While most bands relegate their drummer to timekeeper status, or worse, Unnatural Helpers beatmaker Dean Whitmore regulates the band’s sound from the drum track up. Knowing this helps to explain the Helpers’ heavy rock, rhythm-focused trailblazing. “Most of the time I come up with an idea, and it’s a pretty rigid framework of what the song should be,” says Whitmore. “Then we, or whoever, will duke it out and come up with parts.”
The foundation-first approach helps to account for the static, muscular tendency of the Helpers’ initial as-of-yet unreleased batch of songs. Besides writing the compositions and committing rough cuts and ideas for most of the band’s repertoire, Whitmore also handles the Helpers’ frontman duties, and it’s his sneering vocals on songs like “Mr. Children,” “Becky Is a Bummer,” and “Operation Dry Pants” that end up as one of the most defining aspects of the Helpers’ overall smart-assed aesthetic. Staccato-note teasing butts up against giant chords, and note-bending riffs stagger around Whitmore’s whimsical lyrics and nasal, snide delivery.
The band, which features Whitmore, guitarist Mike Wurn, bass player Sean Kelly, secondary drummer PJ Rogalski, and Kinski guitarist Chris Martin, started a few years ago when Whitmore and Wurn were playing together in local band Welcome. “I started writing a bunch of songs. We didn’t have a band—initially I wanted to do a side recording project, and I gave the demos to a bunch of people, and I gave one to Mike. The two of us started working together like this for about a year. Then I wanted a band, so I booked a show, and then got people to play with us. Once you start telling people you have a show, you know, saying, ‘we’ve got a show, we’re a real band,’ then people will sign on.”
After that, friend Starla of long-time Seattle hard rockers Sick Bees offered to record some demo material, and the rest is soon-to-be history. But for all of his productivity (although he’s reluctant to talk about it, the band purportedly has a wealth of song demos and rough cuts), Whitmore seems indifferent about the band’s career trajectory, at least in terms of traditional routes of released material or getting signed to a label.
“I like the idea of putting out records. And at this point there’s such a big bunch of songs, that I think we could put out a decent record,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of great bands come and go, without ever really doing anything, but at the same time it’s like, I don’t want to talk to fucking record labels, you know, and say shit like, ‘Oh, here’s our record, I hope you like it. Maybe you want to release it for us.'”
But if there’s a lack of enthusiasm in the career department, it’s possibly due to the abundance of the Helpers’ self-recorded output. “It’s kind of cool because I’ve been in other bands, and it’s like, The Struggle,” says guitarist Wurn. Where it’s like, ‘Does anyone have anything new?’ And everyone will say something to the effect of ‘Well, no, you’ll have to wait a while,’ but [with Dean] it’s almost like we could have an entirely new set every time we play.”
A quick spin of the Helpers tracks that have actually made it to mastering suggests that prospective labels won’t have much trouble drafting up a contract if the situation presents itself. At 2 minutes, 28 seconds, “Lights Down Low” is 30 seconds longer than any other song on the offering, and it finds lethargic power chords trading blows with taut drum cadences, as Whitmore blurts brief passages in between. Conversely, “Seems Sick Now” is a driving number, riding on a staunch chord progression until it falls notes below the flight at a few points, all while the vocals try to stay the course. In the standout “Cardboard Swords,” Whitmore bellows, “It’s the age of deceit/And mass manipulation/But we swear we’ll fight back/With our cardboard swords,” suggesting a possible concern for society in what otherwise seems like a sound that’s thick with irony.
Swords made of cardboard or no, with a soundtrack like this, you know the Helpers are gonna win the fight, if only they try hard enough.
