Billboard

1090 CLUB

EUROPUNK
Kudos goes to 1090 Club for being from Montana and deciding to name their album S.O.S. with a picture of a sailboat on the cover. Nine times out of ten when a CD arrives in my hands with a name I dont recognize and a promo sheet hyping them as a blend between some of my favorite bands, I usually get either really excited or preemptively disappointed.

With 1090 Club, its a good ting I didnt let my preemptive disappointment stop me from throwing their debut album, S.O.S. into my CD player because I kept it there for days. Mind you, Im not really home all that often, so days in my CD player dont always amount to much play but you know what Im trying to say here.

S.O.S. is a magnificent debut effort. Through it, 1090 Club channel some of todays most stand-out post-punk indie bands such as Murder By Death, Minus the Bear, and Death Cab for Cutie, all the while forming a sound distinctly their own. What is probably the strongest contributor to their sound is the bands collection of instruments which consists of guitar, drums, piano, and violin. As well, the four members share vocal duties on nearly every song and for the most part contribute equally throughout. This kind of vocal assembly comes with some disastrous risk from complicated-for-complicated sake syndrome. Instead, 1090 Club use it to give their songs a huge birth of life, and often make their more convoluted musical moments come across almost playfully.

Now Im not sure what 1090 Club sounded like before they hit the studio, but one cant help but take notice of S.O.S.s production and mixing credits. Alex Newport who has mixed for At the Drive In, Mars Volta and The Locust contributed, and production was handled by Steve Fisk who has worked with Minus the Bear. In the end, S.O.S. comes off sounding far more textured than any bands debut effort deserves to. Still, they dont at all sound over-produced.

S.O.S. is by-and-large a mood-swing teetering back and forth between dark moments fans of Murder by Death would be familiar with songs like Gypsea. Other times songs such as the opener Hello should only be listened to while sitting on a dock on a hot summer day with a delicious beverage in hand.


THE ENTERTAINER

The Montana band most likely to get signed to a major label isn't from Missoula. It's not even from this side of the state. Boasting not just fine songwriting and playing, but also a taste of the flavor of the month - that bleak-anthem lushness that has made bands like Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips and the Decemberists the new cool - the 1090 Club has everything that the big record companies seem to want these days.

And they're from Billings.

We shall get over it. Especially when we listen. The band plays sophisticated, sweeping music with an intoxicating combination of muscle and tenderness. They also manage to sound thoroughly original, in no small part because of their unpredictable and wide-ranging instrumentation that is as noteworthy for what it includes - violin, cello, bells - as what it doesn't - bass, in particular.

The band just released its first album, Shipwrecked on Shores, on Signal Hill, Calif.-based indie label Sidecho Records, which has previously brought the world bands like Neva Dinova, the Spores and Tokyo Rose.

Admittedly, those aren't household names (although the All Music Guide called the Spores' latest release stunning; and for my money, Neva Dinova's The Hate Yourself Change is finer than anything that fellow Omaha native Conor Oberst, of Bright Eyes fame, has ever recorded).

But Shipwrecked on Shores may be the best of the bunch from the small label. Opening with Hello, a taut and moody rock pummeler, the record ranges through the exotically grim (Gypsea) to the sweetly touching (Cheers to Us). For a shipwreck, it really covers a lot of water.

The 1090 Club flows into town for a gig this Saturday, Sept. 23, at the Elk's Lodge. Photo Atlas will join the band for an opening set.