Thursday, November 14, 8 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
Des Moines-based jangle guitar-pop crew Karen Meat visits the Quad Cities for a November 14 bill at Rozz-Tox.
At first listen, some elements of Karen Meat’s music seem to fall into the surge of garage-rock bands that continues to take over the Midwestern underground with no end in sight. They’ve got that shuffling 1950s sock-hop-type groove, the jangling guitar work, and vocal styles that switch between doo-wop “oo-o-o-ohs” and that brand of upper register sneer that slightly crackles like it’s coming out of a tiny practice amp. As far as I can tell, Karen Meat isn’t a real person or someone’s moniker, but rather this band’s name, full stop. “We’re Karen Meat,” singers Arin Eaton and Brad Turk might say on stage between their charming songs, and collectively they will be Karen Meat. Who is she? She is them. As much as they fit into the garage rock sphere, the band brings some ideas to their music that push it a few steps closer to sophisticated pop rock. Their production decisions are deliberate and full of detail, far from the tossed off lo-fi basement demos slung by many of their peers.
“I Made You a Card,” the first single from their upcoming album Meat Your Heart Out (due December 13), features bright flourishes of synth and keyboard that whistle from the mix as contrasting layers against the chubby basslines and interlaced vocal melodies. The track covers a lot of ground in its slight two-minute run time, as both singers get their own verses between instances of a wordless hook thickened by background singers. All of this leads up to a bridge where the distortion pedals kick on and things get a little scuzzier and heavier for a bit. In moments like this, the band hits that balance between rollicking fuzz rock and candy-coated pop melody previously achieved by garage songwriters such as Ty Segall or Mikal Cronin. For listeners who have been inundated by virtually interchangeable garage-rock bands for the last, I don’t know, 20 years or so, it’s always nice to spend some time with a project that actually knows how to write a melody and hold our attention.
From a lyrical standpoint, Karen Meat keep things goofy and irreverent, but not without some pointed observations that come off as mild indictments of the fools and slackers that surround them. “Did you know I could draw with a beer in my hand?” asks Arin Eaton, while Brad Turk notes one verse later that, “You look hungry, strung out / In need of a beer.” Here is a band that loves beer. Who would have thought? Or maybe they like beer just fine, but populate their songs with characters who are perhaps a bit too focused on it. There are few things that scream “garage rock” more than singing about beer, so either Karen Meat is leaning sincerely into that paradigm, or making light of it from the perspective of a tongue-in-cheek insider. In practice, these two options essentially amount to the same thing, and the band knows it. They’re just having fun with it, and we’re having fun as a result.
Karen Meat plays locally on November 14 with sets by Subatlantic and Tambourine, admission to the 8 p.m. concert is a $5-10 sliding scale, and more information is available by calling (309)200-0978 or visiting RozzTox.com.
