By J Cassetta • Oct 23rd, 2008 • Category: Music, The Daily Dic
If you’ve got your finger on the local pulse, you may have noticed a band called Frantic Clam on Austin Sound this week. And if you went so far as to listen to the demos, you already know most of what I’m about to tell you about relative newcomers Frantic Clam and “Richard Cory”: they’re a band to seriously watch (and listen to, for that matter).
The originality, or probably more appropriately, the honesty in their music is aggressively refreshing. Instead of a band caught up in the pride of their record collection, desperately trying to define their “unique place in music” without straying too far from Papa-Westerberg’s sight, Frantic Clam are a band that’s unique from the get-go, though not in that gimmicky sideshow-instrumentation way that we’ve come to associate with “unique.” No, Frantic Clam immediately sound of familiarity, like you’ve been listening to them for years, but unlike anything you can put your finger on. Influences? Sure: Bowie, The Stones, low-fi Velvet Underground or early Modest Mouse even. But a knock-off they are not.
This song, from their current EP Celebrity, takes its name and theme from the Edwin Arlington Robinson’s famous poem by the same name:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
The band formed under the direction of Zack Hadley and Joe Sparks (who has since left the lineup) while in Iraq, compliments of the US Army, an environment which seems to be reflected in some of the darker themes of the music. I won’t presume to infer the meaning of lines like “Bang bang bang Richard Cory’s dead, a thirty-eight revolver emptied in his head” or even “…fought a war you didn’t care about” (in “Amnesty”), but it’s obvious that these lyrics draw more from the hard realities of life than those of the average indie rock band whose, if we’re going to stretch the stereotype to the extreme, trust-fund-bought lyrics (and gear) are probably more related to how the tight squeeze those pants are putting on their testicles.
Though their history is brief, it’s already apparent even from these 5 short songs that Frantic Clam have a strong sense of direction, and the upcoming release of Anatomica (due out on January 15th, 2009 on Exemplary Records) will hopefully build on these solid foundations. If the music community is even partially fair in its judgment of Frantic Clam, we should expect to hear only more good things about this band — and thank God for it, if I get one more press release about how you and your band put a computer mic up to your shoddy washing machine and found the true meaning of “meaningful,” I’m moving to Ulan Bataar and never looking back.
The band are playing Friday at Trophy’s, check em out (poster below). Here’s a tune from Celebrity:
Thanks for the kind words. Hope to see you tonight. We’ll make sure you get a copy of “Anatomica,” which we are recording this weekend.