Awesome Snakes
Venom (Crustacean)
Grade: B+

By Stephanie Soucheray
Contributing Writer
Graphic by Julie Boehmer

Download: "Awesome Party"

Two and a half years ago, as the Soviettes received buzz blurb after buzz blurb in the local press and started touring nationally, Daniel Henry and Annie Holoien decided the pressure was getting to be a little much. They needed, above all else, to have fun with their music, and so, the Awesome Snakes were born.

"More than anyone else in the Soviettes, Annie and I listen to the same sort of music. We're really good friends and just needed to be a little more free and loose than the Soviettes could be," said Henry, 33. "So, we started the Awesome Snakes, the idea being we'd make a sort of jokey-mixed tape only we'd find funny. But we'd have total control."

That "mixed tape" turned into the Awesome Snakes debut album Venom (Crustacean Records). A bass-and-drums stomp through 15 songs in under 30 minutes, Venom is already generating chatter for its often hilarious, tight and weird songs about, what else, snakes and things that are awesome.

Crustacean, a label out of Madison, Wis., heard the Snakes from a cassette they made on Crois Clayton's Home Taping is Killing the Record. By early winter of last year, Venom was on its way to becoming a real album.

This isn't a joke album or concept album per se, but even Danny Snakes and Annie Awesome (their nom-de-plums for the Snakes) are shocked that the band has been well-received, even earning them a reputation-making "picked to click" credit in City Pages.

"It's pretty surprising," Annie said. At 28, Annie is a veteran of the Twin Cities music scene, having moved here from Fargo after high school. Her first job in Minneapolis was at First Avenue, where she met scenesters and friends alike. It was in these circles that Annie met to Danny.

Venom relies on Danny's improv-like lyrics and Annie's belts to deliver songs that mention six packs of beer (something that is awesome), how lame people who don't like snakes are (a reference to the reptiles), and even a funky story-rap by perpetual guest star P.O.S. ("I got a name for people who don't like snakes: Fuckers").

Half the songs, including "Venom" and "1950s UFO vs. Snakes" use samples from odd how-to tapes and self-help cassettes. They're the sort of weird tapes your friend's perverted dad might listen to on his way to work, but on Venom these clips ground the music in a surreal cut-and-past sonic landscape.

"I collect things. You know, unmarked cassettes from thrift stores, how-to-cassettes when I can find them," explains Danny. "I just save the stuff, weird stuff and hope I can use it."

One weird sample is on the track "Awesome Snacks." The song opens with a patronizing women saying "If you were born to overweight parents, you have and 80 percent chance of being overweight yourself." That byte alone would be funny, but the fact that Danny and Annie let the women's voice continue, talking about eating habits and fat cells, shows just how far they're willing to jerk-off in the name of fun.

Though Venom is at its heart a party album, with jokes and sound gags abounding, there is an obvious musicality and talent that comes through each track. On the anthemic "You don't like snakes, I don't like you," Danny takes the listener on a journey to the Little Caesar's parking lot on East Lake street. Here, Danny meets a man who shows him a snake, then he passes out. But the melody Annie adds halfway through the song hints at the Snakes need to not just be funny, but to be good.

The Snakes are not trying to make a mockery of themselves, but if people want to laugh, that's okay. "I think people like us because we're funny, and we sound like fun," said Danny. "It's not a conscious way of entertainment. We just do what we think is funny and good and if other people like it, great."

When they perform live, the Snakes avoid the potential traps of the albums subject matter. They don't use fake snakes, though sometimes Danny blows on a whistle.

"I don't care if there are thirty people there or three hundred. The're going to like the show because Annie and I are up there, playing our songs, smiling. We're not trying to be tough."

In talking to both Danny and Annie, the word "fun" pops out of their mouths at an alarming rate. Both like their current jobs because they're "fun." Danny likes hip-hop, being married, and his new bed from Ikea because all those things are "fun." Both believe in creating music, rock 'n roll that should be fun. And music wasn't always fun when they were touring with the Soviettes.

"It was just really hard," Danny said. "We were never home, and to be on the road for two months, then back for a month ... what do you do? Do you get a job and try to make money? It takes so much to tour like that."

