THE BAND
JIM SULLIVAN
drums & percussion
JONAS CARNEMARK
guitar & back up vocals
MICHAEL KERWIN
bass & vocals
AMIT CHATTERJIE
keyboards
Something special and unexpected happens when musicians learn their instruments playing together. One guy comes in with an Elvis Costello fascination, favoring clever 3-4 minute new-wavy pop rock; another is a prog freak obsessed with Jethro Tull, Yes and Pink Floyd; the guitarist is fixed on the dexterous jazz-rock of Steely Dan and fusion-era Jeff Beck; while the drummer blends New Orleans funk with Zappa drummer technicalities; and on and on. No one can agree, they just play, and the results become a wonderful compromise: rock music that sounds fresh, unplanned and yet clearly has a distinct pedigree.
The Bethesda, Maryland-based quartet HüsBand are one of these bands. Holed up in the suburbs, they came together as four semi-novice musicians, and through sweat-soaked woodshedding as a unit, emerged a telepathic ensemble with a unique songwriting vocabulary and a familiar yet non-derivative sophisticated pop-rock sound. The band’s overall sensibility falls somewhere between Steely Dan’s slinky musicality and Pavement’s playfully literate abstractness. HüsBand’s 8-song debut, Situation Room, is an album-oriented release, thoughtfully produced and sequenced for vinyl.