Upstairs In Your
Room
Year: 2004
Format: CD
Label / Release No.: Shrimper (shr144) |
Tracks:
Johnny Blaze
Radio Barstow
Upstairs In Your Room
Sea Above
A Crown Of Smoke
Here Comes The One
OK, Not Today
Anyone Else's Arms
Your Sister & Me
Paris
Rudy Valentino |
Credits:
Daniel Brodo - Bass Guitar, Background
Vocals & Recorder
Allen Callaci - Vocals
Dennis Callaci - Guitar & Vocals
Chris Jones - Drums, Guitar, Piano & Dobro
Steve Folta - Background
Vocals & Recorder (Track 2)
Recorded & Engineered by Steve Folta
Paintings by Daniel Brodo
Articles by Dennis Callaci
Cartoons by Allen Callaci
Layout & Art Design by Bill Magdziarz
Recorded June 2002 - May 2004 at Some Fancy Recording Facility
(Upland, CA) |
Reviews:
Upstairs in Your Room, the new record from
Refrigerator, is a heavy and thoroughly satisfying appetizer that forces
you to forego your main course, asking instead to have it bagged up to
take home. It is the reason that some people become thoroughly obsessed
with music. It is charming, smart, endearingly flawed, and is perfect to
play first thing in the morning, loudly, or last thing at night, softly.
It falls under the tag 'indie rock' and anyone who would like to
pretentiously claim that term doesn't mean anything is being far too
literal. It can, and should be, a broad tag. Indie rock is the modern day
folk music. To be more specific, imagine the feeling of those who heard
folk music in the 1960s. We all hear about what it was like when Bob Dylan
plugged in, but what about before that, when he was a kid with an acoustic
guitar and direct lyrics to slay the average businessman? What did that
feel like?
Okay, this is not to say that Refrigerator is close to Dylan, neither in
style nor ebullient lyricism. This is rather an argument on the idea that
a band such as Refrigerator can make a record in late 2004 that sounds as
if it were made in 1994 and instead of being dated, it sounds like the
rock and roll earnestness of bands like Guided By Voices, the Spinanes, or
Sebadoh. It comments on the pure excitement of stumbling across the
Breeders, Giant Sand, or Silkworm's Developer. These bands all have in
common their insistence on singing about loss, heartache, and the futility
of just plain living. They all made clever jokes about their wry
observations, but it was all without too much winking involved. Sure,
there are not the politics involved with the original folk music scene in
this country, but there's also not the showcasing self-pity of one of
indie rock's offsprings, emo.
Upstairs in Your Room is a record of eleven very-good-to-great songs.
There are references to addictions, suicide, failed relationships,
wanderlust, and never ever getting it right. The CD opens with "Did your
heart get taken the hard way?" ("Johnny Blaze") and ends with "You're no
one's now, you're no one's now again" ("Rudy Valentino"). The band - Allen
Callaci (vocals), Dennis Callaci (guitar, vocals), Chris Jones (drums,
piano), and Daniel Brodo (bass) - play as if they are the artiest bar band
in the world. Nothing strays from the drunken rock sound, but Refrigerator
is not going to cover "Louie, Louie" (hopefully) and no other bar band in
your town will sing the lines "In a crown of smoke where noise was draped
/ As though it were silk / The two of you parted like a Moses ocean / Of
blood and filth" ("A Crown of Smoke"). They are the poets in the corner of
the bar, trying hard to ignore the frat boys at the pool table.
And what is the main course after Refrigerator? Well, only the greats: the
Velvet Underground, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce Springsteen to name a few.
Refrigerator, and the bands mentioned in an above paragraph, are the quiet
link that a generation of shy nerds were lucky to start discovering
fifteen or so years ago. Upstairs in Your Room is proof, shambling and
uneven, of the thrill of indie rock whispering its quiet power. This won't
appeal to everybody, although that's a shame. The production is too muddy
in this digital age, the vocals are sincere but odd (and shouldn't be any
other way), and a few songs end far too quickly. Sometimes, though, a band
will let their heart come through, as it does one-hundred per cent of the
time here, and that is all that matters. Refrigerator have added a minor
classic to the canon and while there may be bands more cutting-edge to
listen to right now, there probably are not a lot out there as
unapologetically grounded in making solid music with a few basic
instruments and some sad tales to tell. Upstairs in Your Room will break
your heart, even as you soar with the freedom of it.
