tense forms reviews

CD REVIEWS: Local and Independent
BY STEVE MCPHERSON

The Notes and Scratches
Uh Oh
Tense Forms

This debut from Chicago collective Notes and Scratches comes in an unassuming enough package; it’s just chipboard with an endearing illustration of a cat riding a turtle. Leadoff track “The Hours” begins with chunky muted guitar, but the xylophone and singing saw hold forth the promise of something in the vein of pscyh-country shoegazers Mercury Rev. Seventeen seconds in, though, the drums come crashing through, and that’s when their real M.O. becomes apparent. Broken Social Scene’s manic party vibe is present, but their closest neighbor is the Arcade Fire, although singer Josh Dumas is a husky-throated Tom Waits-alike, not a Bowie/Byrne disciple. The album overall is warm and friendly and it gives the distinct impression of having been recorded with one mic in a big empty room. “Via Satellite” is a long distance lament that’s held aloft by a sympathetic horn section and “The Clockmaker’s Daughter”—the highlight of the disc—is an old-fashioned marry-me song in much the same vein as Big Ditch Road’s “Not to Me.” Taken all together it’s not so much high lonesome as lo-fi hopeful; just the thing for playing in the car on those winter nights riding home from the bar.

Tip of the Week
The Notes and Scratches
Tom Lynch

Joshua Dumas’ The Notes and Scratches bridge the gap between concrete indie rock and feel-good pretty pop with their “Uh-Oh” (Tense Forms), a completely enviable and ambitious assault of countless instruments and carefully constructed lyrical swerving. While the cigarette-charred vocals, sometimes hidden in the mix, seem somewhat out of place, they add an unexpected and fruitful aspect to the music, like an old car barely making itself through a Chicago December. Hand-claps, bells, xylophone and strings—nothing is kept out of the record, and while that could easily go oh-so-wrong, Dumas and crew do almost nothing disagreeable and, with near-nauseating charisma, charm to no end. “Uh-Oh” deserves multiple, multiple listens.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005
The Notes and Scratches

Thanks to Chris from Gorrilla vs. Bear for the heads up on The Notes and Scratches. I checked out the tracks provided and with my love for Waits and Gunshy my ears perked up upon hearing Joshua Dumas voice. This is a must have. These tracks have been on constant rotation here and I highly recommend checking these guys out. Also check out their live performance on Chicago’s WLUW. The band’s bio can be found here, their website here, and you can purchase Uh-Oh! here.

posted by M. at 10:13 AM

Band leader looks to grow
By Sean Moeller

At age 26, Chicago musician Casey Meehan could be like most people his age in the direction he takes his aspirations.

He could hope for greater workplace success, maybe moving into a higher income bracket from the one that came with the first few post-graduate years. He could be looking to settle down a bit, to start making house payments in lieu of renting and to cut back the amount of times he drinks too much in a single weekend.

But really, he just wants more string players for his band. He’d like oboes, flutes, more brass and more options to give shape to the gigantic and adventuresome pieces of music the Windy City implant has been working up in his head over the last four years since his move from New Orleans.

“I’m looking to put an orchestra together in the next couple years,” he said. “My band right now (trumpet, baritone sax, two guitars, bass, piano, drums and occasional violins) is getting, basically, too big to function. It’s hard playing shows and getting everyone into a car. I’ve got these other big scores that I’d like to perform, but I’m taking my time with it.

“I’m not expecting to play out with it that much. I’d like to put out a record with it I guess. Sometimes it makes me jealous of people who just have the trio.”

Meehan could contentedly continue making the soulful, southern tunes that mash moody lounge operatives with building block nodules of Big Easy jazz, but wants to do more than the standard. More than the routine. It’s the reason he got out of New Orleans, where he lived for four years after moving there from his boyhood home in Denver, when he finished high school.

The opportunities for the dreamer in him and the resources to bring those dreams a heartbeat couldn’t be found there. He had friends in Chicago so he packed up and came north.

“I hung out down there for a while. I might move back down there someday. But Chicago has a lot of good bands and musicians and there’s a better chance to get seen. I took the plunge,” Meehan said. “And The Reader (a weekly Chicago entertainment paper) has free classified ads for musicians. It makes finding trumpet players a lot easier. It’ll be good if I can hack the weather. I think New Orleans warmed my blood permanently. But it makes it real easy to stay inside and work.”

The band, which combines the complicated delta texture of the late Squirrel Nut Zippers with a greater call to the darker phrasings of a classic bluesman and a folk storyteller, has had a difficult time finding the right billings around its city as it doesn’t fit right in with a dead-on rock crowd or a softer and gentler indie crowd. It’s that round peg trying to fit into the square hole.

Meehan recognizes his group’s abnormal fence-sitting between audiences and genres, but there’s nothing much he can do about what comes to him in the songs he primarily sketches in the piano practice rooms at the Chicago Public Library near his apartment.

“A friend of mine said that the job of the artist is just to get the hell out of the way. If something is coming through, you don’t want to twist it in any way. I just try to clear my head as much as possible and keep writing,” he said. “(New Orleans) really made itself most prevalent when I moved to Chicago. I guess I just fell in love with the instrumentation down there. It’s funny because when I lived down there, I was writing about my visits to Chicago.”

Sean Moeller can be contacted at

(563) 383-2288 or smoeller@qctimes.com.

Casey Meehan and the Delta Still, The Vatican Unit
(Music » Rock/Pop)

If Mark Eitzel had more of a Yiddish and Tin Pan Alley heart, he could well be Casey Meehan. A New Orleans songwriter who has teamed up with members of Lying in States and The Autumn Waking, he creates very somber moods at times. It’s not hard to imagine these desperation tunes as a soundtrack for a heartbroken and down-on-his-luck rogue slogging through the dingy city streets at 4am. During other moments, he uses sax, clarinet and Rhodes piano to produce a rollicking party gone out of bounds. Attendees of the soiree try in vain to keep one another on two feet, while glasses are raised in a celebration to anything an inebriated mind can conjure. Before long, some stumble home in each other’s arms. Others, glassy eyed, go it alone; in their heads they hear the sounds of klezmer still swilling within a tonic of cinematic pop, and they crack a crooked smile before passing out cold.

• Tony Barnett

Hideout
1354 W. Wabansia
Chicago-Bucktown
(773)227-4433