NO JOKE: The Sterns are dead serious about making fun music. |
From the Kinks’ “Lola” to Henry Gross’s “Shannon” (about a dog, remember?), pop music has a noble tradition of songs with secret meanings. Local band the Sterns make a worthy contribution with “Supreme Girl,” one of the standouts on their sophomore effort, Sinners Stick Together (Omnirox Entertainment). Like most of the disc, it’s lively, hooky, and a bit hyperactive, and it seems at first to be a typical pop rant about an ex. Until you read the lyric, that is: “Unprepared for the judiciary, she’s not a product of the monastery/She’s covered in flaws, she’s not the supreme girl I thought she was.” Sure enough, it’s meant to be George W. Bush singing about Harriet Miers’s aborted Supreme Court nomination.
It sounds like a good joke, but the Sterns (whose next Boston show is May 24 at Hennessey’s Upstairs) aren’t the type of band to write a song for comic value alone. “I’ll cop to writing that song,” admits guitarist/singer Alex Stern when we get together at the Druid in Inman Square. “What got me was that when Bush talked about her, he constantly brought up that she had a good soul, and that her ministry was important. She wouldn’t be considered for that post were she not religious, and yet there isn’t supposed to be a religious litmus test there.” Adds singer/guitarist Chris Stern (they’re not related): “We have a tendency to address things, and a lot of this album is about the way religion intersects with politics. We’re not of the persuasion that you shouldn’t read the lyrics. Maybe we don’t always write profound things, but not everyone takes the time to write really good lyrics.”
That’s one indication of how the Sterns — Chris and Alex plus bassist Emeen Zarookian, keyboardist Michael Sixx, and drummer Andrew Sadoway — are dead serious about making fun music. Another is the seven months they spent in the studio to make an album that runs only 34 minutes. The level of detail in their music — along with their love for keyboards and jittery, new-wavish tempos — has led some to peg them as British-sounding, but that’s not quite accurate. If anything they recall the ’80s California band the Three O’Clock, who had similar exuberance and a male singer with a helium-high voice. Besides, as Chris points out, what some have heard as a fake British accent is his real speaking and singing voice. They do, however, acknowledge that Belle and Sebastian were a prime influence in bringing them together. And the Elvis Costello button I see on Alex’s lapel suggests the Sterns are aiming higher.
Chris: “I hear catchy songs on the radio every day, on every station I flip to. Top 40 hits, catchy songs, great. But a lot of them are really despicable. There’s a certain tradition of quality songwriting that’s been abandoned. You say we’re polished and that’s great, we embrace that. So much of indie pop is about keeping it raw, which doesn’t interest us — we want the production to be interesting too.” Thus, he says, there’s a three-word explanation of why their album took so long to make: “Overdubs, overdubs, overdubs. We worked hard to get the production we wanted; at one point Andrew rented a glockenspiel so he could get the bell parts right. All our favorite bands took their time in the studio to create something very textured and nuanced.” Alex: “When you’re on stage, you have a guitar in your hand. It may be in tune or it may not be, but you’re going for the moment. But what you put on a record is something you live with, technically, for eternity.”
