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Mates of State
My Solo Project
Wow, where do we start! Here we were, distinguished guests of the CMJ Change Music in San Francisco in August - popping on down to the Edinburgh Castle to catch a couple of acts in that weekend's festivities. Unbeknownst to us, a local band which had yet to cross tunefilter's path - Mates of State - were headlining this fine Saturday night. We're one of about 75 people crammed in the warm, cozy Castle upstairs as the opening act departs the stage. Cold beverage in hand, we eagerly await as the headliners set up. The drums get set up (we partake another cold beverage). A decidedly normal looking girl in Gap shirt and jeans - a feat in and of itself in the SF music scene - heaves a some-odd 70 pound, circa 1970 Yahama keyboard top on a stand and hooks it up. We partake more beverage and groan from the back-breaking memory of having to lift mom's Hammond and Leslie when unpacking the van on Sundays during the parent's wedding band days. But the unsettling feeling we have, yet haven't quite formed into a question yet, was, where's everyone else? More beverage, more set up, but still no guitars being carried on to the stage. Finally, setup activity ceases and the band takes the stage. It finally dawns on us - there is no guitar player. There's no bass player! It's just said girl behind the ole Yahama and an equally as normal, lanky midwestern looking dude on drums. Catching us in the middle of scratching our heads, the Mates (yeah, okay, now we see the obvious) suddenly start rocking out. The look of confusion soon turns to puzzlement as we try to comprehend what we're seeing. Sound like it's coming from a dozen people as Gap-clad girl has both hands flying all over that Yahama while belting (and we mean BELTING) out the vocals. Midwestern boy matches every key with a drum lick of his own while belting his own vocals in perfect harmony. Our mouth is agape as this perfectly controlled shouting match carries itself out over shear drum and keyboard dexterity. And on top of all of this, just when we think we've got the groove of the song down, it picks up and takes a 90 degree turn into a whole different direction. Four bars of intro may be thrown out the window for 8 bars of staccato scales which suddenly give way to a driving beat with the potential energy that we last saw on Fugazi's 13 songs. We don't know whether to throw our heads through a wall or sit down with a calculator to figure out the tune. So, bemused and baffled, we drink and try to enjoy.
Epilogue We've been spinning My Solo Project at tunefilter HQ for about a good month now and that same energy we saw at the Castle comes across beautifully on this recording (and when we saw them again at Kimo's in September). Their songs are probably not for everybody - after all, twelve bars of the average Mates song probably hit more notes than an entire Limp Bizket album. But we can't get the tension lined melodies of their their best tunes - La'hov, Throw Down, and Tan/Black - out of our heads. Surely among the best songs released this year.
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