The Soviettes were a high-stakes band; for a moment, they seemed like they would rocket out of the Minneapolis scene and take other punk-rock acts with them. They wrote fantastic songs, toured the country opening for Against Me! and were even written up in SPIN last summer. Then, one of the band members, Suzy, moved to LA. The Soviettes have been on official hiatus since this fall, and a reunion is unlikely.

Some of Danny's best memories are with that band. He recalled one show in Anchorage Alaska. "The show was sponsored by the university, and it was like every student was there. They don't get bands up there all the time, and for 30 minuets, they were just hardcore dancing. It was amazing."

If you can sound good while making people laugh and dance, you're ahead of the game, and Venom shows the Snakes to have finally reached the right balance of work and play in their lives.

"If someone offered us a big tour or something, it would be great," said Annie. "But we only want to take this as far as it can or should go. We're just a fuck-around band."

Still, there are some concrete steps for the Awesome Snakes. Danny is booking more shows and Stand Up Records, a comedy label, wants to print Venom on vinyl.

"We love vinyl," said Danny. "At first, we approached them but they said they did only spoken word comedy, but after seeing our show they wanted to make a deal. Hopefully it will happen."

Venom may be self-referential, vulgar, goofy and weird. But it is never pretentious. The album is the sound of people having fun, and people being honest about their musical intentions. Besides, who doesn't want to listen to a song called, "You Got Snakes All Up In Your Grill?"

Graphic by Julie Boehmer

From left to right: Franz Nicolay (keyboards), Tad Kubler (guitar and of Song of Zarathrustra fame), Bobby Drake (drums and of End Transmission fame), Galen Polivka (bass), and Craig Finn (guitar, vocals and of Lifter Puller fame).

The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls In America
Grade: A+

By Ian Anderson
Editor

(Quick, click on the link to download "First Night" in order to appropriately set the mood as you read this article.)

After spending five minutes gushing to Craig Finn about how much I loved Lifter Puller, how much I love the Hold Steady, how much I love the new record and, in turn, him, he finally summed it up for me: "Yeah. I'm really proud of it and I'm really excited about it and I'm glad everyone is excited ... and I'm glad you like it, Ian."

The Hold Steady's new album Boys and Girls In America is the best record of the year. The album embodies everything that was great about Lifter Puller with the extra panache and classic rock bombast of the Hold Steady and fulfills all of the hopes we all have had for Craig and Tad from the beginning. Each track is a well-crafted pop song that contains killer riffs, killer hooks and damn good lyrics. The Hold Steady have always been great, but they never quite locked in all three great aspects of the band at once, until now.

Produced by John Agnello, who worked with the likes of Dinosaur Jr., Drive-By-Truckers and even, yes even, Andrew W.K., the record has a broader, thicker, and more sonically satisfying sound that is appropriate for the streamlined simple-is-more feel to the record - and may very well result in a wider appeal and easier accessibility.

Boys and Girls, although a party through and through, is much more personal than any of Finn's past efforts. The main themes step away from his examination of other characters and seems to focus on himself. Part of this I attribute to what inspired him to write the album in the first place, a line from Jack Kerouac's "On the Road": "Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together." According to Finn, the record is simply about love and guys and girls and relationships.

"[The album] is based loosely on one sentence from Kerouac," Finn said. "When I first read it, I didn't get it. I re-read it at 32 and found it to be tremendously funny. It's both maudlin and sad in a Morrissey kind of way, but it was also funny and overdramatic, but also truthful. At that age, the moments of joy and elation are the most in life and the lowest are the lows. It's the kind of thing that when I'm 35, I don't understand love and relationships any more than I did at 15. This is a situation that age doesn't even help. So I wrote songs from different angles on that one topic."

This personal quality is enhanced by Finn's shift from his patented stream-of-conscious style of writing to a more repetitive, fan-fare-esque fashion that really captures the attention of the listener. Here, I will admit that I have always enjoyed that off-the-cuff style of Finn gab, but I must say that having sing-along choruses does make the record a bit more of a party.

