The Subjects Preview

The Subjects
Empty Bottle, Chicago
Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The phrase “high-school buddies” conjures all sorts of imagery. Maybe you boozed together for the first time, chased tail, or smashed a mailbox here and there. In the case of The Subjects, let’s hope none of the above.

One half of the quartet comes from the student body at a Maryland prep school, the other from the faculty. In an age of frequently exposed inappropriate contact between teacher and student, The Subjects’ formation probably needed to be sanctioned by a parental “As you long as you don’t touch my son, I don’t care what the fuck you do.” Kept under wraps until after graduation, for The Subjects — oh, now I get the name — and their debut, With The Ease Grace Precision And Cleverness Of Human Beings (Pretty Activity), the cirriculum is surprisingly unstructured. Keeping School Of Rock at a healthy distance, the album has time signatures but only barely keeps in step. Its chaotic, indie rock personality certainly has contemporary history in mind — see how “The Hounds Of War” hugs The Walkmen and Strokes — but comes across as gleefully unmanufactured, treating the rules as mere guidelines. The Subjects run down the hall but are still charmingly late for class. The educational jokes are in endless supply (freshmen are by definition awkward?), but the only children left behind in this equation might be a shell-shocked auditorium.

The Brown Party and Bill Tucker open.

— Steve Forstneger

Click here to download “The Hounds Of War.” http://www.gosubjectsgo.net/hounds.html

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly