By Jack Firneno | Photos Courtesy of Eric Krewson
Dear readers, indulge me for a moment:
The song Darkest Days from the Chairman Dances’ debut album, Sings Long Lost and a History of Iniquity, presents the listener with an interesting form. It’s written in two parts, the second being a variation of the first. It begins with lazily strummed, familiar-sounding chords. “We walked ourselves to the carnival parade / dressed as demons scaring kids,” sings Eric Krewson, beginning a tune which meditates on growing up. He references those lines when starting the second refrain but changing the lyric to, “We used to gird ourselves and carry the moon on our backs / We’d ride the rails for the thrill of it all.”
Here, the music begins to sound anxious, and the guitar chords a tad more raucous. “The first half is in narrative time. It’s like a newspaper just describing what’s going on,” Krewson explains. “The second is in lyric time, which is like more like poetry, more expressive. The band plays faster and more dynamically. The chords are sevens and nines instead of just the usual triads.”
Still here? Good.
It might be easy at this point to just write off the Chairman Dances as overwrought or pretentious. Noting that Krewson holds a degree in musical semiotics, studied musicology in grad school and that the album was released with the University of Pennsylvania Library acting as their record label could only serve to paint the band as, at best, over-educated indie rockers. But what makes these sophisticated literary and musical devices interesting is that, as crucial as they are to the album, they’re woven seamlessly into the background. Spanning from somber acoustic pieces and majestic mini-epics to post-punk and rockabilly, Sings Long Lost and a History of Iniquity purposefully travels easily recognizable styles while rewarding close listens with complex textures and inventions. “The material is essentially pop songs, but at the same time, the album is an attempt to stretch the language of pop music and test its limits,” Krewson explains. And while the genre may be often maligned as shallow, he notes, there’s more to it than many realize: “I equate it to folk music and the oral tradition. It’s more capable than what people give it credit for in terms of conveying meaning.”
“The album is an attempt to stretch the language of pop music and test its limits.” – Eric Krewson
Krewson assembled the Chairman Dances last year from friends, peers and former musical collaborators to see just how far those limits could be stretched. Lead guitarist Dan Wisniewski, Ben Rosen on bass and drummer Michael Giuliana from Princeton quickly became integral to the project. “I was trying a lot of things musically with them, but it was never a situation where I was just bringing in songs for them to play,” Krewson says. “They’re by far the best musicians I’ve worked with.”
True to Krewson’s intentions, their debut, a double EP featuring two separate song cycles, bends and stretches well-worn ideas in new ways. Sings Long Lost reflects on coming of age while A History of Iniquity explores the darker sides of human nature. But there’s method to the seeming disparity. “I wanted to write a contemporary album for my friends,” he says, referencing the subject matter of the former. “It was born of conversations with people going from their 20s into their 30s. It started narrow, but I realized the themes were more universal.” Conversely, A History of Iniquity, he says, is “a series of grotesques,” where he created villainous characters with whom people could still sympathize: “Generally, I think people are more forgiving than we think. I wanted to see how far I could stretch characters like that before people stopped identifying with them.”
According to Krewson, employing pop music to serve as the backdrop for these ideas makes them easier to express. “People are familiar with the genre’s forms and gestures, so it’s not like you need to create a new language for [the songs],” he explains. “You have a listening audience that you can tap into and hopefully say something grand.” And since releasing their album this fall, the Chairman Dances has been reaching that audience. College radio stations have been picking up the album, and the band plays regularly in and around Philadelphia with the occasional trips to Bucks County and New York City. As of this writing, they’re also up for “Artist of the Month” on the prominent Philadelphia entertainment blog The Delhi. “I’ve been very happy with the reception, and I’m more proud of this than anything I’ve ever been a part of,” Krewson says. “You really can’t ask for anything more than that.”
Go online at thechairmandances.com
