The Planet The w/Popular Shapes, Point Line Plane, Science Victim
Fri Feb 27, Fun House, 9:30 pm, $5.
Yes, those old fogies, recently released a new three-disc “35th Anniversary Collection” called The Ultimate Yes, which has remained unusually stuck to my CD player–an odd pairing with the rest of my record collection, since before I heard new bands like Cobra High and records like Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66 soundtrack, I couldn’t give a shit about prog rock. Yes and their kind were noodling, pretentious, humorless music-geek bands, and the only song I really liked by Yes was their non-prog hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart” (mostly because of the creepy video, where bugs crawl all over a man’s face). Other than that, the High Fidelity types could have the rest of the overblown lot.
But leave it to young musicians to dig up buried genres, dust them off, and turn them into new treasures. For example, Portland’s The Planet The. The trio made up of Chicago transplants Charlie Salas (vocals, guitar), Charles Francis Matze III (drums), and Dave Huebner (synthesizer) make bombastic art/math rock with a sense of humor and lots of effects, which come together seamlessly on their debut, Physical Angel. “Before this album people would say we should listen to Yes, so we did, and then fell in love,” says Salas. “They’re great, but so indulgent and obnoxious. We wanted to take elements of that, but make it more accessible, unlike the common math-rock band that soullessly tries to trick everyone.”
The Planet The have fashioned an album of warped instrumentals, heavy with long passages of Korg keyboard guts pancaked on top of each other thicker than Tammy Faye’s face paint–but where the occasional metal-style guitar solo or abstract dance beat filters in as well. “We perhaps attack [music] from more of a punk direction, although people still think we come off as closet music geeks,” says Salas. “We like the prog thing, but we wanted to disguise [Physical Angel] as a dance album to trick people into liking prog rock…. People love to dance, but I think they should learn to dance to 9/8 time.”
Salas doesn’t only (barely) disguise the roots of The Planet The’s influences, he also veils his own voice for most of the record–running it through the Korg so it comes out as the robotic twin of his own histrionic delivery, and hiding most of what he’s saying as well. He claims Physical Angel is a concept album about TPT’s hometown Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn (their high school and the “burnout kids we grew up with”), but you have to take his word on it because few moments of his rambling narrative are decipherable–besides nouns like “mouth,” “hands,” and “artery.” “Most of the stuff on this record has a made-up language,” says Salas. “Not to be esoteric or abstract. Just because we were lazy and don’t really give a fuck about lyrics and didn’t think anyone would care about what I have to say.”
TPT started out in 1994 as a six-piece that, Salas jokes, “sounded like Pussy Galore meets Steely Dan. Eventually, as the band members quit, we became more focused.” The band has since made its mark alongside Portland synth-punk peers Point Line Plane. It’s one of two projects for Salas, who doubles as one-man choreographed karaoke-dance act Panther. “Panther is pure id,” Salas says. “It’s a project where I am able to get as creepy as I want and never come back. As compared to in The Planet The, [where] a certain composure is needed to play the songs.”
With both Panther and The Planet The, the common thread is physical theatrics that complement the instrumental ones, and Salas is as squirmy as a sugared-up kindergartner at a birthday party. He pounces on the crowd with moves that make Ian Svenonius look stoic, and enjoys giving his audience a place in the show no matter what music has his back. “If the crowd is [into the band], it becomes more fun and intense,” he says, “but if the crowd’s out, it’s fun to violate them and make them want to take a boiling hot shower after and scrub with a Brillo pad.”