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REVIEW this Dave Kleh, Me & My Friends (SELF-RELEASED, CD, DIGITAL DOWNLOAD)
To my recollection, I’ve never met Dave Kleh. But based on my limited knowledge of him, I suspect he’s an interesting fellow. Kleh has been an active musician locally dating back to the late 1970s. For the last seven-ish years, he’s been the leader of a band called the Fizz. Originally dubbed Flood in the Fizzy Factory before they settled on a less cumbersome moniker, the group has undergone numerous lineup changes over the years. Every now and then, Kleh will fire off an email updating me on those changes. One message in
particular chronicled every change he’s made for the past several years, and why. It was an epic, strange missive. And, as many of his emails do, it came from his work address, accompanied by the dorky headshot of a corporate real estate agent. It would be easy to dismiss Kleh as just another middle-aged dude clinging to youthful dreams of rock stardom. But there’s something about his latest solo record, Me & My Friends, that suggests Kleh and his music have been unjustly dismissed. Like I imagine Kleh himself to be, the record is deeply quirky, with an air of self-importance that doesn’t quite make sense at first glance. But dig beneath the surface and there’s no denying the album’s — and Kleh’s — idiosyncratic charms. Me & My Friends is a retrospective that chronicles his musical efforts over three-plus decades. As the title implies, Kleh enlists the help of some talented players along the way, most notably guitar ace Bill Mullins and saxophonist Joe Moore. The cameos are nice: Moore’s work on the 1979 cut “Tribute to Zoot” — an homage to late N-Zones front man Zoot Wilson — is especially good; and Mullins is, well, Bill friggin’
Mullins. But Kleh is the album’s most intriguing character. In reviews of his previous works, I’ve written that Kleh’s attempts at new-wave absurdism fell short because they didn’t quite go far enough into the surreal. Think Talking Heads-lite. But given a chance to view his music in a wider context, it seems that Kleh is simply a more gentle spirit than I initially observed. As he proves on cuts such as “What You Do to Me,” “Ladies’ Man” and others, he is slyly funny. There’s a winsome nonchalance about him when he sings lines such as, “I like you, like the raindrops on my coat / Yeah, I like you. Like the words that I just wrote,” against a minimalist, newwave backdrop. Dave Kleh may be an enigma who has never really gotten his musical due. Me & My Friends likely won’t change that. But it does offer a glimpse at an unusual songwriter who certainly deserves attention. The Fizz play a release party for Me & My Friends at On Tap in Essex Junction on Wednesday, April 16. The album is available at cdbaby.com.
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Move and the way will open. Wednesdays: College Night / DJ Kyle Proman $2 You-Call-It Well Drinks & Drafts. Doors 9PM Th.4.10: DJ Dan Freeman & Two Rivers $4 Well Drinks, $2 Drafts. Doors 9PM F.4.11: SALSA with JAH RED 8PM DJ Rob Douglas 11PM Sa.4.12: Blue Pepper II / Live Ragtime Duo 8PM Electric Temple / DJ Atak 10PM
fields a hypnotic reggae groove. “Bill’s Tuesdays - Karaoke / Emcee Callanova Thrills” is classic, slap-bass-driven jam $4 Well Drinks, $2 Drafts, $3 Shots. Doors 9PM rock that borrows melodic cues from Pink Floyd. And “Diotima’s Tale” is 165 CHURCH ST, BTV • 802-399-2645 pleasantly meandering stuff that brings the record to a satisfying, spacey finish. Throughout it all, the band manages12v-zenlounge040914.indd 1 4/4/14 2:25 PM to balance its jammy tendencies with an acute sense of songcraft and melody. YOUR SCAN THIS PAGE Squimley mostly keep flights of fancy TEXT WITH LAYAR to a minimum — no song breaches Grab any slice & a Rookies Root Beer HERE SEE PROGRAM COVER the seven-minute mark — and remain for $5.99 + tax in service to the larger composition. 10,000 Fire Jellyfish is a promising debut from an intriguing band that doesn’t have to depend on jams to jam out. Squimley and the Woolens play a release party for 10,000 Fire Jellyfish at Nectar’s in Burlington on Tuesday, Spring Special April 15. The album is available at 1 large, 1-topping pizza, squimleyandthewoolens.bandcamp. 12 boneless wings com. and a 2 liter Coke product DAN BOLLES
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of heady jams and grooves throughout the record’s 10 tracks, but this debut is intriguing because of the sounds found between those spaced-out interludes. These moments reveal a genuine artistic curiosity and musical scope that goes well beyond your average noodle wanking. The band’s stated influences — the worldly Toubab Krewe, funk legends Parliament Funkadelic and postrockers Explosions in the Sky — can be heard to varying degrees throughout Jellyfish. A slow-burning funk groove opens the record with “Warm When Wet.” “Not Another Dumpling Plate” is moody and expansive, as is the album’s most overtly jammy cut, “Atticus.” “Third Field” evolves from cinematic art rock into bustling freak-out jams. “Lone Rock”
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In the age of Pitchfork-wielding hipsters, the word “jam” has become something of a four-letter word, carrying with it a confining, maybe even damaging, stigma. It is also, much like indie, alternative and any number of other catchall labels, often misleading and inaccurate. So how do you know when a jam band is a jam band? To borrow a line from former Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart when asked to define porn, “I know it when I see it.” All of which brings us to 10,000 Fire Jellyfish, the debut album from Squimley and the Woolens. As countless Burlington bands have before them, the quartet emerged from the dank collegebasement scene before hitting local stages. And they are a jam band — a decent one, at that. There’s no shortage
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Squimley and the Woolens, 10,000 Fire Jellyfish
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