Vodeo

These guys must get laid a lot. Not that having acrobatic sex with as many attractive people as possible is every musician’s dream, but … wait. Yes, it is. Anyway, not since The Hanna Barbarians or maybe even the John Price Band has the Fort seen such a group of shaggy dudes with enough bona fide sex appeal to be able to step onto a stage and produce a veritable hurricane of bras and panties (and perhaps boxers).

What the dudes in Vodeo look like, I’m not really sure. I’ve seen only one of them up close, bassist/vocalist Jacob Pullig, who works for the Weekly in sales, and I’ve seen the rest of them only through the dimly lit, tightly packed confines of The Grotto. No, Vodeo’s –– and the Barbs’ and Price’s –– real heat is on wax.

Recorded in Colleyville at AudioStyles with owner/producer Taylor Tatsch (The Orbans, Jetta in the Ghost Tree, Shadows of Jets), the debut recording by the Fort Worth quartet formerly known as Shake the Moon slithers and slinks like a vintage Heatwave or Commodores joint but rocks and rolls like Toto or Fleetwood Mac at their polyester-flingin’, coke-doin’, orgy-havin’ best.

Tightness. That’s probably what you’ll take from these five tracks. Tightness polished to a sheen so brilliant, you’ll swear you see the reflections of Ambrosia and The Alan Parsons Project in the faces of frontman Jonathon Gehringer, keyboardist/vocalist Drew Harakal, drummer Jason Whorton, and Pullig.

The crisp performances never take away from the grooves. Or the melodies. The catchiest track has to be “Light as a Feather,” a juicy slice of yacht rock that Vodeo also laid down live in the studio for us last year as part of our annual Music Awards charity compilation CD. Smooth but also head-bangable, the song has an intro –– a slowly skipping bassline over a throbbing heartbeat of a kick drum –– that’s straight out of the Book of Boz (Scaggs). After the shimmering, echoing twin guitars and handclaps (!!!) come in, Gehringer slips into his most comfortable Kenny Loggins satin jumpsuit and raises his pretty, whispery voice to the eye in the sky.

The chorus flips the script but never loses sight of the song’s intrinsically smoooooth essence. To Gehringer’s calls, the guitarists respond with dramatic, blocky, loud staccato riffage. The lyrics also go straight for the groin: “You got me,” der der der-der, “Stiff as a board! / Light as a feather / Your skin is so cold! / I can make you feel better.” Rrraaar!

Celebrating their sweet freedom in this relatively unchartered new musical landscape, Vodeo also gets slightly experimental. “You Feel It Too” pivots on a strong semi-jazzy groove over which Gehringer, his pipes distant, almost vocoderized, sasses about love and relationships. The lyrically repetitive chorus is followed by a bombastic yet twinkling sonicscape as refreshing as a summer breeze sweeping over Key Largo at sunset. (Hold on tight to your piña coladas.)

The guys in Vodeo steal away to dabble in nontraditional structures only occasionally. Believe it or not, they’re much more comfortable in Top 40-land. Though perhaps not as memorable as “Light as a Feather,” “Better Luck” is probably, uh, better, making it the best track. Mostly for technical reasons. In addition to a nifty little percolating breakdown of airy keys and muted guitar strings (trés Alan Parsons), the song has not one but two –– two! –– guitar solos full of lixxx hot enough to make Steve Lukather ride like the wind. Or go sailing. “Better Luck” simply has a tad more jangle, a tad more strut, a tad more oomph. It was probably written after “Light as a Feather,” but that’s just a guess. Don’t sue me.

