Originating in The Church Of Latter Day Saints, the philosophy known as "Choose the Right" utilizes the Mormon concept of free will to explain the importance of earthly actions and the ways in which one's choices on Earth will affect their ultimate destiny. I'm not going to pass judgment on the concept in its religious context, but I do have something to say about how it might be applied to the often tedious exercise of forming a band. New bands almost always seem to "Choose the Right" when they start off, hoping that their safe choices in substance and aesthetic will affect their ultimate destiny in a positive way. You know the setup: Find some like-minded and similarly dressed dudes. List the "right" influences on your Myspace page. Use the "right" equipment. Assign each player to a position as if everyone was trying out for a sports team. Take few risks. Stay up to date with "trends." Play by the rules. This recognizable approach is taken by a wide variety of start up bands regardless of genre or place of origin, and the near religious rigidity of the process might be part of what makes many of the local shows I attend so completely predictable.
Fortunately, there is a new group from Denton that has momentarily saved me from the been there/ done that structures of local rock bands. They are doing all the "wrong" things so to speak, and I'm really thankful for it. They are
Christian! Teenage Runaways.
The all female band's three members,
Sashenka Lopez,
Julie Mckendrick and
Leanne Macomber have known each other for some time. Mckendrick and Macomber have played together since the late Nineties, and Lopez and Mckendrick started a Riot Grrl cover band last year with MacComber joining later. The band started writing and playing original songs and the concept for Christian! Teenage Runaways was born shortly after. I would name off the respective instrumental duties in the group, but the first time I saw them live they were trading off instruments back and forth in a flurry of onstage rotation that prevented me from figuring out who was supposed to be playing what role in the group. Turns out, no one plays a single defined role.
The times I've seen Christian! Teenage Runaways perform since that first night have been some of the most rewarding live experiences I've had in what has personally been a record breaking year for local show attendance. The band seems to be consistently and organically reinventing itself mid-performance, and when you see them, you almost get the feeling you're watching three really different bands that all happen to be great.
There are traces of the group's Riot Grrl Cover band beginnings in their sound, but that doesn't begin to cover the sonic territory that they've started to map out since. Spiky little guitar lines crawl in and around the nuanced and melodic bass playing which, especially in the higher register, is reminiscent of
Galaxie 500's Naomi Yang or even the originator of the style,
Peter Hook. There are louder more chaotic moments too, where barre chords come crashing through with all the subtlety of a nail bomb, and a brief instrument switch might immediately lead into a song that finds the band playing a keyboard beat laced with the gooey sweetness of a 60's girl group's collective coo.
Girl groups are counted as a definite influence on the band's music, and names like the
Shangri-Las,
Ronettes, and
Supremes come to mind as particularly prominent. One big advantage of a revolving group of lead singers, drummers, bass players and guitarists is a constantly evolving spontaneity, and CTR is able to effectively utilize their ever rotating line up to produce unexpected surprises. I've seen the group dismantle the drum set for a song while Lopez stands on stage, plaintively singing her guts out while steadily keeping a snare beat. Sashenka has an exceptionally strong voice with a recognizable syllabic curl that carries with it the history of everyone from
Lora Logic to the androgynous shrieking of the men and women of No-Wave, late 80's group
UT, early Nineties Olympia and contemporaries such as
Finally Punk,
Mika Miko, and
Animental. Basically, the influences come from all over the place.
To understand the band's bravery is to see Sashenka proudly proclaim that a turn on drums is the only the second time she has ever played drums, and then to suddenly hear the melodic finesse of Julie's bass notes locking in with a deceptively simple beat that wins over an entire uninitiated audience. Julie seems to be the anchor of the group, tackling the bulk of drumming duties and exuding the most confidence on the various instruments. Macomber usually sings the softer numbers with a detached yet haunting vulnerability, making it all the more entertaining when you hear her having a screaming contest with Lopez like she does at the end of the song "Isle 9". And when I say "scream," I mean actual banshee-like wailing where the ends of your mouth curl as opposed to the much more rehearsed kind that you'd expect from more "ambitious" local rockers.
Being an entertaining live band is a stated goal of CTR, and they are just as adventurous with their visual presentation as they are with their setup. There is definitely some humor involved in the decision to wear a bee hive wig in front of an audience, and when it's actually donned at the beginning of a song as if it were as important to the performance as a capo or a special tuning, it becomes even funnier. There has been some debate on this site concerning bands dressing up and their motives for doing so, and in this case I'm told that CTR is motivated by a mix of Glam-Rock influences, a desire to play with visual identity and the possibility of liberating themselves from shyness. When I think of other local bands that have unique approaches to onstage attire, I think of
The Undoing Of David Wright and
Eat Avery's Bones, and with company like that, the debate is all but settled for me. Some of our readers seem to assume that if a band spends time on having some sort of costume onstage, they must be skimping on their musical output. But I would counter that if a band is meticulous enough to worry about their live image in such detail, then they've probably put as much or more into their music. CTR is a band that pays attention to details, all the way down to the humorous little exclamation mark after the word "Christian!" This, in my book, is a good thing.
And speaking of their memorable band name, it was explained to me that it is a substitutional parody on the "Choose the Right" abbreviation or "CTR", which has been plastered on everything from Latter Day Saints neck ties to toe rings and socks. CTR take the joke further by pretending to be "Christian Teenage Runaway Whores...transients and what not.". This is a send up of the whole concept of choosing the right, and I want to express my gratitude to CTR for bucking local convention and making so many "wrong" choices in just the right ways.
