Chain and the Gang
Down With Liberty…Up With Chains
Rating: 2.5
Label: K Records
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Even since he was a teenager, Ian Svenonius came to understand that rock ‘n’ roll was bought with sociopolitical currency. His previous high stakes ventures with the teen hardcore strike force Nation of Ulysses, mod satirists The Make-Up and garage gurus Weird War printed almost as much literature as they did music. Each time Svenonius modeled a world outlook that would glide through the beat, assembling the sounds of these units from novelty records, psychedelic garage, soul,gospel, exotica, hardcore punk, girl groups and British invasion pop favorites. The many wonders of the vinyl world were exposed for what they were really saying about American life while sifting through the country’s rotting trove of pop culture gems. Off the stage he’d be Fidel Castro’s answer to Dick Clark, but on stage it would all break loose.
Svenonius is a nimble hurricane live; screeching, wailing, proselytizing and even deadpanning on vocals, to make sure nothing is left to chance when it comes to his message or his music. When it came to currency he was going to print his own money.
Chain and the Gang’s debut LP marks Svenonius’ return to Calvin Johnson’s K Records for the first time since his days with The Make-Up. More so than any other of his other outfits, the group is modeled after a specific belief: The wars and rampant greed to spread freedom has led to so much in the way of spiritual and emotional enslavement. So why not embrace incarceration and join the chain gang!
A fine idea to be sure and so much of Down With Liberty…Up With Chains is a fun record when it builds up a head of steam. But more often than not the songs themselves are noticeably underwritten. Despite having an army of K Records musicians who make up the Gang, there’s no getting around how thin songs like “Trash Talk” and “(Lookin’ For a ) Cave Girl” are, even if the intention is to send up goofy 45s from the early 1960s. What all those vinyl treasures still have going for them is the human conviction by musicians that at any moment the mic would be taken from them and that the joy of music would be snatched away, a quality Svenonius has tapped into in his songwriting of the past and one sorely missed on his latest trajectory. He’s still one man trying to plug into the truth, but it’s just less convincing this time and even a little stale.
Despite these half realized ideas, there are a handful of exceptional songs and a band that can make just about any song sound kinetic. The Chain Gang, with its plethora of heavy drums, narrow guitars, backing female vocals and rich pianos is a band that has found its sound and when given a decent tune, they make it shake. “Room 19,” with its twist and shout simplicity, finds Svenonius practically jumping off the record and pulling you into the best party you never knew about. “Interview With the Chain Gang” and its simulation of a monotonous press junket taps into a genuinely thought provoking take on the lifeless zombie-ism of rock journalism.
Just as the record begins to gasp for air, clunkers like “What Is A Dollar” with its dull anti-capitalistic droning choke it off. “Deathbed Confession” is equally disappointing, little more than a song where history’s shadow men confess to their roles in the big conspiracies of the 20th century over and over again. It’s just lazy writing for good musicians, one of the most frustrating combinations imaginable. Conceptually not enough thought went into making Chain and the Gang’s politics vivid; they never come alive or seem like anything more than overly relaxed musings.
Chain and the Gang is Ian Svenonius’ first new band in eight years, while Down With Liberty…Up With Chains is his first new record in four. Between his hosting gig on Soft Focus and his newfound role as an author and counterculture essayist, there’s more than a little ring rust in what he’s referred to as the “idiom of rock ‘n’ roll.” What all idioms demand is not only a grasp of culture but its condensation into an understanding that is direct and universal at the same time, the two characteristics at which Svenonius normally excels. He has the right people to recapture his vision, but they need better hymns to help them through their time in the prison yard.
by Neal Fersko