Whether you love it sincerely or sarcastically, yacht rock is hard to pull off without sounding like an imitator or, worse, an ironist. These Vodeo cats legitimize the sound by unabashedly updating it and toughening it up. Not only are they the best nouveau yacht-rock band around, they’re easily one of the best, period. Vodeo is an exceptional debut whose most thoughtful tunes are ready for drive-time rotation –– from KXT to WKRP and all points in between. - The Fort Worth Weekly

Once again, a wealth of exceptional tuneage exploded from the great 817 this year. On a purely technical level, there were at least –– at least –– 538 good-to-great songs. Can’t wait for next year’s Music Awards. The members of our nominating committee are going to pass out from analysis paralysis. But what good is a year-end list without some sense of curatorial discretion? Without some idiosyncratic flavor? Without decades’ worth of published music musings to legitimize it? Kinda? (Maybe?) Enter: the following 2015 tracks either from the Fort or with a Fort connection. Enjoy!

1.) There’s a lot to love on Andy Pickett’s debut album, but the smoothest, most memorable joint is the title track. Equal parts Randy Newman, Steely Dan, and Christopher Cross, “It Happens Every Night,” a sort of diaristic complaint from the mountainous singer-songwriter’s part-time giggings as a bar bouncer, staggers along to a thick, crisp, quiet bass-drum groove as Pickett wraps his distant, airy voice around a juicy little Tin Pan Alley-esque melody. The inoffensively repetitive chorus –– “It happens every night / It happens every night / To meee” –– is so smooth, it could talk its way past White House security. The gentle giant Pickett gets a lot of social media love, but he’s deserving of much more than that.

2.) From an eponymous album chock full of yacht-rocking brilliance, Vodeo’s “Light as a Feather” is super-tight, hyper-melodic, and hella groovy. From an intro of slinky bass riffage and pulsating kick drum, twin guitars shuck and jive like two prize fighters in gold lamé jumpsuits around frontman Jonathon Gehringer’s breathy, slinky, panty-dropping voice. Wake up and play this, KXT. Now. Damn.

3.) Angry, loud, moody, thunderous, melodic –– on Huffer’s “High Hopes, Tight Ropes,” from the hard-rock trio’s stunning self-titled debut EP, the line from Sabbath to Soundgarden is manifest in the desperate-sounding vocals, the tribal banging, and the guitars’ molten flutter and wow. Yeah, yeah. There’s no shortage of stoner-rockers in North Texas, but no one’s really doing the THC-meets-heroin thing quite like Huffer.

4.) Not that anyone should care what major label he’s signed to or how many Grammys he’s nominated for, the first single from Leon Bridges’ debut album is amazeballs, period. Sounding as if it had been recorded in 1957, the softly swaying “Coming Home” is punctuated by a chorus –– “wanna be a-row-uh-ound” –– that’s powerfully sublime and totally disarming. Sam Cooke would be proud.




5.) In a righteous world –– heck, in a righteous scene –– people would be making a huge fuss over Shadows of Jets. The vehicle for veteran singer-songwriter Taylor Tatsch does nothing but pump out delicious guitar-pop gems. “Feel,” from SoJ’s three-song EP Grow, is highly recommended for fans of Blinker the Star, Son of Stan, and New Radiant Storm King. Poor Tatsch. I guess he was born about 30 years late.

6.) My favorite Clear Acid track of 2015 is a demo, but who cares. “sonic palette demo” is badass and pure Clear Acid, meaning it’s dark, loud, and genuinely creepy as fuck. Over screeching, howling guitars that seem to follow a general direction and splashy drums, a sweet, distant voice limns a legato sort of Brit-pop melody –– the juxtaposition between the harrowing instrumentation and vocal ebullience just makes everything that much unsettling, like setting fire to the stacked bodies of Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, and Davy Jones while they’re still alive. The breakdown, in which the tempo dives off a cliff and the violence gets ramped up, goes on too long, but by the time the ending arrives –– just the word “down” intoned over and over above a deflowered version of the beginning strophes –– you may wish to go back to a less skin-crawling time.

