Locals Only: : A Little Big Star

Do you recall the first time you heard a song and said to yourself, “This Rock & Roll — it’s for me”? Maybe you heard the song via an older sibling or at a friend’s house or maybe during a long drive by yourself. Maybe you haven’t had that moment yet. And sure, you’ve always liked music, but I’m talking about the moment when you hear a song and some sort of electric/mystical “marriage” happens between the song and your mind and heart. The sound you heard was just so full of energy that you sat there, mouth open, amazed, trying to take it all in. Or you started dancing around the room like a fool, not caring about whether it was “cool” to do so.

After you hear that song, you spend virtually the rest of your life trying to recapture that feeling to varying degrees of success.

The Defrost Star writes and plays songs like that: walls of wicked, adrenaline-punching Post Punk in a hot ‘n’ heavy relationship with melody that cracks and sparks like an electric whip.

It’s difficult to pin down where the band’s main songwriter, Doug Whitaker (guitar/vocals), gets his sonic influences from, because, “I don’t even listen to music,” he says. “I listen to NPR.”

Whitaker and drummer Greg Given formed the nucleus of the band, later adding Kyle Shoup (guitar/vocals) and Kris Gillis (bass/vocals) to the ranks to become The Defrost Star (the name of the band doesn’t mean anything at all, according to Whitaker) in May 2003.

The band is very passionate about Whitaker’s music. “The way that (the music) sounds when Doug records it and then the way it winds up coming from the full band is pretty neat to watch happen,” says Given. “When I first started, I had heard these songs that (Whitaker) had recorded and I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t care what it is, I want to be in this band. I want to play this music,’ because when I listen to a CD, there’s no middle ground. I either hate the CD or love the CD.”

The band’s sound is reminiscent of Sunny Day Real Estate at their most powerful, along with the slash-and-burn of the Foo Fighters with a touch of Party of Helicopters. Sometimes, an oddball comparison comes up, too.

“We have songs in which I scream,” says Shoup, “and people will come up and compliment me about my screaming by saying, ‘You sound like the guy from Linkin Park,’ and I’ll go, ‘Gee. Thanks.”

Even the band is prone to making strange associations. On their Web site, they say they are, “Combining elements of Rock, Alternative, Emo, and Punk music.”

Emo?

“(We) say (Emo) because it seems to be popular now, and if you put that as your style of music, people listen to it,” reasons Given.

However, onstage, they are far from the whiny shoegazing that sometimes characterizes Emo music. They genuinely let the excitement and the power of the music possess them.

“Every time I’m playing — even though we’ve been playing some of the songs for a year — still, when I hear them, I get excited. I like the music that much,” says Gillis. “In one of our newer songs called ‘Killing Me,’ every time when everything drops out, and then there’s this hum, and then Kyle brings his opening guitar melody back in, it’s just like ‘Grah!‘ You just want to jump, scream, because the music just bursts back in. It’s just fun.”

Given adds, “Every concert that I’ve ever been to, I was watching the people onstage, and I would say to myself that I want to do that, I want to be the person onstage. And when you get to be the person onstage, you look out and say, I want a crowd like a U.S. Bank Arena crowd on the other side. Because it’s amazing to have people out there watching you and everything you do, while playing music that you think is great and having a captive audience.”

The Defrost Star will take you prisoner. Go willingly, but not quietly.

Do you recall the first time you heard a song and said to yourself, “This Rock & Roll — it’s for me”? Maybe you heard the song via an older sibling or at a friend’s house or maybe during a long drive by yourself. Maybe you haven’t had that moment yet. And sure, you’ve always liked music, but I’m talking about the moment when you hear a song and some sort of electric/mystical “marriage” happens between the song and your mind and heart. The sound you heard was just so full of energy that you sat there, mouth open, amazed, trying to take it all in. Or you started dancing around the room like a fool, not caring about whether it was “cool” to do so.

After you hear that song, you spend virtually the rest of your life trying to recapture that feeling to varying degrees of success.

The Defrost Star writes and plays songs like that: walls of wicked, adrenaline-punching Post Punk in a hot ‘n’ heavy relationship with melody that cracks and sparks like an electric whip.

It’s difficult to pin down where the band’s main songwriter, Doug Whitaker (guitar/vocals), gets his sonic influences from, because, “I don’t even listen to music,” he says. “I listen to NPR.”

Whitaker and drummer Greg Given formed the nucleus of the band, later adding Kyle Shoup (guitar/vocals) and Kris Gillis (bass/vocals) to the ranks to become The Defrost Star (the name of the band doesn’t mean anything at all, according to Whitaker) in May 2003.

The band is very passionate about Whitaker’s music. “The way that (the music) sounds when Doug records it and then the way it winds up coming from the full band is pretty neat to watch happen,” says Given. “When I first started, I had heard these songs that (Whitaker) had recorded and I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t care what it is, I want to be in this band. I want to play this music,’ because when I listen to a CD, there’s no middle ground. I either hate the CD or love the CD.”

The band’s sound is reminiscent of Sunny Day Real Estate at their most powerful, along with the slash-and-burn of the Foo Fighters with a touch of Party of Helicopters. Sometimes, an oddball comparison comes up, too.

“We have songs in which I scream,” says Shoup, “and people will come up and compliment me about my screaming by saying, ‘You sound like the guy from Linkin Park,’ and I’ll go, ‘Gee. Thanks.”

Even the band is prone to making strange associations. On their Web site, they say they are, “Combining elements of Rock, Alternative, Emo, and Punk music.”

Emo?

“(We) say (Emo) because it seems to be popular now, and if you put that as your style of music, people listen to it,” reasons Given.

However, onstage, they are far from the whiny shoegazing that sometimes characterizes Emo music. They genuinely let the excitement and the power of the music possess them.

“Every time I’m playing — even though we’ve been playing some of the songs for a year — still, when I hear them, I get excited. I like the music that much,” says Gillis. “In one of our newer songs called ‘Killing Me,’ every time when everything drops out, and then there’s this hum, and then Kyle brings his opening guitar melody back in, it’s just like ‘Grah!‘ You just want to jump, scream, because the music just bursts back in. It’s just fun.”

Given adds, “Every concert that I’ve ever been to, I was watching the people onstage, and I would say to myself that I want to do that, I want to be the person onstage. And when you get to be the person onstage, you look out and say, I want a crowd like a U.S. Bank Arena crowd on the other side. Because it’s amazing to have people out there watching you and everything you do, while playing music that you think is great and having a captive audience.”

The Defrost Star will take you prisoner. Go willingly, but not quietly.

This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2004.