Listen To The Excellent First Album From These Local Pop Rockers
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 17, 2015 5:40PM
The Kickback are a motley crew of musicians led by a lead singer who has done his best to alienate every bandmate he has over the years. The band is finally releasing their debut album, Sorry All Over The Place, but it was a long and winding and occasionally tortuous path that brought them to this point.
When Billy Yost moved to Chicago from South Dakota a few years ago with his drumming brother, the two went about building a band based on the sounds in their heads. They recruited like-minded folks, and then went through a number of line-up changes. According to the band's own Disastour podcast, helmed by Billy Yost, much of the band's inner turmoil can be attributed to his own self-defeating machinations.
The album has actually been done for almost two years now, but the band insisted on going the old-fashioned route and actually courted labels to release it. I know, that sounds insane in this day and age, but one listen to Sorry All Over The Place should make it clear why this happened. The Kickback is a band who actually writes music like a band and produces albums that would be best-served on a vinyl slab. Hell, the band even held out and waited to recruit a superstar producer like Spoon's Jim Eno to helm the recording. This whole mentality is oh-so very old school, which is probably why the album sounds as fresh and immediate as it does.
The band's sound is a mixture of hummable pop hooks and Jungian primal scream. It's not the newest formula in the world—already well mined by The Pixies and Nirvana—but in Yost and his band's hand this stew remains pliable enough that you can both hum it in the shower and power drum along with it on your steering wheels while wheeling through traffic. Sorry All Over The Place is populated by songs about comic books, self loathing, substitute teaching, and Twin Peaks. And while that all does sound incredibly nerdy, the sound itself is undeniably sexy. Which makes total sense since what is rock and/or roll other than a bunch of nerds making nerd noises in an attempt to be sexy.
Sorry All Over The Place is released to the world at large tomorrow, but The Kickback is playing record release show at The Hideout Thursday night with Abraham Levitan of Baby Teeth, The Hudson Branch, The Noise FM, Mutts, and Archie Powell & the Exports. The headliners go on right at 9 p.m. and the line-up will work its way backward from that. The band is also asking folks to dress up as their favorite superhero. Because, why not?