Divine Fits Play The Logan Square Auditorium
By Eric Hehr in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 25, 2012 3:00PM
Divine Fits. Photo by Marina Chavez.
In the late 1960’s, the term “supergroup” was coined to describe a band made up of established performers who had already achieved fame in previous musical projects. The term stemmed from the name of the 1968 album Super Sessions, which featured Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, and Stephen Stills (the aforementioned being part of another famous supergroup, Crosby, Stills, and Nash). Notable early supergroups examples include Cream, The Byrds, The Hollies, The Highwaymen, and The Traveling Wilburys.
In recent years, supergroups such as Audioslave, The Raconteurs, Monsters of Folk, and Zwan have emerged onto the music scene, but have unfortunately suffered the same inevitable fate as their supergroup forefathers: after releasing a minimal amount of music, supergroups indefinitely fade away post the initial burst of inspired material and industry buzz. More often than not, the short life span of supergroups is due to the fact that they are formed as side projects—never intending to be the permanent source of creative outlet, but rather a vanity project disguised as a chance to play with "friends." However, there is the rare chance that a supergroup can become the principal project of musicians career.
A recent supergroup to hit this year is Divine Fits, made up of Britt Daniel (Spoon), Dan Boeckner (Handsome Furs, Wolf Parade) and Sam Brown (New Bomb Turks). Divine Fits released their first album, A Thing Called Divine Fits, in August on Merge Records. This indietastic supergroup formation can be traced back to 2007, when Britt Daniel attended a Handsome Furs show and told Boeckner that he had one of the best rock ‘n roll voices he had ever heard. A flattered Boeckner upped the ante, telling Daniels he'd been an avid Spoon fan since high school - enough to the point where he quit his Metallica cover band and set out to form his own band made up of original material influenced by Spoon (which would eventually become Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs). The two stayed in contact with each other over the next few years, and in 2011 Daniels emailed Boeckner an instrumental demo of what would eventually become the Divine Fits song, “What Get’s You Alone.” Daniels asked Boeckner to record some vocals on top of it, and thus the first Divine Fits song was born (the version of “What Gets You Alone” that appears on A Thing Called Divine Fits contains the original demo vocals that Boeckner recorded in his kitchen).
A Thing Called Divine Fits hints at many things the Divine Fits members have done in their previous projects. There is the Spoon-esque bass and drum groove of “Would That Not Be Nice?” and the Handsome Fur-esque bravado of “Baby Get Worse,” but A Thing Called Divine Fits is presented in a progressively moody template; one that relishes in murky minimalism and takes comfort in the mystery of thematic ambiguity (album opener, “My Love is Real,” contains the sparse refrain, “My love is real/Until it stops”).
It’s hard to deny Divine Fits’ undercurrent of succinct musicality without reminiscing about the members other bands, yet A Thing Called Divine Fits manages to hold it’s own identity, incorporating elements of The Human League (see the synth line in “My Love Is Real”) and Love & Rockets (see the new-wave romanticism of “Baby Get Worse”). The debut album is made up of songwriting and arranging that you’d be hard press to find in a track by Spoon or Wolf Parade.
Unlike other supergroups that struggle to combine their individual musical identities into a tasteful musical algorithm, Divine Fits have a signature sound that isn’t dictated by their other bands. Their debut album was revered by NPR, who cited the album as “the work of guys who know exactly what they want from their music […] the album deserves that highest of compliments: For all its familiar components, it sounds like Divine Fits.”
This all leads to a larger question - the question that taints all supergroups: Is Divine Fits the new full time project, or is it the side project in-between Spoon albums? And furthermore, will Divine Fits release more acclaimed material, or is A Thing Called Divine Fits a fleeing burst of refined collaborative creativity that will be left untainted by future efforts; a kind of musical "one-night-stand" that is looked back on with a somberly bittersweet “What if…” remembrance (see Little Joy’s undervalued solitary self titled album).
Divine Fits are playing the Logan Square Auditorium tonight. The band is still too young to assume longevity, but for all indie music fans know, this might be the last Chicago stop for Divine Fits. There might not be another album. And if there is, will they have enough time between all their other projects to tour on it? This is all food for thought given the history of previous supergroups, but also ample reason to catch Divine Fits while you can. They are here tonight, Chicago. Strike while The Divine Fits are hot.
Divine Fits play the Logan Square Auditorium (2539 N. Kedzie Blvd., Chicago, IL 60647) tonight, Thursday Oct. 25. Tickets can be purchased in advanced by clicking HERE.