Columbus, Ohio’s Smug Brothers just released “Take It Out On Me” with the non-album B-side “Constellation of Eight,” from the forthcoming Stuck On Beta album due via Anyway Records on
June 6th.
“We started in 2004, in Dayton, Ohio, me and Darryl Robbins from Motel Beds,” says Kyle Melton about the band. “We made one album, called Buzzmounter, without ever being in the same room together. Then a few years later I was interviewing Don Thrasher for a piece about the ’90s music scene and he offered to play drums with us. As you know, Don played in Guided By Voices…”
Melton moved in 2015 to Columbus but he and Thrasher managed to keep things going with a variety of Columbus and Dayton based musicians. But the core of the band at present is Melton and Thrasher with bassist Kyle Sowash and guitarist Ryan Shaffer.
Stuck on Beta is a fucking masterpiece of 21st century rawk, to which you are going to listen if it kills you. The Smug Brothers sound like Bee Thousand-era Guided By Voices had a baby with Chronic Town (the debut EP by R.E.M., not the band itself, don’t ask me how that works) and went to pre-school with Big Star, Spoon, the Strokes, Wire, and Deerhoof.
Melton gives it a description a shot: “Don and I did all the basic tracks in five sessions. Bass and overdubs were done when we could find time. The twist here was the demise of our beloved Tascam 424 MKIII 4-track that had been used on virtually every Smug Brothers track since 2004. As Sowash went to do his bass parts, he noticed my guitars were increasingly out of tune: the motor on the 4-track was dying after 20+ years of heavy use. We were able to get it repaired last fall, but the machine still wasn’t able to hold its tuning. As a result, I had to redo all of my rhythm guitar tracks; drums, however, were fine since we didn’t tune the drums to every song. So in a sense, we built the album up out of the death of an old friend.
“I suppose the story of the 4-track is a good parallel to the themes of the album, he adds. Things are gonna get weird, fail, and die, but you might as well embrace the chaos, give it your best shot, and enjoy the ride. In the end, you might get something good out of the adventure, like a new album.”
You can find a digital and limited CD copy of the new album HERE. Vinyl can be found HERE.
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