moving an impressive 10,000 units, Ingram Hill returned the following year with their first full-length disc, June´s Picture Show, produced by former Feel/Billionaire vocalist Rick Beato, whose production credits included the Tender Idols, Michelle Malone and Flickerstick. The album had only been on the street for a matter of weeks when Hollywood Records offered them a contract, which they accepted. Hollywood re-released June´s Picture Show nationally last spring, garnering Ingram Hill a great deal of positive press for the album. In keeping with their early work ethic, the band has toured almost non-stop since the album’s re-release, raising their profile and inspiring fan sites to blossom on the Internet. Guys will dig the Rock, girls will have to guard against the vapors: Ingram Hill is coming to town. (Brian Baker)
The High Dials
Friday · Southgate House (Lounge)
While it’s tempting to dismiss The High Dials as another sunshiny ’60s Pop revival show, careful listens to the Montreal-spawned quintet’s latest release, War of the Wakening Phantoms, show a deeper understanding of great, nuanced Pop music in general.
The group started in earnest in 2001, recording and releasing their debut on their own, only to have it snatched up and issued internationally in 2003 by New York City’s PsychPop-friendly imprint, Rainbow Quartz. A New Devotion quickly generated buzz for the band, earning positive press shout-outs and solid college radio support (the E-Street Band’s Little Steven Van Zandt was also an early booster, giving the album regular airplay on his excellent Underground Garage radio program). While Devotion‘s follow-up does have plenty of vintage residue melting amidst the trippy, multi-layered splendor (from the swirly, vinyl-worthy cover art to the lustrous melodies), they’ve taken these elements and crafted their own personalized vision, eschewing the more obvious clichés for something richer and more timeless. Like the best LPs by British bands Doves and Super Furry Animals, The High Dials construct their own little world on War of the Wakening Phantoms. The cascading melodic charisma is enhanced by a radiant stratum of guitars, keys, strings, saxes, flutes and banjos, which aren’t so much piled on top of each other as they are gently settled in, like tiny pellets gracefully sinking to the bottom a snow globe. Rather than mimics, The Dials are more like a sample chemist who manipulates sounds beyond instant recognition to avoid copyright lawsuits. But it could also be that Trevor Anderson (the songwriting mind behind the Dials’ music) and his compatriots are squarely in tune with the universal Pop music subconscious, sipping from the same stream as Brian Wilson, The Thrills and Teenage Fanclub, but remaining imaginative enough to stamp their own psychic fingerprints into the listener’s consciousness. (Mike Breen)
The Queers
Monday · Top Cat’s
To most knowledgeable Punk aficionados, the Queers 20-plus year story is well documented but still as compelling to tell as a classic bedtime tale (if you’ve raised your kids on a steady diet of Dead Kennedys and Germs, maybe). The Queers officially began in New Hampshire in 1982 when guitarist Joe King decided to convert his love of pure lunkhead Punk energy and Pop melody into a string of self-performed singles. By the end of the decade, King had assembled an actual band to present his songs, enlisting drummer Hugh O’Neill and bassist B-Face to be The Queers. The band’s debut album, Grow Up, sank without a ripple when their British label folded, but King sent one of his last copies to Ben Weasel (of Screeching Weasel fame who also wrote a regular column for Punk bible Maximum Rock ´n´ Roll). This led to The Queers’ contract with Lookout! Records and a long association with Weasel, who produced their 1993 label debut, Love Songs for the Retarded, and a number of subsequent albums and EPs throughout the ’90s, including 1994’s exquisite Beat Off. Tragically, O’Neill’s brain cancer diagnosis necessitated his retirement; he succumbed to the disease in 1999. When B-Face defected to join the Groovie Ghoulies in 1998, King soldiered on with a constantly shifting Queers lineup (although that had always been a hallmark of the band; Screeching Weasels’ Danny Vapid and former DMZ guitarist J.J. Rassler were frequent collaborators). He signed with Hopeless Records, recorded Punk Rock Confidential and continued to tour relentlessly across the country and around the world. A live album and a couple of studio albums later, King returned to Lookout! for the 2001 EP Today and the well-received Pleasant Screams in 2002. For the past two decades, the Queers’ Joe King has turned juvenile lyrics and a snotty Punk attitude into midbrow art and a marginally successful cottage industry. (BB)
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2005.