Bluetip Get Happy
»
 |
Little could I guess the emotional attachment this DC quartet has to the deceased auto. It was, in fact, the same van that carted Farrell and Bluetip guitarist Dave Stern across the country on countless tours with the early DC-hardcore band Swiz nearly ten years ago. Swiz layed the groundwork for the band that is now Bluetip, recently home from a European tour in support of Join Us, its second full-length on Dischord.
Produced by ex-Jawbox mastermind J. Robbins, Join Us is a veritable tour of the DC hardcore scene's past and present, a chef salad of Fugazi, Shudder To Think and the Dismemberment Plan with a strong Cheap Trick aftertaste.
"We've been bringing in a bit more of that influence just for the sheer joy," Farrell admits the next day. "Not that you could make a statement by that kind of music..."
And although Join Us reveals various homages to those influences, the record establishes Bluetip as a force to be reckoned with amid the bevy of faceless post-punk outfits. Sure, Bluetip can rock you into submission, but few of its hardcore colleagues could churn out such subtly psychedelic winners as album closer "Slovakian." Farrell's sung/spoken lyrics, while pointed, leave songs such as "Castanet" and "Cheap Rip" open to a myriad of interpretations. Indeed, Join Us seems to constantly teeter between reluctant happiness and self-deprecating overanalysis. Rip-roaring album opener "Yellow Light" sums up the dichotomy best.
"It's like, 'Things are just barely going my way! Cool, woo!' The whole record is kinda like that; almost making it and then not quite making it," Farrell says. The thick-riffed "Castanet" touches on personal issues that Farrell hammers home with lines such as "if I miss you I can still do a damn good impersonation," and at song's end he's rendered an insomniac, with only Cheap Trick records to remind himself of what once was. "This record may have been a clearinghouse to deal with something I won't get into," he says with a resigned chuckle. "That song in particular is yet another 'I'm sorry.' I don't know how to describe it anymore than that without being embarassed."
Bluetip came together in 1995 and quickly made touring its first order or business. The band has criss-crossed Europe and even spent 10 days playing in Japan with Kerosene 454 and Sweetbelly Freakdown (captured on 1998's Touring Japan compilation, available on Time Bomb Records). Farrell said he is anxious to get back on the road, but the demise of the van has prevented the band from booking a U.S. tour for the summer. For the time being, Bluetip will continue writing new material in hopes of getting another album out sometime this year. The fact that the band's once-revolving drum stool has been permanently occupied by Dave Bryson will make the process all the easier.
"We just want to keep writing, because there was such a long break between our first and second records," Farrell says. "We toured all the time with different people, which tends to make you a little crazy playing the same songs over and over."
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"