Straying from indie, maintaining a groove

It was the soundtrack to the backyard barbeque you were going to throw last summer. The perfect music for a weenie roast. Dub Narcotic Sound System's latest E.P., Bone Dry, marks a departure for the band. It's an album replete with horns, and a Hammond organ. Bone Dry sounds different from DNSS's earlier work, yet remains grounded in the same premise--a mixture of soul and indie rock. It's the sixties revisited--a send-up of the Memphis soul sound tempered by a throwback to the band's indie roots.

Dub Narcotic Sound System--playing this weekend in the Berkeley common room--emerged as an answer to Olympia, Washington's danceless indie rock scene, a scene front-man Calvin Johnson helped to found. As singer for the influential band Beat Happening, and co-founder of the K Records label, Johnson set the stage for Olympia indie/punk bands to flourish in the late '80s and early '90s. But instead of recording lo-fi, three-chord, guitar-driven pop songs, DNSS drop dub bass lines and incorporate turntables and echo machines. They mix genres like casseroles--think of them as eclectic chefs. Yet throughout, they maintain their indie aesthetic, building over jangly guitars and Johnson's distinctive voice.

It's all disaffectation and irony. Lyrics like "Refit the tool to reclaim the sound" and "Death by Chocolate will be no disgrace...assassination bass" suggest the music's insistent self-reflexive interest in maintaining the groove--a recurring theme in their songs. This constant attention to the "groove," to explaining verbally the band's association with soul music, belies the band's real interest: not so much the groove itself, but the image it conjures up--down hepcats who listened to Booker T. and the MG's instead of Creedence Clearwater Revival. In a way, the lyrics signal a playful irreverence that is augmented by Johnson's vocal stylings.

Johnson's deadpan monotone adds to the sense of irony as it disturbs the supposed sleekness of this music with its off-tempo wailing. Unpretentious and seemingly amateur, it cuts through the edgy mix with its incredible lack of soul, grounding the music in an indie-rock, DIY aesthetic--playfully mocking the dance-oriented genres it would seek to resurrect.

The end effect is one of collisions: soul and soulless-ness, reverence and irony, collisions that work because they sound so novel. And Bone Dry differs from previous DNSS projects. Recorded in Memphis, we can imagine it as a musical field trip through the city's rich, soulful past.

As cooler temperatures set in, the summer and its barbeques are only memories. But the sounds of those swinging times are still accessible. Dub Narcotic Sound System descends on New Haven for a show in the Berkeley Common Room with local stylings by the Butterflies of Love and D-Plus on Tues., Sept. 30, at 8pm. Come to rock out.

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