"I sort of made a personal decision lyrically to make repetitive choruses, which is something I haven't done before," Finn said. "There are some more real, actual repetitions for people to hold on to. Trying to get across a sense of celebration and a sense of joy and the 'woah-woah' choruses convey a sense of fun and joy that really add a lot."

A prime example of this transition is "You Can Make Him Like You," which is my favorite track off the record. With a chorus that hooks with the line "There's always other boys / there's always other boyfriends / there's always other boys, you can make them like you," the song is just infectious. Finn is always a step or two away from a clever turn of phrase, which is why he's so cool - and this works throughout the entire album.

"We wrote 'You Can Make Him Like You' in the studio," Finn said. "It just sort of fit the flow and it was a fun straightforward song. I liked the idea of it and it was kind of funny and it appealed to me because it was a song I could laugh at."

This sense of humor permeates throughout the album and adds to the already party atmosphere. This riotous tone is compounded by the blue-collar modern-day Born to Run vibe the record projects, which is perfectly appropriate to the anthemic nature inherent in the band.

Another element that really brings out a new side to the band is a greater integration of keyboard player Nicolay, who, having joined mere weeks before Separation Sunday, never really had a chance to get in the game on the ground floor. Now, presented with the opportunity, he really stepped up to the plate.

"We were more aware of space," Finn said. "[We wrote] this record with him; piano is such a dynamic instrument and we allowed space for that. Franz is a really good musician that hangs out with more trained musicians and he kind of lined up the string sections too."

"Essentially, you want to grow as a band and progress in your craft and instrument and songwriting process," Kubler said. "This [record] is much more deliberate. We wanted to bring out the hooks with less-is-more. I wanted to create more space for Franz to come through as a musician. We wanted to give him space to carry the melody of the record. At times we'd say 'Let's just take out the guitar.'"

It's clear the writing process has become a collaborative effort, which definitely plays to the strengths of each member - and it is just as clear that the guys took their time in the studio.

"We just wanted to try new stuff," Kubler said. "It was the first time we ever worked with a producer. We wanted to create a space in the studio where we felt comfortable thinking above and beyond the habits and routines we developed in our songwriting. - 'to really explore the studio space.' We feel as a band that we accomplished the big rock record [with Separation Sunday], we wanted to see what else we could do."

The famed Finn-penned characters of Holly, Charlemagne and Gideon take a step back on this record, leaving the concepts behind on Separation Sunday. "I just made them up," Finn said. "They're loosely based on things and people and are composites of people. Gideon isn't this one guy I knew, but is a type of guy I knew. But those characters aren't doing anything in these songs - it's not a concept album, it's a scene. They all appear in "First Night," which is an update on what they're up to, but they don't have much to do with the rest of the album. The reason why I didn't write another linear album is because, if I did, I would have to do that for every album for the rest of my life."

"We wanted to break the mold and grow as songwriters and maybe the next record will continue in the progression," Kubler said. "We've developed a profound respect for each other - like a platoon. We have so much fun doing what we can do, and it's contagious. Here a five guys who genuinely have fun together."

Another change that this album marked was the move from Brooklyn-based indie-trend-setters French Kiss Records to the much larger Vagrant Records.

"Vagrant are our best friends," Finn said. "And French Kiss, those are some of the only guys I hang out with in New York. Vagrant has a way of reaching people outside of the box. With French Kiss, there was limited capital. Separation Sunday seemed like a dog on a chain: it had momentum but could only go so far."

The switch to Vagrant will allow the Hold Steady to reach a greater audience, which isn't losing sight of the band's indie-cred, but rather, bringing more people into the know.

"A part of the closure of the artistic circle is getting feedback from the audience, and the bigger that is, the better it is," Finn said. "I have the most punk-cred than anyone I know my age. I want people to not feel excluded in any way."

Boys and Girls In America is a profound record that accurately captures the romantic feelings of the road, youthful optimism and the inevitable frustration that comes with those romantic misconceptions. Finn's self-aware writing brings out a characteristic intrinsic in the very fabric of naive love, which, he explains, never gets over the naive part even as you get older.

Oh, and Craig, can you send me one of those Hold Steady beer coasters?