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Blanks
The Delancey
11 April

Download: "Lodger" (YSI)
Download: "Homunculus" (MP3)
Visit: Homepage

Three years ago--fuck maybe four?--these guys got ahold of me after their lead singer Matt Boch saw a Liars quote scrawled in my shell profile and thought I might have something worthwhile to say about the two or three 'Liars-esque in spots' songs his band recorded during intersession. I told him the drummer overplayed, the vocals get way ugly in the lower register, and the band was more Q and Not U than Liars and maybe that was a problem. I asked if they wore ties when they played gigs; he said yes.

I'd come to regret that email. The drummer (John Drake) would never forgive me for the knock, for one, and when I produced Hedwig and he directed the Angry Inch, he made sure to son me at every opportunity. (In fairness, I am easily son-able.) Blanks opened that mythical east coast Exploding Hearts concert I booked spring 2003, and apparently Drake had to switch his plane ticket last minute because my plans were (necessarily) shaky, so apparently there was beef over that too. Then there was the whole drummer vs. drummer beef; from June 2003 to June 2004, I played drums for Forced Premise, which at the time was probably the best band in Boston, maybe on the East Coast, and I could barely keep time.

But that's not why I regret the email. These guys had just started playing together, was the thing, but more than that, they were doing the indie rock thing at Harvard--no venues, no musical interest at large, no taste developed past the age of 14 or 15 which means yes, Wyclef Jean, Guster, and the fucking the Verve Pipe pack 'em in and people are more happy than not. I won't even get into the crypto-racism involved in "hip-hop for dancing" which is the closest most Harvard kids get to a black person who's not from Andover or Exeter, or my own story about an eight-band free concert gone wrong called "Jesterfest." But suffice it to say the place is stifling, and at the very least I respect Blanks for making through four years of this, learning how to write, making the jump from "college band" to "band made of college kids," etc. They're serious about the rock&roll game; they even have embossed BLANKS guitar straps, and on stage drummer Drake wears studio headphones.

Saw Blanks last night, anyway. They still have some songs that sound 'tuneless tune'/Chili Peppers if you drink enough Brahma, and Boch still stuffs his choruses with way too many words, but jeez I am really excited for these guys. They've been doing Bloc Party vs. Killers vs. sorta-emo for three years, but now that's major label shit, and they have the music video poses, the smile-when-you-sing, the bad-ass rhythm section all the clowns who want to cash in on this sound too just don't have. Each guy is, like, personalized too: wacky handsome guitarist, sincere frontman drunk off his own song, the cool considered bassist, the no-nonsense drummer (again, studio headphones).

They have two really good songs too. "Lodger" they opened up with if I remember: the whole lazy one instrument changes the chord before another thing that I love, lots of triplets snuck into Drake's fills, a quote of "Girl from Ipanema" in one of the bridges, one huge chorus. The lyrics come off a little i-dunno ("I'm not trying to take my own life. I've got meaningless questions to ask myself. I know there's no good in rehabilitation, I've sought meaning, still I know the code") until you realize holy shit, this is an emo song about video games, dependence on the Konami code, etc. What?! Maybe it's self-effacing, prankster or merely affect, but I don't think I've heard emo pomo like this, same time have it sound so convicted.

"Homunculus" they played later, this time quoting Nirvana and doing 'fun Fugazi' like, ahem, Q&NU wanted to do on Power but it came out too thin. This song also dabbles in video game metaphor, here more banality/shoptalk ("pause wait reset it" must be alluding to the blow the cartridge method), but read it how you want--I give it six months before everyone else does.