Dials preview
The Dials
Beat Kitchen, Chicago
Friday, November 18, 2005
Anyone who’s ever dealt with death knows the push/pull between grieving and moving on can split your soul. As band members, it’s especially terrifying because no one wants to look like they’re capitalizing on tragedy. Courtney Love took shots by not changing the release date for Hole’s Live Through This (the week after Kurt Cobain’s suicide). Even Chicago’s Chin Up Chin Up had to make a decision when bassist Chris Saathoff was killed by a drunk driver in 2004. Now it’s The Dials‘ turn, whose Doug Meis was killed in a terrible, kamikaze car wreck in Skokie in July of this year.
The toll of that tragic afternoon undoubtedly weighed heavily on Dials frontwoman Rebecca Crawford, who not only lost Meis, but her husband, John Glick (The Returnables), who was riding with Meis and Michael Dahlquist (Silkworm). Admirably, she, guitarist Patti Gran, and Farfisa-ist Emily Dennison collected themselves and will celebrate the release of their first album, Flex Time (Latest Flame), Friday at Beat Kitchen.
While it’s inevitable the words “Sleater” and “Kinney” will get thrown around as an influence, the danger is throwing The Dials in with the hordes of tenuously amateur riot grrrl bands that pass through our CD players seemingly everyday. But, it’d also be irresponsible not to mention S-K, because The Dials are one of the few bands who understand that indomitable formula and seem to get it right in recreating it.
Still retaining a confrontational edge in “Dead Beat,” the title track, and “High Tide,” you can feel what Crawford, Gran, Dennison, and Meis really want to do is play pop songs. It’s X and Blondie, The Go-Gos and The Donnas, not Team Dresch and Bratmobile. So instead of pummeling you with ideology and making the music some pretentious, “punk rock” backdrop, The Dials pull you in with sugar-rush power pop, letting you learn them instead of learnin’ you. Former Sarge drummer Chad Romanski has joined the band for this tour.
Detholz!, The Avatars, and The Bitter Tears open.
– Steve Forstneger
Click here to download “Stuck Inside.”
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