Songs

When I was a kid our mother drove us around town in a blue Chevrolet Malibu which would later be our first car. Before it was ours the radio was always dialed to WLTE (because that’s how you tuned a radio in those days, you actually dialed it). They’re the “Lite FM” station that went off the air in December 2011 to become some kind of bullshit pop country. If you grew up in the Twin Cities around the same time there’s a good chance you rode around in the back of a similar car hearing the same blend of mellow country and soft rock on the way to the Red Owl (hey, maybe we passed each other on one of those errands!).

And those good folks at WLTE (who were pretty callously dismissed by the fuckers from the CBS Corporation, if you ask me) shaped a lot of my musical interests by the time I started bringing home record players from the Goodwill in our neighborhood. Take away that radio station (and while we’re at it KLXK) that neighborhood thrift store and my mother’s patience with my penchants for bringing home albums and these words wouldn’t be here today. Hard to say where Hymie’s Records would be, but I know I’d have a real job somewhere and you’d probably be reading some stupid shit from the people at BUZN 102.

I never outgrew the 70s pop I grew up hearing on my mother’s radio, and I’m finding myself not alone in recent years. Whether its fun cover bands (think E.L.nO.) or soft rock retro bands like Gayngs and Night Moves, we’ve seen a lot of stuff here at Hymie’s that suggests a revival. We’re also selling a few more Brewer & Shipley records than we had before.

Enter Light Lunch, the first release by Heavy Deeds, a collaborative side-project band that insists it’s not a side-project band. Their five song EP is out now on vinyl (and as a download on the bandcamp page here). Recorded and released by Neil Weir’s Old Blackberry Way, it handily blends the reverb-rich, slightly psych-y shoegaze aesthetic we’ve come to expect from the veteran studio/new label with the rich nostalgia I’ve just shared. Give it a listen: Light Lunch is as rejuvenating as a sunny afternoon in your garden.

The title is apt – at twenty-four minutes Light Lunch is likely to leave some at the table unsatisfied, even if the small portion served delivers. We were disappointed with the disc’s brevity but enchanted by what it accomplishes in so short a span. Ironic, we suppose, considering how long in making this tiny treat has been.

The nice folks that make up this band you may just be hearing of for the first time hardly come from nowhere. Collectively they’ve contributed to Polica, Pony Trash, Robust Worlds, Vampire Hands, Web of Sunsets and a smattering of other local mainstays and favorites. Each has brought the insight of experience and confidence of accomplishment to this hardly-new but just released recording. You can hear nearly all of this in the first track, where a slow-building confessional along the lines of Chris Rose’s Robust Worlds takes on an ensemble cast. Drummer Alex Rose holds this expansion together with the confidence of a straight-up pro (a pattern that repeats itself throughout Light Lunch) and as the song grows the group joins together in the most satisfying harmony vocal performance we’ve heard on a new local release in a while. In solo appearances throughout Sara Bischoff’s performance as a singer is distinctive and moving.

And it gets better from there.

If you can’t hear these folks easing into “One Toke Over the Line” after hearing the title track you’re too cynical to enjoy the record anyway. Maybe playing the third track, “Islands,” will help to cure you. It’s a ear-catching blend of sounds from several eras – A refreshing reminder of Seals & Croft’s “Sudan Village” as much as of mid-90s pop along the lines of Lambchop or the Silver Jews or the shoegazing records familiar to Old Blackberry Way’s walls. It’s that first feeling that sticks with you, though, and that’s a courageous choice for a band these days. After all, seventies soft rock is hardly on the vanguard.

But look, a record like Year of Sundays is super common these days because they sold millions of them in the seventies. And that’s because listening to them made people feel good, and there’s nothing wrong with that even if it isn’t as cool as it was in 1971.

And in its brightest moments, Light Lunch is a far more satisfying seventies update than the lauded Gayngs record, which always felt sardonic to those of us who still listened to the light stuff. It’s also less rooted in the past, airier than the labored-upon and lush Night Moves album, Colored Emotions, but closer in feeling. We think it ought to be as successful as those two because it has something missing from most of the pop music we find people bringing to into the shop these days. Talking with the City Pages‘ Natallie Gallagher (in a story you can read here) Sara Bischoff said Heavy Deeds always joked they were a “family band.” That’s not lost on listeners like ourselves, exhausted with posturing and cynicism and, quite frankly, shoegazing. It’s about goddamn time the pop records we brought home stopped telling us what was wrong and started encouraging us to “be the grand believer in everything that [we] are.” Here is a record for the world around us, ideal perhaps for driving through it or walking in it or just having a picnic with friends.

Those of us who haven’t given up on that easy edge we got from our parent’s records can tell. Heavy Deeds reminds us a lot of some of the awesome folk groups who have played here at Hymie’s (Aldine or Mages, for instance). Listening to a song like “The Great Believers” makes you feel good, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

You can hear Heavy Deeds perform songs from Light Lunch and more here in person at Hymie’s Vintage Records this evening at 7pm. Like all performances here in the record shop it is free and all ages. You can also buy for youself a copy of Light Lunch directly from the band!