Very Emergency

Facing illness and boredom, The Promise Ring changes its pace.

by Chris Parker

Emerging from the post-hardcore underground in the late ’90s, The Promise Ring was the standard-bearer for the emo movement. It was largely because of the melancholy pop-punk songwriting of guitarist/vocalist Davey vonBohlen (formerly of Cap’N Jazz). Go from their ‘96 debut, 30 Degrees Everywhere, to their breakthrough follow-up, Nothing Feels Good, and 1999’s Very Emergency, and you can trace the arc of their musical instincts toward increasingly infectious and upbeat, adrenalized power pop. But in just three years, it’s been a world of change for the band, a fact reflected in the cool, introspective quality of their new album, Wood/Water (Anti).

Between Very and Wood, vonBohlen had a benign tumor the size of his fist removed from his skull, and the band ditched the furious tempos and roaring guitars. Oh sure, there’s a little bit of the old sound on the album opener, “Size of Your Life,” but the record mostly meanders in an artful, purposeful way. The pristine, high-energy punch of the old records is replaced with mellow, thoughtful pop that has more in common with The Flaming Lips or Coldplay than Jimmy Eat World or Sense Field. What remains intact are vonBohlen’s lisping tenor and graceful, honest lyricism.“I think what [vonBohlen’s illness] did is it just kind of redirected our goals. It just gave us time to sit back and think [about] what made us happy in our lives, band aside,” drummer Dan Didier says from his hometown Milwaukee, on the eve of launching their current tour. “It emphasized the importance of friends and family, so when we got back together to start working again, it was kind of like a new direction.”Didier suggests that the band felt it had exhausted the possibilities of their previous trajectory. “We just needed to turn the car around and see what was on the other side. We did the Very Emergency thing -- let’s do the exact opposite for our next record, just to keep ourselves interested in what we’re doing,” he says.

Another factor in the sedate, somewhat bucolic feel of their new album was their choice of producers. After three albums with Jawbox’s J. Robbins at the controls, the band chose British producer Stephen Street (Blur, Smiths). Street wasn’t interested in coming to America and being away from his family for six weeks, so The Promise Ring came to him. They spent a month and a half at Jacobs, a residential studio on a sprawling green estate outside London. They lived there at the studio, played pingpong and croquet (no video-game console), and they enjoyed what amounted to a combination studio/bed and breakfast.

“They cooked for us. It was amazing. They’d leave you out breakfast things, like Corn Flakes, and throughout the day we’d have lunch and dinner,” explains Didier. “It was like a happy family, down to them calling, ‘dinner time.’”

Street’s influence on the recording shouldn’t be underestimated either. “He’s good at knowing what should go in a song. He knows when a song should change, or what should be said in a song,” Didier says. “To go from [Blur’s] Parklife’s brilliant production that to the more rocking, dirtier sound on the self-titled record, if you can do both sounds and do them, well, God bless him.”

It’s all part of the transformation of a band that wasn’t even meant to last. “When we first joined in the late winter, early spring of ‘95, we thought we were just going to last over the summer,” Didier remembers.

Now it’s back to touring, a life they know and love well, perhaps even more, after learning how quickly it could end. For his part, Didier looks forward to it with youthful indulgence. “Once I hit the road,” he says, “I have no responsibility except to play for an hour or so each night, that’s it, and that’s fine with me.”

Thu., May 23, 9 p.m., with Certainly Sir and La Guardia, $12.50 advance; $14.50 day of show, TLA, 334 South St., 215-336-2000, www.electricfactory.com.

Browse The
June 10, 2004
Issue

Join the
City Paper
Mailing List