Quad Cities musician and engineer Pat Stolley is not a good interview. He’s plain-spoken and blunt, and when asked last week about the origins of Intricate Maps – the new album from his band The Multiple Cat – his answer couldn’t be more ordinary and pragmatic: “I had a band that was doing stuff.”
In the past, the singer/songwriter/guitarist said, he had difficulty keeping a band together, with people moving away or being less than reliable. But following 2013’s The Return of the Multiple Cat, he had a solid ensemble that wanted to keep working. So it was as simple as the confluence of writing songs and having interest from the local label Cartouche Records in putting them out.
Chalk up Stolley’s manner to preferring creation over discussion. Starting with the opening seconds of lead tracks “Maps” and “David,” the record is dense with pop rock that is precise, detailed, and economical but also organically vital and often joyously catchy.
And while the eight tracks that fit that description would be plenty rewarding, the three “Theme”-titled pieces bridge songs and help shape Intricate Maps into a dynamic, breathing album. Listening to the record’s carefully modulated flow, it’s difficult to take Stolley at his word that his limited time dictates that he use just about everything he writes; it’s a triumph of songwriting, instrumentation, and arrangement dovetailing with smart sequencing and evocative connective tissue.
Livia Sohn, the featured soloist for the Quad City Symphony Orchestra’s forthcoming Masterworks: Song & Dance concerts, began playing the violin at age five. Maybe.
Until very recently, Quad Citians wanting a rodeo experience had no choice but to wait for the i wireless Center’s annual World’s Toughest Rodeo tour. But for the last month, the District of Rock Island has been housing it’s very own, full-time Rodeo – and it’s got the bull to prove it.
The differences between two versions of Satellite Heart's "Bob De Niro" are compositionally minor, but the new recording transforms the song.
