On Friday FUEL Rocket Lounge will host its first local band performance of the year. No need to stop reading; I'm not talking about a group of Hanover High kids. I'm talking about a band that has been together for seven years, has released five albums, is sold on iTunes and has recorded at the same recording studio as Fall Out Boy and Rod Stewart. Like many of the acts Friday Night Rock has brought this year, this band is, in a word, legitimate.
The Mathias brothers, Teddy '09, Pete '09, and 18-year-old Johnny, join Hamilton College sophomore Casey Gibson to make up Filligar, the Chicago-based indie band about to embark on its first-ever college (mini) tour. "The Spring Tour for Darfur" will take the band to Hamilton on Thursday, into FUEL on Friday and to Middlebury College on Saturday.
Why did the brothers Mathias and company decide to forego profiteering for a good cause?
"It's the cause that we're most educated about," Teddy said. "It's how we're brought up. [College students] want something like this to have more meaning than us just playing a bunch of shows."
The tour will feature the debut of three brand spanking new songs from Filligar's sixth (yes, sixth) CD, which bows this summer. While the band is still in the fluid, experimental stage of creating songs for the as-yet-untitled record, Pete says of Filligar's evolution, " [Now] the sound is kind of hard to place. I think it's more ... more groovy."
That difficult-to-define, eclectic characteristic of Filligar's music has brought them notable success, especially with their most recent effort, 2006's "Succession, I Guess." Available on iTunes (with a four-and-a-half star customer rating to boot), "Succession" has garnered rave reviews. And that (immensely entertaining) online bastion of Ivy League snobbery, www.ivygateblog.com, called the band "actually good ... remarkably mature," adding that "they've got that crucial blend of pop precision and effortless weirdness down pat." Considered alongside Randomville Magazine's comments that "Succession" is "impressive from anyone at any age" and "a respectable piece of work that few independent bands could hope to equal," Filligar is doing quite well for themselves.
Not too shabby for a group churning out almost a record per year alongside working towards Ivy League degrees -- educations that the brothers highly value. Says Pete, a classical studies major, "Education's something that has directly influenced our lyrics and, you know, how we think about things, how we structure a song or how we even relate to each other and articulate what we want to do."
In the Next-Big-Thing world of aspiring indie rock bands, a strong do-it-yourself ability helps quite a bit.
"You need to have a sense of business," Pete points out.
Adds Teddy, a geography major, "Having the intellect necessary to survive is really important."
That professional business sense came in handy when Filligar switched recording studios for "Succession." Gravity Studios in Chicago has recorded the music of such big names as Rod Stewart and Fall Out Boy.
"Working around those real professionals brings you up to a whole different level," he said. "You know, its not like drugs, sex and rock and roll or anything like that."
Filligar's collective intelligence also comes across in their lyrics, which are smart and intriguing (this coming from a writer who usually cares as much about music lyrics as he does about lost North Face blitzes). Younger brother Johnny, still in Chicago, writes most of the band's lyrics but, like all components of their music, the work remains largely collaborative. How, exactly, does this collaboration take place with members scattered in New Hampshire, New York and Illinois?
As Teddy explains, "We make a lot of progress when we're not together. We're just kind of working on our own, doing our own things. Also, sharing stuff over the Internet, that's how we've written all of our past CDs. But times when we're together, we work twice as hard."
Avoiding the whining and complaining typical of so many current indie bands is "one of the more conscious decisions we make," says Teddy.
After all, Filligar just wants to "write songs like those [of the Beatles] that just make people love them." The Fab Four are just one of the abundant, varied and ever-changing bands that Filligar counts among its influences. The Flaming Lips and fellow Chicagoans Wilco are some more contemporary stimuli, while the piano in "Venice World's Fair (c. 2138 AD)" was inspired by Missy Elliott.
And the inspiration for that indescribably great name?
"My sister had a pet goldfish named Filligar, which doesn't mean anything. It's totally meaningless," Pete said. It is, however, a phenomenal conversation topic. Pete's favorite lie about it's meaning: "bohemian steroids."
These modern-day, bohemian steroid-pushing troubadours will perform in FUEL on Friday, April 6, with Connecticut natives Babewatch set to open. Free admission, food and drinks are courtesy of Programming Board, as always.
Filligar has come a long way since their only other show at Dartmouth -- summer of 2005 at Psi Upsilon, before the elder brothers Mathias even matriculated. Ever the humble musician, Pete quotes Bob Dylan: "'A crowd's a crowd, it doesn't matter where you're playing.' As a musician and in anything you do, if you have anyone that's willing to listen to you, you have to take it very seriously. You have to give them what they came for."
