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Concert Preview

Raucous, energetic Hockey Night returns for yet another rockin' Gardner concert-they might even jump on the speakers

Hockey Night returns to Grinnell this Friday night, marking their fifth visit in as many semesters. The fact that Concerts Committee has felt obliged to bring the St. Paul band to Grinnell every semester for the past three years is truly a testament to the band's excellence.

When opening for Built to Spill in the spring of '05, Hockey Night put the aging indie rock giants to shame. A visit the following semester yielded a raucous dance party that brought the audience on stage for an encore performed atop speakers. Former Grinnell student and St. Paul native Todd Pitman labels Hockey Night "the music that will bring peace between warring factions in outer space with their laser guitars."

Hockey Night is a testament to St. Paul's burgeoning indie scene. The band's first album, 2002's Rad Zapping, was the brainchild of guitarist and bandleader Paul Sprangers and fashioned with the help of guitarist Scott Wells and drummer Alex Achen from a collection of four-track demos.

In 2005, with the addition of second drummer, Adam Harness, the band saw the release of their second album, Keep Guessin'. Currently working on their third album with upcoming indie anthem "Rebel Fever (Who We Are)," Hockey Night will be returning to Grinnell with a full arsenal of new material.

While the band borrows from a wide tradition of rock from classic and '80s to indie pop, their music is forward-thinking.

Spranger's speak-singing vocal style is reminiscent of early '90s indie band Pavement; the two guitars harmonize solos, creating riffs that give hope for the future of audible humankind; and the drummers drive rhythms with their unrelenting, snare-heavy heroics.

Hockey Night's live shows are more energetic than a pep squad on Ritalin, and they never play the same show twice, meaning they will keep you guessing even if you have seen any of their previous four appearances at Grinnell.

-Charlie Smith

Sprawling, goofy Tally Hall pays homage to strip mall memories

The White Album-era Beatles meets the Futureheads reincarnated in the carbonated bubbly-ness of soda pop. That's Tally Hall. Or at least, that's what they sound like for the first three and a half minutes in the first track (entitled "Good Day") of their debut album Marvin's Magical Mechanical Museum.

The next song - actually, all of the songs that follow - bear only a faint resemblance to the first track; the album sprawls musically, from the Caribbean-sounding, seemingly nonsensical "Banana Man" to snatches of beat-boxing and rapping.

Despite the endless stream of musical mutation that seems to be the only defining characteristic of their music, all the pieces recombine to make the album a whirlwind carnival of infectiously catchy pop-rock.

Tally Hall got their big break when keyboardist Adam Horowitz won the 2004 John Lennon Scholarship Competition for writing "Good Day."

They gained popularity from the presence of their music videos on the website Albino Blacksheep.

The five members of the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based band all graduated from the University of Michigan, and four of the five are from suburban Detroit. The name Tally Hall comes from a bygone strip mall frequented by those four as children, and Marvin's Magical Mechanical Museum, which lent its name to their first album, was the mall's video game arcade.

Tally Hall manages to combine myriad influences - among them the Beatles, Weezer, Queen and the Beach Boys - and segue effortlessly in and out of an almost random juxtaposition of influences and sounds without sounding like a cheap imitation of any of those influences.

They manage the delivery of a completely quirky assemblage that is uniquely Tally Hall.

Lyrically, there is a certain self-awareness, a pervasive tongue-in-cheek goofiness and irreverence that invites humor. Listening to Tally Hall is a contagiously exciting ride through a funhouse.

-Ivy Lee

Expect anything and everything from space-suit clad Mystechs

Don't come to Gardner tonight expecting opening band the Mystechs to play some music to kick off the night.

The Mystechs, opening for Tally Hall and Hockey Night, deliver much more than music. In fact, they're hardly music at all-they're more like Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The Chicago-based band describes itself in the song "Disco Hammer" as "half-way in between retarded and rad." Their action-packed performances are known to include space suits, accordions, humor and a lot of poking fun at pop culture.

The Mystechs are unclassifiable in terms of a genre, as their songs vary in style from '80s-style synth pop, '70s punk, rap and R&B, country, soft ballads and more. They are also known to switch between genres in the middle of a song without warning.

The band's website compares their humor to that of Ween, Outkast and Frank Zappa, and describes them as using humor "as an excuse to get away with avant-garde murder, disguising their art-rock experiments as jokes in order to sneak past listeners' defenses."

The Mystechs currently consists of Emil Hyde and Nick Dye, though the members have changed in name and number throughout the band's career which dates back to 1998. They have released seven albums, one every year from 1999 to 2006.

The unique and bizarre electronically-driven music of the Mystechs is sure to be the foundation for an off-the-wall opening performance at Gardner tonight.

Don't expect to hear an amazing indie-rock band play real music (like what we're used to at Grinnell), but do expect to laugh-either at them and their undisciplined antics and wacky appearance, or with them and their not-so-subtle pokes at how awful pop music has become today. Or both.

-Charlie White

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