AEM140 Slow Motion Centerfold

Slow Motion Cen­ter­fold may seem rather anom­alous when viewed along­side the artists we’ve fea­tured in the past on the Ampeater Review. We tend to shy away from music with bla­tant pop­u­lar appeal, and the music fea­tured in this par­tic­u­lar review has a lot of that. Both tracks could be mas­sive radio hits. Nev­er­the­less, I feel that the appeal of Slow Motion Centerfold’s music extends far beyond the pop­u­lar and bor­ders on the uni­ver­sal. The Nashville-based quin­tet draws together the best qual­i­ties of main­stream pop-rock, imple­ments them with unpar­al­leled exper­tise, and for­goes the unde­sir­able bull­shit often asso­ci­ated with the genre. Biases aside, it was a band that needed to be writ­ten up.

A-Side “Alma Rose” was the track that con­vinced me. I first heard it sev­eral months ago and it’s floated in my head ever since. “Alma Rose” is packed with hooks so mem­o­rable that each one could merit a hit and, in sum, they amount to an epic hit. It begins with an ephemeral and melodic gui­tar riff that soars when the full band kicks in behind it. From here the band sinks into a more sub­dued verse, fueled by a drum and bass groove rem­i­nis­cent of the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, circa 1999. That com­par­i­son is no doubt bol­stered by the voice of Alex Hall, whose exten­sive dynamic phras­ing and sub­tle drawl hint at the power hid­den behind the smooth poise. When the cho­rus finally hits, it deliv­ers all we could hope for, melodic and powerful.

“Alma Rose” derives its unique (oxy­moronic?) pol­ished power in part from expert pro­duc­tion. Slow Motion Centerfold’s debut album, Rock the Body Lan­guage, bears the mark of pro­ducer Brian Virtue, whose résumé includes work with main-stream rock icons like Jane’s Addic­tion, 30 Sec­onds to Mars, Audioslave, Deftones, etc.
The album is a bit of a throw­back to these com­mer­cially suc­cess­ful rockers—the crunch of power chords and crash of sym­bols come across as heavy yet accessible.

Com­mer­cial may seem like the antithe­sis of indie, but it doesn’t have to be. To be com­mer­cial, an artist must be pop­u­lar. An artist can­not be pop­u­lar unless it appeals to the lis­tener. When you tweak that notion, the rejec­tion of pop­u­lar music sig­ni­fies the rejec­tion of the lis­tener. We must then be sus­pi­cious of the artist that claims to not give a shit about the pub­lic, then, for such claims are inher­ently para­dox­i­cal. An artist with a true dis­tain for the pub­lic wouldn’t bother to release an album or per­form a show. To do so engages the lis­tener and invites feed­back, whether pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive. So, in a sense, doesn’t all music seek to be popular?

“Alma Rose” con­tains much more than the fluff we’d expect from a track with such imme­di­ate appeal. The title lyric is a ref­er­ence to a vio­lin­ist who was deported to a con­cen­tra­tion camp, where he was forced to lead an orches­tra of pris­on­ers as they played for their lives. B-Side “Super Grand Mas­ter” reveals a sim­i­lar hid­den weight. On first glance, it seems like a text­book pop-rock anthem with so many mem­o­rable sec­tions that it’s hard to deter­mine which one is the real cho­rus. (Is it the vocal har­monies at 43-seconds? The hits at 49-seconds? The unex­pected heart­break chord and reg­gae back­beat at 53 sec­onds?) Hid­den behind these imme­di­ate plea­sures, how­ever, the lyrics reveal a mix of high­brow geek­dom and punk atti­tude. The title is a ref­er­ence to chess, and the verses were con­ceived as a “string of cou­plets.” Mean­while, gui­tarist Chris Smith describes the prin­ci­ple theme as a “rally cry against nar­row minded anti-visionaries who sleep in silk paja­mas and are scared of peo­ple with Mohawks.”

Slow Motion Cen­ter­fold man­ages to weave these seem­ingly dis­parate ele­ments together with ease. That stems in part from the fact that the band is com­prised of child­hood friends and includes a pair of broth­ers. Smith notes that “longterm friend­ship and broth­er­hood make the song­writ­ing process more chal­leng­ing but more reward­ing. There is a great deal of trust and aware­ness of what we are all capa­ble of con­tribut­ing to a song, so if someone’s slack­ing, they aren’t going to get away with it.” It may be a mixed bless­ing, but I feel as if the bond between mem­bers is a sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment in the equation—it endows the music with added per­son­al­ity and com­fort. Process may also fac­tor into it. Slow Motion Centerfold’s com­po­si­tions all stem from instru­men­tal hooks but were devel­oped piece by piece, as the band mem­bers were once scat­tered across dif­fer­ent states. Hall observes that, “We used to write songs by send­ing pieces of demos through email. Then we’d put every­thing together dur­ing live rehearsals. We still work in this way even though we live in the same zip code.” In the process, we see an inher­ent bal­ance between the imme­di­ate that the reflective—creation and revision.

We can all rat­tle off a short list of artists that have man­aged to appeal to the pub­lic and the crit­ics alike. How­ever, we tend to view these artists as an excep­tion to the rule, and mar­vel at how they’ve struck a bal­ance. Slow Motion Cen­ter­fold has carved a much more holis­tic path. Where other artists have seen inher­ent con­flict and strug­gled for com­pro­mise, Slow Motion Cen­ter­fold has found the poten­tial for sym­bio­sis. Pop­u­lar and imme­di­ate appeal serves as a gate­way to the heav­ier stuff. It does not detract from the more endur­ing qual­i­ties of the music but, rather, allows the impa­tient easy access to those qualities.

I’ve been mean­ing to write up Slow Motion Cen­ter­fold for sev­eral months. Instead I pro­cras­ti­nated. With each month, I was afraid that I’d miss my win­dow, and that the band would make it big before I got to it. Lucky for me, that hasn’t hap­pened yet, but I’m cer­tain it’s just a mat­ter of time. Now and then a hit comes along that deserves the heavy rota­tion it gets. The two tracks fea­tured in this review could be those hits. I wouldn’t mind hear­ing them in car com­mer­cials or piped into the aisles at CVS. For now, though, let’s enjoy them from the com­fort of our home stereos.

Nate Green­berg

Side A — Alma Rose 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 — Super Grand Master 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]]]