HoboEye Music:
Gena Rowlands Band, Washington, DC

The Gena Rowlands band... plays songs about b-movie starlets, x-movie starlets, ex-movie starlets, Academy Award Winning Actresses, people born in the wrong skin, blonde strangers, convenience stores, bad parties, the Eisenhower Interstate system, and Kong's words with Jesus in the aftermath of a rough first date. It's late-night music. (Have a smooth beverage.)

Bob Massey and his restless, oddball friends live and play in one of those big American cities strung along Interstate 95 like Christmas lights for astronauts. Down there in the middle lies Washington, D.C. When all the broken glass and beer nuts are swept up after the party that was D.C. punk, someone has to sing a wistful song to close out the night.

The rage, the politics, the dissatisfaction haven't gone away. Everyone's just a little wiser now.

If you were to look up the bios of the Gena Rowlands Band players, you would encounter names like Fugazi, Tsunami, Dismemberment Plan, et al. The Gena Rowlands Band are people who were reared in that Washington D.C post-punk community. Members have toured and recorded with those names and more. But the big deal here is that the GRB leaves those names and sounds behind.

What you hear is utterly different. Strings stolen from a b&w movie score or New York's experimental scene. The skitter of jazz brushes. A voice that draws more power from a whisper, a wry lyric, or a soulful falsetto than a scream.

As the mastermind behind Smart Went Crazy and Beauty Pill (Dischord), producer Chad Clark immediately got it. He effortlessly captured the sonic nuance, tenacious hooks, and dark humor of the band at Inner Ear Studios (which is to D.C. as Sun Studios is to Memphis, or Chess Studios to Chicago.)

The result? La Merde et Les Etoiles is the album you put on, alone in your apartment, as you look out over the strange city at night wondering who all those people are, and how they managed to find each other and is it last call yet.

Check out the Gena Rowland Band website >