Listening
to Will Destroy You,
Driver of the Year's release from earlier this year, the first
thing that popped into my head was Flight of the Conchords, the
comedy folk duo from New Zealand that scored an HBO series on which
the band's fan base never grew much larger than one.
To be fair, the Quad Cities quartet - playing at RIBCO on Saturday - isn't a comic novelty act, and they were around for years before the Conchords made a splash stateside. And to be clear, the Driver of the Year album works without parody, even as its odd flourishes threaten to turn it into a joke.
Both Driver of the Year and Flight of Conchords have a fondness for the falsetto, for overly mannered singing, for deliberately robotic backing vocals, and for musical choices decades out of fashion.
But while Flight of the Conchords make musical decisions to mock the band's delusion of hipness, Driver of the Year is simply comfortable in its idiosyncrasy. Will Destroy You is a rock record, but is not content to play it safe in any identifiable genre. And it continually approaches "too much" but never crosses the line.
For me, the largely instrumental "Barely Legal" conjures Queens of the Stone stripped of metal; "Night Receiver" mutes the core growl of the White Stripes' "Icky Thump"; and "Girlfriend Is Better" invokes the keyboards of mid-1980s Prince. But those impressions are fleeting, and never extend beyond a single song.
The
unconventional flourishes tend to push the listener away, but there
are moments when Will Destroy You
genuinely thrives, when the band finds an organic groove. "It
Wasn't True" has keyboards of cheese, but elegant cello and Seth
Knappen's straightforward lead guitar balance them, and the
insistent din of Justen Parris' drums and cymbals knock them back
in the mix. Jason Parris doesn't quite break out of his tendency to
overplay the vocals, but he expresses honestly.
Parris' singing is at its most natural on "Celebrities Are Guns," and I'd love to see him continue in that vein. The band is distinctive enough that it doesn't need to try quite so hard.
Joining Driver of the Year at RIBCO on Saturday is the Iowa City-based soul outfit the Diplomats of Solid Sound, and it's a strange pairing. Driver of the Year is modern angles and hard edges, while the Diplomats are all classic curves.
The octet's new self-released, self-titled EP has a straightforward maturity, with each track - two originals and three covers - finding a natural-sounding balance between clean, articulate guitar, horns, and the band's trio of female singers. While the EP includes funk, girl-group pop, and surf, its high points are the two opening soul numbers that showcase the singers.
Driver of the Year performs on Saturday, November 17, at RIBCO in Rock Island. The Diplomats of Solid Sound open, and the show starts at 10 p.m. Cover is $6.
For more information on Driver of the Year, visit (http://dotymusic.com). For more information on the Diplomats of Solid Sound, visit (http://www.thediplomats.org).
