Give Back Creates Sounds Far Beyond Their Years

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 19, 2012 5:20PM

The Redwalls. Smith-Westerns. Give Back. Three bands all touted as talented teen sensations, but only one of them debuted with an album of really solid music. And it's the one you probably haven't heard of.

Until now.

Give Back is four high school seniors looking to make a mark on the local scene before they graduate and presumably head off to college. In the email drummer Owen Jones sent us he said, "I know what you're thinking already - another teenage band from the city, I've heard it before and it doesn't sound good. Before dismissing us as kids that happen to have instruments, I urge you to take a listen to a song or two off of the album we just recorded." Now while we at Chicagoist HQ actually do listen to everything that comes through our inbox—we feel that we owe it to anyone willing to take the time to record music and send it our way—rarely are we actually surprised by what we hear. And Give Back's debut, Modern Philosophy, is a keeper.

Jones, bassist Gavin Crowell, guitarist Ryan Walsh and keyboardist JP Walsh have put together a collection of 10 songs of varying complexity threaded together with the uniform joy of a band that knows each other so intimately that intricate instrumental interplay is kids' stuff (no pun intended). In some ways this really shouldn't be surprising, right? How many great bands created most of their best work in their teenage years? And why have we hit a point in time where we laud a teenage band that proves adept at ripping off a sound from a bygone era? Why should it surprise us so much that a young band creates an album that's both mature and playfully entertaining, as Give Back has with Modern Philosophy?

We're not saying Give Back doesn't have their influences. The indie rock of the last two decades obviously has had an effect on these guys, but we're pleased to see that they've filtered that sound—as much as "indie rock" is a sound (and, admittedly, only definable as such by those of us growing longer in the tooth)—and added their own twists to it. And it's the band's collective sense of melody and playful adventurousness that makes Modern Philosophy such a wonderful listen. Give Back is a band that knows how to take it all in and craft something new that belongs solely to them before handing it over to you.

Give Back plays an album release show with Crash Hero and The Blisters this Saturday, Jan. 21, at Beat Kitchen, 2100 W Belmont, 6 p.m., $10, all ages