AEM051 Lohio

As a fresh­man in high school, I man­aged to select an almost impos­si­bly hor­ri­ble sched­ule of classes that led me on an epic walk across the full length of our sprawl­ing cam­pus not once but twice each day. I was 14, and Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber were shitty and cold, as they usu­ally are at New Eng­land board­ing schools. Then, in late Novem­ber a won­der­ful thing happened–Apple invented the iPod. In a split sec­ond this lit­tle white box with its mas­sive 4gb (HA!) hard drive turned those 15 minute walks into the most highly antic­i­pated stretches of my daily rou­tine. I’d spend the bet­ter part of the pre­vi­ous evening select­ing the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of songs for each walk, think­ing that I could some­how trans­form this wholly banal rit­ual into some kind of cin­e­matic expe­ri­ence. The idea was to crank the tunes as loud as my lit­tle ear­buds would go, and to imag­ine see­ing myself walk­ing through the snow as though it were a dra­mat­i­cally framed cut scene from The Grad­u­ate or some equally intro­spec­tive indie art film. Unfor­tu­nately, my music library was at the time lim­ited to about 20 clas­sic rock albums that I’d appro­pri­ated via Nap­ster. Need­less to say, the movie play­ing in my head prob­a­bly looked a lot more like Easy Rider than I would have hoped. Any­ways, Spring rolled around, I got a bike, and my once cher­ished iPod mega-walk went the way of the dinosaurs–that is, until Lohio landed in the Ampeater sub­mis­sions box.

Whether it’s the del­i­cate, almost frac­tured vocals on “Grandpa’s Chaise” or the bois­ter­ous synths on “End of Sum­mer­time,” this 7-inch from Lohio is the per­fect sound­track to, well, life. The arrange­ments are instru­men­tally sparse but con­sti­tu­tion­ally strong, strik­ing a fine bal­ance between irre­sistible catch­i­ness and har­monic inde­ci­sion, the com­bi­na­tion of which keeps lis­ten­ers stum­bling along, eager to dive into the next groove but cau­tious of what might be around the cor­ner. I get the impres­sion that Lohio wears many musi­cal hats, and that what we have on this here 7-inch are but two of a mul­ti­tude, from a band that draws inspi­ra­tion from more gen­res, sub-genres, and faux-genres than the now infa­mous “genre shirt”. It all boils down to some­thing called “indie pop/rock,” what­ever that means, but god­damn it’s good. I sup­pose that’s why Lohio seems to be poised for great­ness, and why (more than most bands fea­tured on Ampeater) they’re being acknowl­edged as ris­ing stars on the scene.

Greg Dut­ton (vocals, gui­tar), Erik Cirelli (gui­tar, effects), Liz Adams (bass, vocals), and Sven Stens (drums) took their home town of Pitts­burgh by storm, and have been voted amongst the city’s best bands in numer­ous local polls. This early suc­cess earned them open­ing slots for indie giants Vam­pire Week­end, Ra Ra Riot, and Griz­zly bear. Thus thrust into the national spot­light, Lohio found them­selves fea­tured on MTV, KEXP and the leg­endary KCRW. The Lohio EP’s crit­i­cal suc­cess was almost inevitable–the cogs were in place. Musi­cally, it’s an incred­i­bly sophis­ti­cated album that sits con­fi­dently in the healthy mid­dle­ground between shame­less pop and intro­spec­tive shoegaze. It’s the record I wish Mojave 3 had made after Spoon and Rafter, and it accom­plishes with taste and grace what Puz­zles Like You strug­gled rather awk­wardly to achieve–unpredictable yet melodic pop music that simul­ta­ne­ously engages and dodges its audi­ence. If I could turn the world down and Lohio up, I’d do so in a second.

Lohio made an inter­est­ing deci­sion for this 7-inch–to use the first two songs from their Lohio EP, but to reverse the order. What we end up with is an A-side that hits right out of the gate, and a slow build B-side that leaves lis­ten­ers emo­tion­ally and (if you play it loud enough) phys­i­cally drained. Side A “End of Sum­mer­time” could be the theme to a TV show on Nick­elodeon, but for a sin­gle har­monic deci­sion that sends the song in a wholly new direc­tion. On a sin­gle held note, the song devi­ates from its open-armed pop sen­si­bil­i­ties and deliv­ers a descend­ing vocal har­mony that casts the shadow of Fall over an oth­er­wise end­less musi­cal sum­mer­time. It’s a bril­liant move, as though Lohio were push­ing that imag­i­nary car­rot a cou­ple more inches away from the horse’s mouth, just when it seemed most likely that the poor crea­ture could sneak a bite. As a result, this is one of those per­pet­u­ally looped songs on my iTunes playlist–I start it again as soon as it ends, hop­ing that one of these days it’ll give up and deliver the hook that I so badly want it to hand over. But, some­where deep down I know it never will, and that’s the beauty of the song. If it gave us an obvi­ous and grat­i­fy­ing har­monic res­o­lu­tion, it wouldn’t be worth 10, 50, or even 100 listens–we’d have our way with it and move along. In so depriv­ing its lis­ten­ers of this cheap thrill, it gains a deeper and more endur­ing strength. Good luck mak­ing it to the B-side.

Five Tunes described Lohio with such per­fect accu­racy that I have to appro­pri­ate a line. They wrote, “It’s like the song is say­ing ‘Oh God, I feel so much that I can only express my emo­tions through this awe­some gui­tar solo.’ Bam. Great band.” B-Side “Grandpa’s Chaise” lets the band’s del­i­cate emo­tional char­ac­ter shine through a bit, and if it were the only track I’d ever heard by Lohio, it would still make my per­sonal favorites list. Dutton’s voice is far from per­fect, but it’s the tech­ni­cal flaws that make it some­thing truly spe­cial. It sounds frag­ile, like it could just break at any moment, and to some extent, it does. The song opens with a strug­gling verse so wrought with intro­spec­tion that the vocals just dis­solve. Dut­ton and Adams sing in sub­tle har­mony: “The shade couldn’t fight off the sun, it cross the room, it woke us up in bed at the start of the day, as I laid in your arms on grandfather’s chaise.” The song then departs on a gui­tar solo to end all gui­tar solos. I haven’t heard some­thing this crush­ing since the break on “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps”. When the vocals re-enter, they do so with delib­er­ate con­fi­dence, shout­ing “and the walls that we built up, they came down to the ground they were tram­pled like dust, and the thought of giv­ing up, it made no sense at all it was so obvi­ous. In short, it was love.” It’s such a human song–most of us have at one point or another been in that room and thought those thoughts. Lohio calls us into their world, pulls us onto the chaise, invites us to cre­ate or recre­ate that sce­nario in our heads, and does so with a sin­cer­ity and com­plex­ity that makes this song truly mem­o­rable. Hell, I should start car­ry­ing around a gui­tar, just in case I have to explain some­thing and words won’t quite do the trick.

Lohio’s one to keep an eye on–they’re out on a quest to pro­mote the new EP, and I would put my money on these guys becom­ing an indie rock sta­ple when their next full length drops. In the mean­time, if you need to find me I’ll be the guy stand­ing by the foun­tain in Cen­tral Park with giant head­phones on, blast­ing the solo from “Grandpa’s Chaise” on repeat.

Ben Heller

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