Sunday Morning Chameleon

Sunday Morning Chameleon
Empty Bottle, Chicago
Thursday, August 23, 2007

Chicago quartet Sunday Morning Chameleon got a relatively quick start in the music game, earning hefty accolades out of the gate with the release of their self-titled debut EP. Now, as they prepare to release the follow-up, they only have to prove it wasn’t a fluke.

Two years ago Sunday Morning Chameleon self-released a six-song EP. Those six songs happened to find their way to WXRT, who were so impressed by the efforts SMC ended up on XRT’s “Top 5 Of ‘05” list, the only unsigned act to earn a spot. Just a few months later the band was asked to write a tune for the film Chasing October, a movie about being a Cubs fan, but ended up with four songs on the soundtrack.

Those are a few big moves for a band so early in their career, but More Human, the band’s new EP, proves Chameleon are the real deal. There is very little, more like nothing, actually, to dislike on these six songs, which Chameleon recorded with producers Brian Deck and Sean O’Keefe. Jamie Cassedy’s slide guitar and frontman Ryan Flagstad’s subtle keyboard runs give the first half of “Freight Train Killers” a haunting start before the song transforms into a barrage of echoing chords and reverb-drenched vocals. Flagstad knows his role as a frontman is to lead, but makes songs like “Go On” and “Turn Yourself In” successful by not doing too much and leaving room for the stripped-down playing of rhythm section Josh Veselsky (bass) and Dan Siegfried (drums) and Cassedy’s shimmering guitar layers. It sounds cliché as hell, but “Back And Forth (In My Mind)” might be one of the best songs this year you don’t hear – unless WXRT has anything to do with it, of course.

The Assembly and Milk At Midnight open.

– Trevor Fisher

Click here for streaming samples of More Human.

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly