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Crack
the Whip [Lashes] Jan. 23, 2006 By Matt Schild
Of course in this age of crushed-hopes bedroom heroes and over-sensitive children of the emo revolution making depression and self-involved introspection the hottest thing going these days, catching a band running around Hollywood with a smile on its face is a rarity. Catching a rocker who’s as enthusiastic about his music as Clark, or a band that makes no bones about playing adrenaline and sugar-buzz power-pop as The Lashes, is about as shocking as a strip club in Vatican City. “In a lot of ways, I think a lot of people in bands, they’re afraid to have fun sometimes because they think it’s not cool,” Clark says. “We know it’s not cool to have fun. Who cares. It’s way more fun to have fun than to try to be cool. “Are you actually that cool?” he continues. “Are you actually a tough guy with a cool haircut who gets laid 24 hours a day? No, you’re not. You’re not that fucking guy. You’re probably acting out on high school bullshit that happened to you and now you’re getting your vengeance on the world. You’re not that fucking cool. Have a sense of humor about yourself.” Clark and the rest of the Lashes (guitarists Scotty Rickard and Eric Howk, bassist Nate Mooter, keyboardist Jacob Hoffman and drummer Mike Loggins)have another reason to enjoy their success: They worked their asses off for it. The roots of the band stretch back to Seattle in 2000, though the act juggled members and lineups until midway through 2002, when things solidified and The Lashes began firing on all cylinders. As the band struggled to cement its lineup and its reputation, its members quickly became fast friends: All have lived with each other, in different combinations of twos, threes and fours, in Seattle dive houses, while working enough minimum-wage, resume-destroying jobs to make a career counselor barf.. The crummy apartments and crappy McJobs were only a means to an end, however, with The Lashes’ end being spreading the power-pop. Staying in town and holding down jobs just long enough to scrape up enough money to fund a DIY tour from the Emerald City down the Left Coast. Those tours' two-week itineraries were just long enough to completely wipe out the six men’s bank accounts long enough to force them to lick their wounds and nurse their debts just long enough to pull another tour together. “We’re all actually best friends and we would live in our van, if that’s what it came down to, 12 months a year if that’s what it took to play rock’n’roll shows because it’s really what all of us care about,” Clark says. “We’ve all dropped out of school and quit our jobs and taken shitty jobs just to go on tour and play rock’n’roll music and play pop songs.” Although most bands pay lip service with that sort of devotion to The Rock, one listen to The Lashes makes it pretty clear that they’re soaked sworn on oath of fealty to rock’n’roll. Get It, like its predecessor, 2004’s The Stupid Stupid Stupid EP (Lookout!), is a labor of love. It chops up bits and pieces of everything from Pacific Northwest power pop favorites like Best Kissers in the World and The Posies, the noisy hooks of early-years Kinks and Who, the gooey confections of Cheap Trick and the guitar-flinging antics of Joan Jett or The Knack. “New Best Friend” crackles with sparking guitar tones and a four-way chocolate-pudding wrestling match between two guitar, a bass and keyboard melodies sure to make any pop fan feel a little dirty and a little excited. “Please, Please, Please,” an ode to indie-label aspirations (see sidebar) roars with anthemic melodies of the purest power-pop descent. Get It screams with the sort of soaked-to-the-bone love of pop that, even in the age of ProTools and mixing miracles, just can’t be faked by a clever producer. Clark croons “All it’s gonna take is another pop song/To make everything okay” in The Stupid Stupid Stupid’s “Pop Song.” For about two and a half minutes in most Lashes songs, it’s believable that a great melody’s the solution to every problem up to and including world hunger. Clark and company know a thing or two about rock’n’roll salvation. Before moving to Seattle, each one of its member grew up in a one-horse town that offered little future whatsoever, especially for the proverbial outcast rocker stuck in nowheresville. Fortunately, for each of The Lashes, like generations of rockers before them, rock was there to make everything bearable. That sort of upbringing isn’t easily forgotten, even with a move to the big city and a major-label debut looming on the horizon, and The Lashes aren’t ready to forget their roots. “Rock’n’roll saved all of us from our small towns,” Clark gushes. “All of us are from little places where a lot of the reason we didn’t end up in a more professional way of life is we got sidetracked by punk rock. We all ended up going to shows when we were young and that was what we loved. That’s what saved us from the crazy world of being a teenager. Then we all started bands and stuff and started playing shows. Being from small towns, you always have that small-town mentality, like there’s always someone bigger than you. You try to hold your own and everything. We don’t expect anything to be handed to us. We know we have to work for everything we get. “We’re from fucking Podunk places that no one cares about. Being in a small town where none of your friends may be successful and maybe one band in the city has an indie record. Our goals, even though they were always to be The Beatles or just be a great rock’n’roll band that everyone likes, getting written up in a small-town newspaper or getting a show with a band that we like are goals that we have that we still think about. I still believe that I got to play with Goldfinger when I was 17! That seems dumb now, but bands that you like when you’re young, all of use were like ‘Oh man, we’re playing with real bands! Even though we didn’t like Goldfinger a lot, in a small town Goldfinger comes to town and people come out of the woods because there hasn’t been a show in town for 25 years. When your band gets to open for bands in a small town, that’s as big of a deal as us sitting in the van listening to ourselves on the radio in L.A. It’s like all these things are really cool things that we never dreamed would happen because we’re from a small-town background. We’re actual kids playing rock’n’roll music coming to Hollywood.” Maybe it’s the band’s less-than-cosmopolitan upbringing that’s helped it shuck the suffocating air of hipster detachment and indie-kid sadness, or maybe it’s the energy inherent in the band’s notoriously upbeat and hooky pop songs, but one way or another, The Lashes are cracking through Seattle’s façade of perpetually unsmiling rockers. Of course, a few well timed pranks here and there have also helped the act smirk its way through the indie elite – while making a name for itself as mischievous pranksters. Probably most notorious among its hijinks is a fun-loving poke at Sub Pop Records, a staple of Seattle indie culture, made before the Lashes were signed to Looutout!. Arming a crew of homeless men with signs reading “Sub Pop Sign The Lashes,” to picket outside a Sub Pop birthday bash at Seattle’s Crocodile Café, the act didn’t just celebrate the Seattle institution’s indifference toward its demos, it reveled in it. Just like with the wry humor embedded in its songs, however, many people fail to get the joke. To Clark, it’s just their loss. “There’s definitely a sense of humor to our band and that’s a big part of it. It’s definitely up to the listener to decide which parts we’re winking at you and which parts are sincere. That’s kind of hard, and because some people don’t get it and some people do. In Seattle, there’s a lot of times when we pull pranks and people think we’re being serious when we’re not. There’s a lot of reaction in Seattle. People either love us or they hate us in Seattle, but that is what we want from everywhere. I’m tired and we’re all tired of bands where people are like ‘Oh yeah, that band’s pretty cool. They’re all right.’ I’d much rather have a passionate reason about why they hate my band than to have them hear me on the radio and not remember that they heard me on the radio.” It’s probably fortunate that Clark and his band mates so eagerly embrace rampant hate, as The Lashes already face a sea of malcontents ready to harsh on their sugar-buzz. There’s a faction of lock-step hipsters exercising a knee-jerk aversion to anything immediate, fun and catchy. A slew of punk rock kids are pissed about the deal with Columbia. Clark himself makes no bones about his business-minded approach to leading his band – always a big no-no with punk’s ever-present sellout police. If there’s a band with a few cards stacked against it, it’s the Lashes – but that isn’t going to make the band be dishonest about its desire to rule the world. “Nobody is born punk rock! You didn’t find out about The Undertones when you were six years old,” Clark laughs. “You heard Kiss because Kiss was a huge fucking band. You heard The Beatles because The Beatles were the biggest band ever in the world. Our band’s a small band. I’m not even arguing for our band right now. If you get the chance to go to a major label and you think that your songs are something that other people might like and it allows you to go on the road and not be a telemarketer while you play your rock’n’roll songs and still eat Taco Bell, man that sounds like the best job I can dream of. I totally got it!” Clark might have landed
his dream job, but with Get It, everybody shares the benefits
package, a white-hot chunk of power pop sure to melt even a few icy
indie-kid hearts. |
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