Superdanger - Fight! Fight! Fight!
ARTIST.....: Superdanger
TITLE......: Fight! Fight! Fight!
LABEL......: Afternoon Records
URL........: www.superdanger.com
RIP DATE...: Feb-26-2006
STORE DATE.: Feb-07-2006
GENRE......: Indie
QUALITY....: VBR / 44.1Hz / Joint-Stereo
SIZE.......: 64,2 MB
Track Listing:
01 - Suicide Grrrlz 03:39
02 - Robette 03:00
03 - Absent Forever Circa 2000 03:55
04 - Good vs. Evil 03:08
05 - Defending Champion 03:34
06 - Pastel Tones 03:21
07 - It's Robert 02:39
08 - Donna 04:11
09 - Johan 03:49
10 - Like Trap 06:31
11 - The Nerd 04:17
─────
42:04 min
Release Notes:
www.afternoonrecords.com
www.myspace.com/superdanger
AR019
Engineered by Michael Sandstedt at the Juice Box Factory
Produced by Superdanger and Ian Anderson
Mastered by Dave Gardner
Artwork by David Gillette
It's spring 2003: Caleb Rick, a ski bum in Colorado who's
gradually been learning the guitar, calls up his old high school
buddy Scott Hefte, then wrapping up graduate school in Ohio. A
question is posed, "Will you move back to Minnesota with me and
start a band?" This is the unlikely story of the birth of
Superdanger, who in two and a half years have morphed from a
seemingly half-baked idea into one of the Twin Cities most
promising power pop outfits. "Caleb called me and basically said,
'I bought an electric guitar and want to start a band - you've got
to play the bass,'" recalls Hefte. "At that point in time I knew
how to play the guitar a little but had never even touched a bass,
I was a trumpet major in college and primarily played the piano.
Still, it seemed like something that would be fun to try so I
wrote some songs on the guitar. We got together and it sounded
really bad, Caleb couldn't really sing to start out with - I
couldn't really play the bass. So of course we decided we needed a
drummer! I knew that Jake [Hanson] really wanted to play drums so
I suggested that idea to Caleb and he went for it. As it turns
out, Jake had never really played the drums before, so he was
pretty bad to start with, too. We weren't exactly taking it very
seriously."
Despite these inauspicious beginnings, Superdanger eventually
honed their sound through extensive practice and gigging, finding
themselves on numerous quality bills as a result of both their
extensive connections to the local music scene - Rick is a
producer for local variety show "Nate on Drums," Hanson is best
known for his guitar work in Cowboy Curtis and Hefte also fronts
keyboard-driven pop trio Seymore Saves the World - and their
instantly invigorating sound, a youthful take on classic pogo
friendly rock in the vein of mid-period Superchunk and the Pixies.
"The more we played together the more fun it got to be," claims
Hefte. "Caleb's actually pretty good at the guitar."
A four-track EP recorded in a rural Wisconsin cabin with the Tapes
'n' Tapes crew and mixed by Ev Olcott (of Halloween, Alaska) first
introduced Superdanger to the local masses. The combination of
Rick's buzz-saw guitars and clipped Shins-styled nasality with
Hefte's boyish Ben Folds-ian croon and a lock step rhythm section
proved instantly popular. A deluge of near-constant gigging
followed in the wake of the EP's release in March of last year.
"Our philosophy behind playing shows is that we'll play virtually
anything," states Rick of Superdanger's typically busy schedule.
"We seem to have a lot of friends in the Minneapolis music scene
so we get asked to play a lot and we never turn down shows; that's
resulted in a lot more gigs than we ever planned on. It definitely
helped as far as getting our stuff together and tightening up the
band before making a real record though."
And now comes the release of that record, entitled Fight, Fight,
Fight, on local label Afternoon Records. At the still none-too-old
age of 27, Hefte and Rick qualify as gray beards among the
typically hovering-around-legal-drinking-age artist roster of AR
and at first Superdanger, with their boyish harmonies and
blatantly pop melodies, seem an unlikely fit for the harder-edged
label.
"Jake [Hanson] knew Ian [Anderson, co-founder of the record label
and guitarist in Aneuretical] a little bit," says Hefte. "He just
gave him a copy of our demo and he really liked it. They had
already decided they wanted to work with us before seeing us play
live. Fortunately we didn't disappoint them."
Eleven tracks split between Hefte and Rick on lead vocals, Fight,
Fight, Fight is an aptly titled collection of crisp and punchy
rock. The record is very clearly the product of two markedly
different songwriters - one could never confuse the bobbing semi
-'70s-styled-smoothness of Hefte's "Like Trap" with the prickly
post-punk jangle of Rick's "Johan." Superdanger's diversity of
sound, while working strictly within the often narrow confines of
the power trio format (electric guitar/bass/drums), is part of
what makes listening to them consistently compelling.
"We don't collaborate on the writing of the songs at all," says
Rick. "We've never sat down and written songs together. The songs
I sing, I wrote; the songs he sings, he wrote. Obviously you've
got to be comfortable playing it at the end of the
day, though."
"For the most part. I write my songs on the guitar and then Caleb
rewrites them," says Hefte stifling a laugh. "He'll like the song
but sort of recast the guitar part into something he feels
comfortable playing, he always comes through with something. My
songs sort of get picked apart in Superdanger as compared to the
writing I do in Seymore Saves the World. I lose a lot of control
over it and it's a different sort of thing. It definitely feels
like more of a collaboration, which I like."
With Cowboy Curtis about to unveil their much-anticipated
sophomore album in March, Seymore Saves the World still an active
entity with new songs in the can, and "Nate On Drums" hurtling
towards its third season, it's unlikely that Superdanger will ever
become the members' sole creative outlet. But that doesn't mean
they aren't enjoying every second spent on the project to the
fullest.
"This is something we didn't really take seriously even for the
whole first year that we were playing shows," says Hefte. His
point is driven home by the fact that the band was self-
deprecatingly known as Caleb the Jerk during this period. "If
people wanted to come see us it was cool; if not, fine. Even the
early recording we did just kind of happened. But now with things
like Afternoon Records getting involved, doing some radio
appearances, it's all pretty exciting. People seem to know the
band a little bit or have heard the name. That's a long way from
where we started."
"For me just staying involved working with creative people that
you like is a great motivating factor and its own reward," says
Rick. "It's a really good time. David Gillette, who plays Motion
Price on "Nate on Drums," did all of the artwork for the CD and
our EP. The Tapes 'n' Tapes guys are great friends of ours and
recorded our first EP. We like working and playing with all of the
friends that we possibly can. There are certainly a lot of weird
and negative aspects about being associated with any sort of arts
or music kind of scene but there are also a lot of fun and
positive aspects to it and that's what our band likes to focus
on." (pulsetc.com)