"Chicago quintet HIDDEN MITTEN...plays mid-tempo independent rock that is, by turns, dissonant and melodic."
-The Empty Bottle
I've been giving this a lot of thought lately, and here's what I've come up with:
>Wherever you find honest growth in music, you will find an influence in the Hidden Mitten. It's not so much other peoples' music that makes me want to play, but moments in the short history of rock and roll that I think of when you ask what my influences are.
My influences are The Beatles stomping away in sweaty cellars on the Rieperbahn. The Kinks cutting their speakers with knives so that they could achieve their trademark fuzz sound. Frank Black's first "eargasm." These are the things that make rock music so attractive.
>Kraftwerk, Thomas Dolby and Gary Numan pushing the technological limits in the early 80's
>Bands like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine who refused to go away all through the 80's until music came to them instead.
>The moment where it seemed digital production was about to eat itself, being geared toward the polishing of turds. When the grunge movement came, digtal recording had to backpeddle hard to take the emphasis off of slick production and turd polishing, and refocus the technology on accurately reproducing the raw sounds that prevailed in those days. Music with that kind of power, which had the industry scrambling despite the obvious handicap of the medium itself having gone digital around the same time--CD's were everywhere and tapes were just gone...it just makes me so fond of the whole idea.
Music *forced* technology to become backwards compatible in its purview, to accurately collect sound rather than to enhance something horrible.
These are the things I love about rock and roll.
As a band, we are five people who do what we do, simply because we don't know any better.
Sounds Like
I have to give credit to Erin's husband for this: "Thurston Moore takes over Weezer." I'm not certain I agree, but I like the idea. Or Doolittle era Pixies apparently. Strange, since that's my least favorite record of theirs by some distance...
It is high time I show some serious blog love to The Hidden Mitten. Early this summer they sent me a friend request here, as bands do at least a couple of times a week, and after checking out their page I added them immediately without even listening to any of the songs they had posted (my computer sound is hooked up to my stereo and I was listening to something good on the radio at the time, so I didn't switch over). Mind you, I rarely add a band I haven't already seen live, and if I do it's usually because I've heard a song of theirs that blew me away or because we have a lot of friends in common. What was the Mitten's magic? I don't know, and I'm still trying to figure it out. There was just an earnestness that came through on their page which appealed to me. They seemed like the real thing.
Shortly thereafter I went to see them play with my friends The Pumps at Darkroom. They made quite a stage picture before they even played a note. There was a diminutive, disheveled fellow in a shirt and tie and baggy shorts, with a guitar (G. Brown); another guitarist, considerably taller, who I knew of as cohost of a deliciously eccentric Wednesday night show on WLUW but had never seen IRL (WLUW's Hump Day Dance Party and M. Flavor, respectively); a smiling, visibly pregnant keyboardist (M. Brown); a miniskirted and, I must say, tres foxy bass player who had introduced herself earlier as "Erin" (E. Black); and a blond guy behind the drum kit who seemed like an average Joe by comparison. (He is not.) (T. Jasek) Then they started playing, and even if they hadn't had me at hello, I would have been theirs from that point forward.
The real thing? Yep. You bet. You won't find another band in town more committed - to the point of playing a show when one member is less than a month away from giving birth! (try twice the week she was due! -ed) or less pretentious or less concerned with fitting into a scene. Garrett, the Mitten's formidably talented singer/songwriter/guitarist who I described so unflatteringly in the previous paragraph (I secretly think he's adorable, but he kind of cringed when I used that word to describe the band at Darkroom, so don't tell him I said that), pretty much sums it up when he says "As a band, we are five people who do what we do, simply because we don't know any better." And I am damn glad they don't.
What do they sound like? Erin's husband is quoted on the Mitten page with the description "Thurston Moore takes over Weezer." That's not bad. I might go with Doolittle-era Pixies, if the Pixies were happier people who actually liked each other. Remember the first time you heard "Here Comes Your Man"? Like that. That kind of hooky joy. Live, the Mitten's reach sometimes exceeds its grasp, but that's a good thing. Or what's a heaven for? And I don't mean to imply that there's anything sloppy, or for that matter cutesy, about them. They bring the rock, notably in their set-ending (well, usually; they moved it to the middle for their recent Empty Bottle show, "for cardio", said Erin) tour de force "Meltdown", which is a carryover from Garrett's previous band and, like, Thax Douglas's favorite song of all time, or something. And Garrett has a hell of a lot of those effects thingies (I am not a musician) attached to a big scrap of plywood, and he knows how to use them. But then there's this new song with a clapping part on the chorus which I desperately need for them to record so I can take it home and hug it and squeeze it and call it George, since I don't know the actual name of the song (These Are the Things). And then there's this other new song they did Friday night at Cal's with a harmony part at the end that damn near made me well up behind my new glasses, and I have no idea why... (We Can Feel You)
Save for Calsfest, I have never seen that bar so packed - you should all be quite proud of yourselves. Cripes, are we gonna have to get advance tickets for Cal's now?
Thanks so much to City Kitty for our first ever review!
(Not to mention a myriad of kind words and lots and lots of support and love.)
