Lo-fi indie-rock with vulnerable pop-lyricism.

16 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Modern Rock, POP: Power Pop



Details:
The criminally underknown Heirs to the McQueen Fortune hail from Portland, Oregon via Long Island, NY. Theyâre an occasional side project of members of The Feebs, The Throats, and The Sleeping Brothers.

The band members are Mike (guitars, vocals, bass, drums, keyboards), Jim (drums, bass, keyboards, guitars, vocals), and Pete (vocals) O'Shaughnessy. The brothers grew up in the Nassau County âburbs, and bought their first records and tapes at the Hicksville Sears & Roebuck.

The Heirs hand-make unassuming indie-pop that wouldnât be out of place on any of the 50-odd âAmerican musicâ cassettes I made in the late 1980s and early 1990s while listening to that NYC metro area beacon of new-wave music, WLIR.

Their list of muses seems endless. Aside from the Beatles and Beach Boys, it includes â if my ear can be trusted â The Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, Rain Parade, Elvis Costello, REM, Alex Chilton, The Ass Ponys, Love Tractor, The Kinks, The Dream Syndicate, The dBs, Pavement, Sonic Youth, The Pogues, Guided by Voices, Billy Bragg, Built to Spill, The Afghan Whigs, The Replacements, and Yo La Tengo. Whew!

I suspect they also went back and studied WABCâs play-lists from the first half of the Seventies. How else are you gonna add bits of The Looking Glass, Smokey Robinson, and the Raspberries to your oeuvre?

On your first taste of their sonic-palate-cleansing sound, you might think that the Heirs hail from Londonâs Muswell Hill (home of the Kinks), but by way of Brian Wilsonâs giant sandbox. Their sound has inherited a British invasion and pure American rock nâ roll feel, but peppered it with jerky Westerberg tempos and wiry Verlaine guitar fade-ins and fade-outs. And added stabbing keyboards, pneumatic drumming, and ornery, Neutral Milk Hotel-like noise-making. The angular vocals swing from Carl Wilson to Scott Miller of the Loud Family, all wrapped around some slippery-clever word-swirl. These guys are veritable human jukeboxes.

I detect a Ray and Dave Davies dynamic between Jim and Mike that might be at the heart of THMFâs angsty sound. Whatâs a keymonica hurled in anger between brothers? If it hits Jimmyâs head while tape is running, Mike will insist that the âker-plunk-on-skullâ sound make it into the song. They call that percussion.

Produced with an anti-Rundgren analog feel by the Pius Brothers (a reference, methinks, to the catholic school the boys attended), the Heirs fabricate lo-fi, bathtub pop that retains the snap and crackle of their vinyl inspirations. The basement recording was done at Little Ease Studios, where I suspect the machinery sits unevenly atop two boxes of Star Wars toys, with an old Teardrop Explodes cassette case to stabilize the thing in the event of a fist-fight, er, I mean musical disagreement.

From their album âThe Low, Low Moon,â the Heirsâ MySpace offers up:

"My Gull" â Clanging guitars conniving with vintage Stinson and Mars pyrotechnics. A bashing, jagged strumfest that melds Strokes and âMats dynamics into something unlike either. Sweet, super-chunky jangle that sounds like Tommy Roe colliding with Tommy Conwell colliding with Tommy Keene.
"Ghost In Me" â Lou Reed phrasing meets a mix of Apples in Stereo with Orange Juice (of âRip It Upâ fame). Percolates with trippy synth-pop undertones of The Human League and Heaven 17. Hey, speaking of ghosts, I like the photo of two of the Heirs as youths in those Ben Cooper Casper masks. You remember Casper the Friendly Ghost, right? So desperate to communicate with the living. Hmmm.
"Butterflies" â an unplugged melody to start, then some real power-murk and melancholy kicks in. The residue of a summertime fever dream one Heir had after marveling at the endless flit of time and clouds above green suburban lawns. As I listen, I can hear the pitter-patter of South Central Rain on the shingles of my split-level during an angry sun-shower. Rage, lucid and transient, like I like it. Itâs all about the drum-beats. A jungle telegraph hard-wired to the savage breast. I think of Steve McQueen in âPapillonâ for no goddam reason at all. The surly, spat-out refrain âIâm gonna get smeared and smashed/like butterflies in a netâ will invade your head.
If it was '85, Enigma might have snatched these triplets up, hired Mitch Easter to under-produce, and Chris Stamey or Michael Quercio wouldâve been fighting over which song to cover.

As simply poetic as Daniel Johnston can be, with a knack for the sort of vulnerable pop lyricism that decodes the beauty in the world just as often as it celebrates the plainly human. Iâll always be a sucker for naked truths blurted out rather melodically in bleary, beery-eyed songs. The Heirsâ apparently (had to get that pun in) donât get out much, true to their MushyApple Records mantra: âalways recording, never touring.â So, youâll have to break into their basement to catch a performance.

-fin-

- Larry Belmont