Rating: 8/10
Jill LaBrack
January 26, 2005 - from Popmatters (www.popmatters.com)
2004 Year End Top 10
1. Tortoise - It's All Around You (Thrill Jockey)
2. RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke (Def Jux)
3. Mission Of Burma - OnOffOn (Matador)
4. Lambchop - Aw C'mon/ No You C'mon (Merge)
5. Refrigerator - Upstairs In Your Room (Shrimper)
6. Hangar 18 - Saved By The Beezy (Def Jux)
7. Murs - Bad Man! (Def Jux)
8. cLOUDDEAD - Ten (Mush)
9. Trouble Funk - Live & Early Singles (District Line)
10. Blockhead - Music By Cavelight (Mush)
James McNew - Yo La Tengo
Late 2004 - from DustedMagazine.com (www.dustedmagazine.com)
… they have a sound that definitely is
influenced by the likes of Bowie and Pavement, and accordingly are rather
good.
justusfish@smallfish.co.uk
December 2004
- from Smallfish Records (www.smallfish.net)
It is a lot easier to release seven albums in 10 years than you might
think – the trick to it is to be the sort of indie rock band that isn’t
awfully concerned about production value, and, if at all possible, employ
some witty and talented lyricists. At least, that’s the lessons a person
might learn from a handful of listens to Upstairs in Your Room.
Refrigerator is a quartet whose primary songwriters, Dennis and Allen
Callaci, generally succeed with their words more than their notes. The
songs (and liner notes, for that matter) are funny at times, simple and
poignant at others. “Did your heart get taken the hard way? / Scratched at
like a would-be winning lottery / left abandon in the sand of an arcade
where ‘Only the Lonely’ plays looped over the PA / or in a Marvel kiosk
selling ballooned champagne…” Dennis’ lines open the first track, “Johnny
Blaze” with humor in his heartbreak.
But it isn’t long – “Countryside Falling” and “A Crown of Smoke” – before
the real poetry begins. The wordplay in the former is playful but pretty,
“See above, sea below, sea above reflecting our backs pressed to a horizon
/ Though it may be in view, it can’t be captured / countryside falling
over concrete ash / blanketing the city.” More purely pretty is the latter
song’s “Buried the photograph in a vase of salt / and you watered the
doubts you had with endless phone calls.”
It’s lyrics like these that vault the better indie rock of the past couple
of decades above the dregs of the rest. Realistically, many of the bands
have little to say musically – these are the same G chords and E minor
chords they always were, and as the semi-trained guitarists strum them,
there isn’t much to find new. The drums are beaten soundly, but what else?
Lou Reed has said he’ll keep playing the same three chords until he gets
them just right, but he isn’t kidding anyone: it’s the lyrics that make
him palatable most of the time.
And so it is with Refrigerator. The band serves as a rhythmic and melodic
backdrop for what is new, which is verbal. And while it would be easy to
wish the music were better played, better produced or even more memorably
written, let’s just be thankful for what we have with the other half of
the equation. There are plenty of bands out there with less.
Rating: 5.9 / 10
Luther Hermanson (luther@30music.com)
March 8, 2005 - from 30music.com (www.30music.com)
This is a hard record to gauge. As Refrigerator’s seventh record in ten
years, the eleven songs on Upstairs In Your Room move like low-end
alt-country leaning more towards indie rock. Most of the songs travel with
low velocity, non-distorted guitars and simple compositions; seemingly
perfect as soundtrack material for indie films. That they toured with
Sebadoh is non-surprising given their sound, but the slacker energy motif
might be too much of a turnoff for some and boring for others. One thing
that would enhance the record would be better recording production. It
could be by design, but the sound quality is lacking particularly since
this is their seventh record. A few highlights come from “Radio Barstow,”
“Upstairs in your Room” and “Anyone Else Arms.” I won’t entirely rule
judgment on Refrigerator until I see them live, but they seem geared
towards better things than this.
Grade: B-
December 2004
- from Exoduster (www.exoduster.com)
Refrigerator's seventh album in their tenth
year as a band returns to the rusted-out, Peavey-drenched feed-back of
their earlier records on the Communion label with eleven new songs
recorded over two years by Steve Folta at his Junket studio, including
compositions written during the band's European tour in 2003.
Besides touring with Sebadoh in the fall, Allen and Dennis Callaci, Chris
Jones, and Daniel Brodo will be doing guerilla dates at comedy clubs up
and down the West Coast.
What does the record sound like? Busted up soda pop through a shorting-out
vending machine, thumbnail sketches in the vein of a lowbrow Ray Davies or
upper end David Cassidy. That's right, file next to their contemporaries
Smog, The Piltones, and Dump.
The packaging includes an extensive mini-magazine touching upon issues
ranging from spotting Stevie Nicks at the local Stop & Shop to Peter
Jennings rescinding his
newfound American citizenship. No joke.
- Midheaven Mailorder / Revolver USA (http://www.midheaven.com/front.html) |
|
 |
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD ONE-SHEET PROMO |
|
