Music
Austin trio Benko gets its good vibe from the vibes
By Joe GrossNov. 24, 2005
So you want to play in a rock 'n' roll band, but you don't want to be a rock 'n' roll band.
You want to write the best pop songs you can write, but you don't want to look or sound like your typical pop trio. Guitar, bass, drums: Austin has literally thousands of bands like that.
You want to convey catchy, ringing melodies, but you want to do it in an unconventional way.
What do you do?
One word: vibes. (As in the vibraphone.)
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Lance Myers
Golden Arm Trio members Graham Reynolds, left, and Erik Grostic wanted to form another band and make music without guitars. They teamed with vibraphonist Sarah Norris, center, of Bee vs. Moth and the New Music Co-op for the band Benko. Benko plays Wednesday at the Longbranch Inn, 1133 E. 11th St. |
The band started back in 2003, when some folks in the orbit of composer Graham Reynolds' Golden Arm Trio wanted to start a pop band. The group includes Reynolds on drums, plus bassist and regular Trio member Erik Grostic.
But the pair wanted to make this music without a guitar. Enter vibraphonist Sarah Norris, who can also be heard with the more complicated group Bee vs. Moth and the often wildly complicated New Music Co-op.
"Guitarists are the violinists of the rock world," Grostic says. "They can be difficult. Vibes players are never difficult, and there are so many bands with guitar."
He quickly backs up. "Not all guitar players are bad, of course," Grostic says. "Just a few bad apples." But it's clear that, unlike some bassists, he was never a frustrated guitarist. Some bassists are quite centered with their instrument, and Grostic is one of those.
This doesn't mean he doesn't rock. "I still have my first bass, because it's a Rickenbacker," Grostic says. "They just look really cool and it's what (Motorhead bassist) Lemmy plays, and if Lemmy plays it, it's got the seal of approval."
The band quickly decided that their jazz backgrounds wouldn't clash with their pop ambitions. At hoot nights, they'd cover the Police, Duran Duran and Mission of Burma.
"Everyone in the group has an appreciation for people who write songs that can be improvised over," Grostic says, citing Cole Porter and the Gershwins as examples. "The mark of a really good song is one that that can be improvised over effectively."
But there was never any question of the band mutating into jazz. "When you start going into swing with something like this, you just sound like bad swing," Grostic says.
Benko walks the line between sharp compositions and witty improvisations, so it's no surprise that the cover of the seven-song album "An International Affair" is clearly inspired by highly stylized jazz sleeves of the '40s, '50s and '60s, which is when jazz did just that.
Inside the sleeve, however, one hears what could be a straight-forward indie rock sound: big, hard-hitting drums with bass and vibes trading off carrying the melody, with Grostic's soft, everyman vocals on top. The lead-off "Halfway to Heaven" is almost heavy, while "East Side" bobs and weaves and "Kandy" shutters and shakes. Reynolds' frantic drums go from zippy to trippy on a dime-turn, while Norris' vibes can't help but sound lithe.
This makes it possible for the band to join all kinds of gigs. "We've been on some weird bills, but they all seem to make sense," Grostic says. The band's CD release show at the Longbranch Inn joins them up with terrific garage band the Ugly Beats, and fuzzy New Wavey rockers For Those Who Know.
But when asked about his favorite bands, Grostic doesn't even stop for breath and goes right back to some of the best jazz of the '50s and '60s. "The Bill Evans Trio, with (bassist) Scott LaFaro and (drummer) Paul Motian," he says, "but what I think the post-punk band Benko would really like to sound like but never will is Brainiac," the frantic, '90s indie rock band.
Gee, Erik, could you be a little more on the nose? Benko couldn't sound more like a perfect blend of Bill Evans and Brainiac, the hot and the cool, the measured and the explosive. With vibes.
jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926
