AEM011 Hotel St George

If Gang of Four had met and repro­duced with My Bloody Valen­tine, and if their super fucked-up kids had been raised on The Bea­t­les and Guided By Voices and had man­aged to live long enough with­out killing them­selves to make a record, the result might sound a lot like Hotel St. George. Their music is heav­ily guitar-based with nou­veau punk vocals, slick instru­men­tal pro­duc­tion that pays homage to the 70s DIY sound with­out quite emu­lat­ing it, and enough har­monic com­plex­ity to set up and exe­cute some bril­liant hooks. There’s really noth­ing to dis­like here, and there’s a whole lot to merit repeat lis­tens. But on first con­tact, Hotel St. George does lit­tle to grab and secure its lis­ten­er­ship. I put it on, thought, “this is pretty good,” and went back to lis­ten­ing to Queen­sryche. City Boy Lemon, their lat­est LP release, is a grower not a show-er, and I’ve come back to it again and again over the past cou­ple weeks with an eager ear to the melodic con­tour of their songs and the pure joy of danc­ing around in my under­wear while Matt Binder sings “I always dream of sex, I always dream of death, it’s always on my mind, it’s always on my mind.” Cute stuff. In sum, I’ve decided that I really like this band, and I’d like to share them with you guys.

They came to be over Thanks­giv­ing 2008, when bassist/guitarist Erik Vis­nyak sat down at singer/guitarist Matt Binder’s bor­rowed Wurl­itzer piano and imme­di­ately pro­ceeded to spill a glass of red wine on the poor crea­ture. At this point, there were really only two things they could have done: fight to the death, or form a band. They chose the lat­ter, bring­ing Brian Leader in on drums and Brian Reilly on gui­tar. In a mere two months their first EP Yippee!!! came to be, and its mod­estly penned punk dit­ties earned the band two nom­i­na­tions at the San Diego Music Awards. Hotel St. George’s sec­ond release, Hun­dreds & Thou­sands, pri­mar­ily fea­tured Binder’s more sub­tle and com­plex song­writ­ing, which sub­se­quently iso­lated their orig­i­nal fan­base of punk fans while gar­ner­ing a new lis­ten­er­ship amongst the indie crowd. Their next record, City Boy Lemon, split the dif­fer­ence between the two pre­vi­ous albums and offers sophis­ti­ca­tion with­out sac­ri­fic­ing an over­ar­ch­ing punk aes­thetic. Their next album promises to be a keyboard-based endeavor, which is no doubt an attempt to resolve some deep and per­va­sive ten­sion regard­ing the Wurl­itzer inci­dent. I sup­pose mak­ing an album is, in fact, mar­gin­ally cheaper than extended group therapy.

The two songs offered up on the 7-inch turntable today are “Apples & Pears” and “Island Man,” the first track hear­ken­ing back to the band’s roots in 70s punk and the sec­ond hint­ing at 2010’s pop key­board epic Fun Shine Line. I love all my chil­dren equally, but if some­one put a gun to my head and asked me to pick one song to use as the A-side on some imag­i­nary “Best of Ampeater” 7-inch, “Apples & Pears” would imme­di­ately come to mind. It mel­lows out after the first 14 sec­onds or so, but those first 14 sec­onds, man, pure gold. Never under­es­ti­mate the power of a repeated ascend­ing gui­tar lick–this song doesn’t so much start as it does launch. Actu­ally, that’s a great anal­ogy for what the song actu­ally does. Once the intro riff rock­ets cut out, the song set­tles in com­fort­able orbit around Matt Binder’s deli­cious (though at times bor­der­line croon­ing) punk vocals. Every time I won­der whether the tune’s lev­eled out for good, that gui­tar riff comes back in and pro­pels it to greater heights. Hotel St. George has mas­tered the manip­u­la­tion of ten­sion and delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion that makes for a truly com­pelling song, and “Apples & Pears” is a per­fect example.

If A-side “Apples & Pears” is a look back at the clas­sic punk aes­thetic that formed the basis of Hotel St. George’s music up until City Boy Lemon, B-side “Island Man” has a forward-looking indie vibe that hints at even greater things to come. That said, while their punk stylings are rock solid and inge­niously crafted, their indie chops are less per­fectly devel­oped. After a short vocal intro, the song lopes along for a cou­ple sec­onds until it slams us with a pop cho­rus of “bop bop ba da, ba ba bada da”. This is a great maneu­ver, but the killer thing about “Island Man” is that it’s pre­ciously short, clock­ing in at 2:30, and the “bops” only show up twice in the whole song. The solu­tion? Loop that shit. You know that lit­tle repeat(1) but­ton on your iPod? I use that a lot with this guy–usually 3 or 4 times does me good. “Island Man” gives us a pecu­liar mar­riage in a punk-length tune with pop fea­tures, and I feel like some of the melodic ideas could use a lit­tle bit more room to breathe and expand, or hell, just repeat a cou­ple times. That’s not to say that the pop fea­tures are them­selves lack­ing in some way (in fact that’s not at all the case, they’re bril­liant), but I nev­er­the­less can’t wait to hear how this sound evolves and matures on Fun Shine Line. Matt Binder’s voice does some­thing unique on these tunes–while his punk-oriented vocals are a nod to his pre­de­ces­sors, he shows some indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter in the pop tunes that’s apart from any imme­di­ate influ­ence. This is where Binder as Binder shines through, and it’s a good indi­ca­tion of Hotel St. George’s poten­tial for growth as we race towards 2010 and the “new” Hotel St. George. God­speed boys.

Ben Heller

Side A — Apples and Pears Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Island Man Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[[[Down­load the 7-inch]]]

Hotel St. George also has 1 LP in the Ampeater Catalog