Tools
Sun July 11, Vera Project, 7 pm, $8/$7 with Vera Club Card.
So, if we're to believe Michael Moore, CNN, the New York Times, and Last Call with Carson Daly, the world is going to hell in a Humvee. We have a monkey on a stick for a president, we're helping tighten terrorist networks abroad, and the poll numbers between our Democratic and Republican candidates are tighter than a Botox smile. It seems almost impossible for our political climate not to seep into more of our popular culture output.
National news has even soaked into the simple songwriting minds of the Briefs, Seattle's skinny-tied soothsayers, who've stepped back into the spotlight with Sex Objects. With new songs like "Orange Alert," "Destroy the USA," and "No More Presidents," the band has expanded its repertoire to include pressing political events--but not to worry, themes of heightened security and lying leaders are given the same peroxide fizz and pop-spiked punch as the rest of their lyrically inane material. (Sample lyric from "Orange Alert": "It's an orange alert/telling us we have to prep the nation/it's an orange alert/don't you know it's gonna wreck your vacation.") They attack international meltdown with their usual two-to-three-minute bottle rocket of flippant opinion (the same treatment they give to rabid insects on "Killed by Ants"), producing a record that only glances on topical subjects, yet whose timing is impeccable.
Sex Objects is, in the words of bassist Lance Romance, "about stuff that's mundane and making it quirky. We've gotten even more simple--although even the first record is all stupid stuff. Nothing's over-thought." And at a time when the nation's gone serious for obvious reasons, there's nothing like a shot in the arm from a bouncy bunch of silly punks raised on the Knack, the Sweet, the Clash, and Cheap Trick to provide an easily accessible, well-crafted musical escape capsule before you return to your regularly scheduled reality check. "It's weird; people are commenting about us being political but it's [just how] whoever sang and wrote that particular songs feels," says Romance. "Nothing we write about is too serious anyway."
From "Halfsize Girl" through "Sally I Can't Go to the Beach," Sex Objects is a fast-paced, well-polished pop gem--and the Briefs' best album yet, one that should bring back fans who were left a little disappointed by last year's Off the Charts (Dirtnap), an EP Romance explains was compiled quickly between tours. He says that EP title was a reference to the lack of interest from their then-label Interscope Records, who signed the Briefs (Romance, guitarists Daniel J. Travanti and Steve E. Nix, and drummer Chris Brief) after their 2001 Dirtnap debut, Hit After Hit, came out, and then unceremoniously left them hanging before breaking from the band completely.
In the end, though, it was the Briefs who won out on that deal. "Basically [Interscope] had no idea what they were getting into," explains Romance. "We told them right away that we wanted to go on tour, which they couldn't understand because we hadn't done a record [with them] yet."
The band asked for large amounts of tour money and spent little, and kept recording costs low. "We made a record that we were pretty happy with and they just held onto it and we kept using their money for tour support," explains Romance. "When the record wasn't coming out, we were just like, 'Maybe this isn't working and we should [leave Interscope]' and they agreed. So we left and we got our record back. We got really lucky." The Briefs were especially charmed in that, according to Romance, they found an oversight in the Interscope contract, which allowed them to leave hassle-free with their record.
Now they're on BYO, a label run by Shawn and Mark Stern from punk band Youth Brigade, and the Briefs are at home with an indie that's not gonna "suggest" what songs should go on the set list like the majors did. Working more on their own dime and time, the band is back, snapping bubblegum pop tracks crusted with a light punk film. That formula, taken with their infectious sense of humor, shows the Briefs offering, once again, a trip down insanity lane, a road they know only too well. "I grew too sick of bands that take themselves seriously," says Romance with a grin. "In the end, it's all just entertainment."
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