The early evening, all-ages showcase at Chop Suey this Saturday, December 10, featuring Lillydale, is called the Twee, Pop Fest. Please note punctuation: "That's Twee, comma, Pop," emphasizes Lillydale frontman Joseph O. Markevich, AKA "Josie". The local quartet are clearly unabashed in their devotion to pop music... but twee? Hardly. Whippet-thin, tousle-haired, and often sporting a mischievous grin, Josie easily passes for "elfin" in a pinch, but that's as cutesy as Lillydale gets.
Not that he gets his nose bent out of shape about how folks describe his band. "Some of the people who have written about us have called us new wave," he reveals, incredulously. He shrugs. Labels are inconsequential. "I just like good songwriting."
If good is synonymous with catchy, the four originals on Lillydale's debut self-released EP, Erstwhile Confessions of a Butterfly Heart, definitely qualify. The group has an ingratiating way with a wordless refrain: The falsetto woo-hoo-hoos of KEXP pick "Lighting Lanterns in the Shade," the sing-along la-la-las scattered throughout "(the sea, the shore, the spiral)." Josie and bassist Holly Deye enliven selections like "Glassed Candies" with interlaced boy-girl vocals. The arrangements, sprinkled with tambourines and handclaps, are carefully—but not fussily—arranged, leaving lots of room for the subtle guitar work of Jason Williams; though Lillydale's songs boast hooks aplenty, his playing is refreshingly economical.
The core of Lillydale is nothing if not seasoned; the band's origins go way back, long ago and far away. Markevich and Williams started playing in bands together as adolescents while growing up in Erie (rhymes with "dreary"), Pennsylvania. After graduation, the guys migrated to Las Vegas to seek their fortunes, but quickly lost momentum after their drummer vanished in a puff of "premil-lennium tension and acid-casualty paranoia." Uninspired at the prospect of playing six shows nightly in casinos, the two relocated to Seattle late in 1999. Although Lillydale has been kicking around for 18 months, the current incarnation (which also features drummer David Lopez) solidified when Deye—who music lovers may recognize as a bartender at the Sunset—signed on this summer.
Having shared bills with equally inventive indie-pop acts like Fruit Bats, Xiu Xiu, and Math and Physics Club (the latter headlines Saturday's bill with Lillydale), the band hopes to issue a single of "Lighting Lanterns..." plus a couple new songs in the early 2006, followed by a full-length. As suggested by the butterfly and moth imagery that recurs throughout Lillydale's silk-screened packaging, their music is undergoing some gradual changes. Given Josie's tendency to elongate his diphthongs like Silly Putty when he really gets going, a move towards "darker textures," as the singer hints, seems a natural progression.
For now, Lillydale are simply damned entertaining. The group has amassed an enthusiastic following, and understandably so: They put just as much energy and love into their stage show as every other aspect of their art, insists Josie. "It's amazing what you can do with a handful of confetti and some glitter."
