After hearing the brand-new split cassette with unheralded Chicago bands Soddy Daisy and Donkey Hotel, I may chuck my radio right out the window and forget I ever had one. To say that both bands are highly original, accomplished, smart and witty doesn't quite nail it. The words "arresting" and "otherworldly" will just have to do.
The members of Soddy Daisy ( guitarist Christian Swofford, vocalist/bassist Maureen Meer, drummer/producer Chris Lee, and vocalist/guitarist Joey Eichler ) are each so idiosyncratic and striking that one could assume that the musical personalities would clash on a recording. Thanks to stellar writing and Lee's deft production ( which is all meat and no potatoes ), the group melds in a surprising and pungent way with personality to burn. You have to ask after hearing or seeing them, "Who the hell ARE these guys?"
Soddy Daisy sounds like hardcore psychedelic glam rock with an intoxicating raggedness around the edges, but that is just a tip of what is going on here. Eichler sings like he's smacked to the tits on glue, and his careening vocals come seasoned with a swaggering "fuck me honey'" drawl. Meer has the kind of off-kilter voice that is not only distinct and arresting, but she keeps doing unexpected things with it. When the two of them bite into the galvanizing and sinister "Don't Rub it In"—with Swofford ripping his guitar like a surgeon on speed and Lee bashing his heart out—the song becomes hypnotic, scary, sexy, brutal and beautiful at exactly the same moment. When Meer burrows into the showpiece "Take Me Down," it feels like traditional blues re-imagined for a new age with an overpowering aroma of dread hanging over it. ( I can see Bessie Smith smacking her lips and giving her approval from the hereafter. )
What this band has managed to do is put two of the most compelling vocalists in one group and surround them with such atmosphere, dark emotion and pervasive subversion that hearing it literally invades the pores of your skin. Yes, the songs are excellent and memorable, but Lee has to take the credit for knowing exactly what to do with them while submerging them in the correct flavor of murk.
After seeing Soddy Daisy rip through a show at The Burlington two weeks ago, I got an entirely different impression of the band from all that ( seeming ) gloom. Dolled up in lipstick for the hell of it, when Eichler stepped up to the microphone and started wailing for all he was worth I was compelled to yell, "BRING IT, BITCH!!!"
I've now got the idea that Soddy Daisy is hardly about "darkness," depression" and "subversion," but really kicking out the jams and making some of the most compelling rock 'n' roll that I've heard in ages. So what if they sing about shitty emotions with an addictive sound to match? These are shitty times and when they improve this band will go right ahead and make music that fits the tone of the times.
If Soddy Daisy sounds like it joyfully wallows in the subversive, Donkey Hotel takes the opposite approach. Vocalist and ukulele player Bill Chill writes shiny articulate songs packed with sincerity and charm and the man is sassy charisma personified. With guitarist and lover Honey Hole Johnson at his side the two of them would be formidable on there own. Then there are bassist Danny Backer, guitarist Amy Rose and Franklin Atra on drums, and you have something that is downright overwhelming.
That the band envelopes and "treats" Chill's songs is putting it mildly. There are the oddball tempo changes, Johnson's ease in flinging out scathing solos at random and the rhythm section powering it all as if the world were coming to an end. With Donkey Hotel's mitts all over it, a sweet confessional ballad like "Second Semester" becomes a towering epic full of fire and drama. The way these guys go at it, nothing matters in this world apart from what is being said in the song.
Producer Chris Lee and Chill take the moldy concept of a power ballad and literally snatch it back. I dare Celine Dion to try to pull the emotion out of a song in the same way. ( After hearing "Second Semester," I can see Dion glaring at Chill with daggers in her eyes and every intention of flinging her drink in his face. )
The opener on the tape, "First" is either glib or ironic and I can't tell which ( the more I listen to it the more I've begun to realize that it is both ). "Land of the Lotus," with its nimble guitar figures, goes in an entirely different direction. Rather then bother with irony, glibness or emotions, the song "blooms" into a rowdy rocker with Backer, Rose and Atra giving Johnson a foundation to go apeshit. Hearing Honey Hole Johnson let loose on guitar is everything "queerness" threatens to the uninitiated: wild, knowing, intelligent, unpredictable and brutal enough to kick the living shit out of some fool who won't get it. "Gilded Cage" is like a clarion call, a blunt rave-up that puts words, music and muscle behind every note.
Although Donkey Hotel does not consider itself a "queer band," despite the obvious interplay/relationship between two of its members, the members make music that could only be created and fueled from the fringes of "accepted society."
The late writer Jon-Henri Damski would have loved these guys.