7.) It’s a tie. And the two songs couldn’t be any more different. Dove Hunter’s “Dream Catcher” harks back to Appalachian folk and Delta blues as re-imagined by time-travelin’ hipsters who understand how to get heads banging and booties moving –– and that’s credit mostly to frontman Jayson Wortham’s grittily twinkling ES-250-sounding axe and the skipping, hopscotching, occasionally drum ’n’ bass-y stickwork from Quincy Holloway (Sub Oslo).

Conversely, Squanto’s “Frontiers” has been assembled from a million cybernetic glyphs. “The hollow flute-like two-note whistle that changes color slightly and lords over the [song’s] tinny, banging calypso beat … is as discomfiting as looking at a bunch of tiny holes or the nub of a severed limb –– you can’t un-see that shit the same way you can’t un-listen to that melody” (“Squanto’s Spear of Density,” Nov. 11).

What “Dream Catcher” and “Frontiers” share is a deathly serious darkness that’s inescapably frightening. And so damn depressing.

8.) You can’t help but jam along to this. The pounding, relentless beat is righteous, the warped, boinging surf guitar bone-rattling, and the vocal melody singalong-able. Fungi Girls’ “God Cops” reminds you why this trio of still-young’uns cannot be fucked with. Guitarist/singer Jacob Bruce, drummer Skyler Salinas, and bassist Deryck Barrera have been ruling the North Texas scene since first forming in 2008, when they were but teenagers. “God Cops” came out in ’94 and was re-released as a cassette single for Fungi’s 2015 summer tour with Los Cripis. As a famous MC named after a handheld construction tool once said: Can’t touch this.




9.) It’s never been any secret that War Party digs mid-career Clash and early Elvis Costello. And Little Anthony. (For real!) But with “Eat Rent,” part of a trilogy of 2015 7-inchers, the quintet has fine-tuned its ragged, reluctantly melodic sound to a delectable, singular apotheosis. Over an elegantly simple descending riff and stuttering rhythm, frontman Cameron Smith yelps about being down and out on the fringes. “Every day / And every night / Enough alcohol to / Make you blind, baby / Every day / Every night / And I grab my guitar / Press my eyes / The band is going to play tonight.”

Right-o, motherfuckers. National media outlets need to start paying some attention to this prolific, hard-working outfit.

10.) When I first stared this job, lo, these 13 years ago, some tallish fresh-faced dude had the audacity to pop into my cube with a CD-R of his band’s latest studio exploits.

“We’re Brasco!” he said, friendly enough, extending his open palm.

And I was like, “Pfft. Yeah, whatever. Have you heard Lift to Experience yet, cuz?! Or Tripping Daisy?! Whatevs!”

But you can’t blame me. I had just moved to the Fort from New York City. Like every other idiot on the planet, I assumed Fort Worth was merely a suburb of Dallas. I quickly and happily realized the error of my ways. (And I’d like to think I’ve done a lot since then to help distinguish our respective scenes and ours and Denton’s for the sake of celebrating our individualities.)

The moral of the story: Can you believe that still-youthful, still-spry (“semi-spry”?), fresh-faced former Brasco frontman Kevin Aldridge is not only still at it but kicking effing ass?! In October, after years of steady recorded production, the 78-year-old singer-songwriter released “Winner Leaves Town,” a moody yet loudly rocking barn-burner recorded with in-demand Fort Worth producer Jordan Richardson, a.k.a. Son of Stan (Squanto, Bummer Vacation, Tidals). Aldridge has not been this wheels-off since Brasco. Looking for references? There really aren’t any. Except, well, Brasco. And Neil Young in a particularly aggressive mood. For some reason now, I’m inclined to say, “Look out, all you young wannabe hard-Americana stars. Kevin Aldridge is about to show you douchebags how it’s done!” But I probably shouldn’t embarrass him any more than I already have.

Stay tuned next week for my favorite albums of the year. But please feel free to bitch about my song choices presently. Remember: Unlike Music Awards, this column is not a democracy. Peace. - The Fort Worth Weekly