The
Envy Corps hail from Iowa, but the plan is to try to make a splash in
Great Britain before the United States.
The band shares management with The Killers, singer Luke Pettipoole said in an interview last week, and "that's kind of how they broke them. That's kind of the plan we wanted to go for, as well. It's worked for bands like the Strokes and as far back as Jimi Hendrix."
Consider this your opportunity to say that you were in on the ground floor. The Envy Corps will perform on Sunday at Huckleberry's in a show presented by Daytrotter.com, and if the band does hit it big in the UK (and the United States), you'll be able to say that you saw them before their ascendancy.
"The U.S. is where we want to end up basing our operations and where we want to tour," Pettipoole said.
The Des Moines-based Envy Corps spent nine months last year in Great Britain, and it will be returning there in late February and staying through the summer. And its major-label-debut full-length, Dwell, is due to be released in that country on April 7 on the Universal subsidiary Vertigo Records. The quartet doesn't yet have a deal for U.S. distribution, but Pettipoole said he's hoping for a release here in late 2008.
None of the band's earlier output - the group was formed in 2001 - is available in this country, but a version of Dwell leaked earlier this month on the Web, and an across-the-Atlantic influence is evident. "Our sound kind of lends itself to being a little more European anyway," Pettipoole said.
The 25-year-old singer will rightly remind many people of Radiohead's Thom Yorke: They phrase similarly when singing naturally, and when Pettipoole's voice rises in intensity, he recalls both Yorke's whine and his falsetto. "Rooftop" could be a nearly unplugged variation on "No Surprises."
Musically, the band is expansive, atmospheric, and patient, with clearly articulated and separated instruments and a clean, spare guitar sound. There's a hint of anthemic U2 there, but mostly the band works in the post-punk vein and builds its songs to climax.
The
elements are perhaps too familiar, but the band knows how to use
them. "Keys to Good Living" opens gently with what sounds like
foot percussion, glockenspiel, and acoustic guitar and is anchored by
Pettipoole's confident, yearning voice, and the song sweeps you up
toward its electric crescendo.
Dwell was recorded in late 2006 and early 2007 in Jamaica, Iowa - "We kept blogging, 'We're here in Jamaica ... ,'" Pettipoole said - and despite the band's European sound, the singer said he thinks that the Midwest can be heard in the Envy Corps.
"There's a calmness and maybe even a desolation and a boredom that comes with living in Iowa, to a degree, but I think there's something very open about the state, and it's kind of reflected in the music," he said.
But the sound still seems more naturally suited to Europe, and the UK approach makes sense, Pettipoole said. The size of the country allows for a "natural build" to the United States, but it also has its pitfalls: "The British music scene is pretty lightning quick, because the country's so small. You can hop on a band and hop off really fast. That scares me and seems dangerous to me."
As Pettipoole tells the story, the band's relationship with Vertigo was a bit like an arranged marriage. "We got signed and we hadn't even played a show in the UK," he said.
And while there have been some conflicts between the American and British ways of doing things, Pettipoole said Vertigo has given the Envy Corps a large degree of freedom. "They let us produce our own record. ... That was one of the big things," he said. And from artwork to marketing, "we're pretty picky about what we want to do, and they probably didn't realize when they signed us that we were going to be this difficult. ... They are patient with our Yankee way of thinking ... ."
The UK is much more a singles market, and "we're not super interested in that," he said. "They didn't like to hear that, and we compromised. We're still releasing singles, obviously."
And just to be clear, Pettipoole doesn't see a Hendrix- or Strokes- or Killers-sized future for the Envy Corps.
"We're certainly not aspiring to be that level of band," he said of the Killers, with which Envy Corps has toured. "They have so much exposure. It would make me freak out.
"They're from Las Vegas, and we're from Iowa, and I don't think any two places could be further apart."
The Envy Corps will perform on Sunday, February 3, at Huckleberry's pizza parlor, 223 18th Street in Rock Island. Ra Ra Riot (see page 12) will also perform. The show starts at 7 p.m., and admission is $5.
For more information on the band, visit (http://www.myspace.com/theenvycorps).
