This is how you build something. Probably not a planet. But something pretty swell. (KBC)

It wasn’t always apparent to everyone that Kansas Bible Company would become a big thing.  This band got together at Goshen College, and then things started going so well that they all (all greater-than-or-equal-to 11 members) dropped out to move to Nashville and focus on their music.  Since then, a few have returned to grab their degrees and go, but the band keeps going, and they all tour together on breaks, weekends, and summers.  KBC is not some provincial band.  Since the release of their second full album, Hotel Chicamauga, they have played everywhere worth playing across the Midwest, including Bonnaroo.  Yes that Bonnaroo. KBC is a big deal. 

It took me a while to get up the courage to really write a proper review for KBC, and here I’m really going to focus just on their first album, “Ad Astra Per Aspera” (a latin cliché:  To the stars through rugged ways).  This is for a number of reasons.  They came from Goshen, and as a Goshenite myself, I was afeared that no one would take me seriously.  I have a certain lack of disinterest—I’ve taken classes and hung out with members of the band at college (and they’re swell folks).  Their lead singer was actually a substitute teacher for our high school for a while before they really got into their music.  He timed the final oral presentation I had for IB English.  Beyond this, I don’t know what genre to square them away in.  And I care about people liking their music. 

KBC has a unique sound in the indie scene (I’ve settled on labeling them as such for lack of anything more specific).  They have a few guitarists/vocalists, a few bassists, a few percussionists, a keyboard player.  And an up-to four-person horn line.  To clarify, KBC is definitely not a ska band.  Their horns give them, instead, a rich sound unachievable with any other wall-of-sound.  And that’s just it.  With so many talented musicians in one place, you’d expect Ad Astra Per Aspera to be one big wall of sound, in the style of “Yuck” or “Los Campesinos!.”  But KBC doesn’t come off like that.  Their opening (and, in my opinion, most classic) track “How To Build A Planet” has a 45 seconds of minimalist intro before bringing most of the instruments in, and KBC shows their musicianship over and over again by easing up and letting just a few voices be heard.  I’m a huge fan of this.  That said, don’t think that KBC doesn’t know how to use their size to their advantage.  If Ad Astra Per Aspera is anything, it is solidly a jam album.  From the almost vocal-less “Young Professional” to the lyrically nonsensical “Gondor Primulon,” you get the sweetest riffs you could hope for, a chill wind-and-string jam for the ages.  The fact that they stopped “Young Professional” before the 20 minute mark made me sad—that is a testament to how well they work together, and how musical they manage to be.  To be honest, if KBC has a weakness, it’s in their lyric writing, in this album (they’ve improved by album number 2, but that’s for another day).  None of their tracks, with the possible exception of “Black Books” (and maybe "Tension with Kansas") have terribly inspired lyrics—not much to keep you engaged in the content of the vocals, which tend towards the weakly-veiled metaphor, whether that be the repetition of “Cigarette Mountain” or “Moderation”, or simply the shallow themes of sex and drugs in “How To Build A Planet” and, well, really most of their tracks.  I hate to say it, but if you want to be forced to think, gifted some new philosophy, this is not the album for you (Though, for you ethnic Mennos out there, you’ll catch some more nuance tin a few of these tracks).  Go listen to some punk.  But if you want collaborative music at its finest, not only art but also fundamentally pleasurable, an ideal summer album (to bring back that feeling at any time of the year) or just to feel good, this is THE album.  It’s chill.  It’s dope.  It’s the best jam music you’ll ever hear.  If you don’t do anything else, LISTEN TO “HOW TO BUILD A PLANET.” If you aren’t a convert after that, I’ll give up.  But that track… That track is genius.  Even if KBC doesn’t really find their thematic direction until Hotel Chicamauga, this track is still hands down the cream of their crop.  This is what KBC is about.  I want you to imagine this track live.  It’s better than that.  Listen to it loud.  Listen to it with the bass cranked up.  Listen to it in your car, windows down, as the Midwestern summer rolls by, if you can.  Just…  Just listen to it. 

tl;dr: Listen to “How To Build A Planet” by Kansas Bible Company.  Do it.  Now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJjdcytsX40

-Peter

milo - A Toothpaste Suburb

Scrolling through Tumblr for the first time after a week in the Minnesota Boundary Waters, it was obvious that I had missed a lot. Robin Williams hung himself with a belt, Ferguson was becoming some kind of surreal war zone in "post-racial America," violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict was making national news. In between vaporwave-aesthetic gifs and One Piece manga caps, I watched it all unfold bit-by-bit (the only way to learn anything on a social network) with a vague disinterest mostly related to having just taken my first shower in a week and the time being 4am. I'll care about this in the morning, I remember thinking. The artwork for an album cover caught my eye, and I followed a Soundcloud link to this milo guy's track and listened to a sleepy, leaky faucet sounding beat unfurl into some verses with way too many cultural references to catch in one take. It was a welcoming sound. The production was smart, like something taken from a Baths track, and I remember feeling pretty tingly over the lines "I've been out of place like transitional lenses, comma splices in a suspended sentence, kiss the nose of the vulture, destroy the bro culture," etc. The song finished and my hard drive died promptly thereafter. At that point, feeling sufficiently attuned to the media overload once again, I fell asleep on Thomas's couch. I didn't listen to milo for a few days while my laptop was being repaired, but at that point I was already pretty hyped to get to hear the entire thing.

Thankfully, A Toothpaste Suburb arrived today, and I don't want to waste any time spreading the word. At the risk of sounding like myself, I'll say this is easily my favorite album from 2014 thus far. Open Mike Eagle's Dark Comedy was my previous contender, which is no surprise - milo makes it clear from the first track that he and his fellow label artist are good friends, and Mike makes an appearance on "Objectifying Rabbits" for a short verse. But milo takes things a little further, and it gets a little weirder on A Toothpaste Suburb.

Gary Paulsen, Instagram, Yoni Wolf (YES!), Guy Fieri, the Nightosphere -- Nothing is too obscure for milo's lexicon. I debated making a graph to map out these references, but that would ruin the fun of listening to every song again and again, trying to decipher every sentence. It's like a game of Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit. Kool AD even references himself and talks about it on "In Gaol," in a pretty hilarious verse about not really anything. It may seem like milo is making fun of anything and everything, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that he's really just making fun of himself for being so involved in the whole mess.

Knowing a lot about the internet isn't where milo's most important skills lie, though. He's talented. milo plays with metaphors like they're Lego blocks and some lyrics hit way harder than you could imagine a line about a dead bird ever could. He mumbles a bit less than he used to on his previous releases, but he still doesn't sound like a guy that realizes how witty he is.

When milo drops his barriers on "Just Us (A Reprise for Robert Who Will Never be Forgotten)," a revisited track about losing his brother, the effect is brutal and stomach turning. "Now kids write me about being their favorite rapper, and I'm the asshole who gets to live forever after," he spits with a level of clarity hardly visited on the album before, and a simple flat-line "I miss you" punctuates the song with so much earnest that I feel undeserved to type those same words in this review. It's a complicated song, and possibly the most real song about death that I've heard in a long time.

Beneath the plethora of name checks and chuckles on A Toothpaste Suburb, milo shows his reverence for life and some pretty complex feelings about death. The perspective is bizarre, but showing it any other way would be selling all of 2014 short. What a bizarre year it has been.

Happy fall

- Kane

Listen to A Toothpaste Suburb on Soundcloud or Bandcamp