JUNE 2008 ONLINE EDITORIALS
Paean & Sour Boy Bitter Girl Split
By Matthew Azrael Martin
It is official we have the summer 2008 soundtrack, and it is the long-awaited Paean & Sour Boy Bitter Girl twelve track split. We get SBBG songs on the evens and Paean on the odds, but this is one CD that few will be at odds with.
A little bit of folk and blues influence for SBBG goes a long way for singer B.J. Buttice, who is known for his over-the-top cocky stage presence, but at the same time can still pull off rocking a small room while sitting and singing old-time blues style.
Buttice recorded most of the tracks at the once fabled Fort Ram, renamed Dead Pigeon Studios. This split is the last thing to come out of ye old warehouse we can ever expect. Cliché it may be, but Buttice truly did save the best for last. His almost flat voice is carried by a melancholic undertone that rears its head in most of his songs. It is something that grows on you like an invited wart, something that you can pretend to sing along with by the second listen. Buttice, being a guy who often likes to play sitting, harking back to our grandparents’ generation of blues singers, is able to pay homage to the blues but also to let loose some of the genuine depression that makes said music such good listening. Juxtaposing mood and music, Buttice said about second track “Bad Cliches:” “Its kinda ironic, it is the first falsetto thing I’ve done, and it’s about killing yourself.” That’s funny because on the first listen, it sounded like a happy song.
New to the music scene: Paean (pronounced pay-in) has this Connor Oberst-Omaha/Modest Mouse/Arcadefire-esque thing, and in all fairness is emulating their influences. ‘Buy it used and make it new’ is the haps, and these kids are tapped in. This something wonderful septet is fresh out of high school, and it shows in their music. The only thing lacking is a person to go around and close people’s slack jaws for the first listen, take my word – it is that good. For those with bored feet the first track “When I was Five Years Old” is the for sure cure to dancer cancer, and much like their Bright Eyes predecessor, the song throws a wall of sound at it’s listeners.
For those who don’t have rich parents to bank roll Blasting Room there is the D.I.Y. route. Playing with sound, Paean’s Dave Maddocks recorded the vocals for the track “Floyd Brown” with the help of a Pringles can, thus giving the track grungy echoes full of reverb, and later the band made use of the dilapidated bar’s beer cooler to record mandolin and glockenspiel.