Netherfriends - Feathers & Dots EP

Genre indie-rock Publisher Black and Greene Records External Links Netherfriends MySpace

After I listened to "Feathers & Dots," the debut EP by the young Chicago trio Netherfriends, I found myself thinking of "Stray Cat Blues," which is - and this is saying a lot - the raunchiest song the Rolling Stones ever recorded. It starts with a woman's inviting husky coo, followed by Mick's horny Butt-Head chortle-a "Heh-hehhhh…" that seems to go on forever-and just gets ickier from there: "I can see that you're fifteen years old," Mick slurs, "but I don't want your ID."

This may have been the first time I ever felt cleansed by the thought of this unethical under-aged ode. Why? Because although the lyrics may not be pretty, they're believable; however seamy they smell, they pass the smell test. Sadly, the lyrics of "Feathers & Dots" often don't.

The biggest stinker is the first track, "Stop Smoking A$$hole Cigarettes," in which lead singer Shawn Rosenblatt-a creaky-voiced mumbler, who sings the way Black Francis would sing if he were in an elevator trying not to bother people-declares, to someone, "I just want to take you out / for some Indian food, and learn what you're all about." The line would make plenty of sense if this were a song about a high school boy coming out to his mother, but apparently it isn't. It's a love song, and after the tandoori chicken and saag paneer Rosenblatt promises more G-rated delights: "And we'll listen to records while we lay on my floor / I wish that falling this hard didn't hurt anymore." What a delicate guy. You can only wonder what a co-ed game of Monopoly would do to him.

A taint of simple phoniness remains the weak point throughout. (When Rosenblatt drops the dainty, sanitized fantasy of courtship, he replaces it with a cut-rate slacker irony that's hardly any more convincing: "Some days I never wanna hop out of my shower / Some days I never wanna get out of my bed / Livin' life is just like bein' dead." I wouldn't have guessed that a guy who wanted no more from life than to munch naan in the vicinity of his beloved could be so morbid.) Yet the album improves, just a little, with every song, because of Netherfriends' distinctive, fragilely textured instrumentals. Rosenblatt plays guitars, keyboards, and a drum; Paul Newmann contributes drums as well as pots and pans; Angie Kang handles more synth, as well as the glockenspiel, the melodica, and the flute. All three of them sing.

I think I caught a hopeful glimpse of the band's promise in a wordless moment close to the end of the last song, "Worean Kar," when the comical thump of the piano suddenly drops out of the mix and the song is set adrift, to finish in a rhythmless wash of synthesizers and distant vocals. The sonic gesture here, in this single movement from goofy swagger to unexpected rapturousness, does more to establish Netherfriends' desired musical atmosphere than any of the lyrics.