#58: Who’s soft and who’s dumb?
Soft and Dumb; On Being an Angel; Absinthe Father; Tropical Gothclub; Chameleon Lime Whoopiepie
Soft and Dumb
A tale of two bios. First, Bandcamp:
Splaying dissonant chords against pop melodies in odd time signatures, Soft and Dumb explore gendered expectations, disembodiment, tenderness, and hardness. The duo met at college in Urbana, Illinois, where they gathered a dedicated following in the eclectic diy house show scene.
Formed in late 2019, Soft and Dumb’s approach to music is pretty stupid. Not only does the duo’s drummer completely lack the ability to keep time –it’s [sic] guitarist is always afraid her cable will fall out during a set.
Guess which one gets Band Name Bureau’s Seal of Enthusiasm?
While I understand the need for a bio that sells listeners on your “dissonant chords” and “pop melodies,” it’s pretty de rigueur. Speaking as a person who used to read hundreds of press releases for bands every year, I can assure Soft and Dumb that their “stupid” approach grabs my attention much more than touting their odd time signatures. (No one cares about those except the most insufferable of music fans.)
The Facebook one reflects their personalities better too. In a 2020 interview with Smile Politely, the duo of Travis Newgren and Elena Buenrostro explained their moniker.
Buenrostro: It came from a lot of brainstorming. We got into this mode where we kept being like “This and This”. I’m not sure why we landed on Soft and Dumb, but it felt right because our music isn’t too hard—
Newgren: —It can be!
Buenrostro: It can be, but it has this overall, kind of a tender place. Also “dumb” because we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Newgren: The whole Soft and Dumb thing, having two things was nice because of having two people. People always ask, “Oh, who’s soft and who’s dumb?” We’re both soft and we’re both dumb! It’s not like those are our monikers or something.
Ahh, but that’s the drawback of a two-person band having a two-word name: hearing the same jokey comment over and over again.
On Being an Angel
When your name is On Being an Angel, and your logo is this…
…will anyone expect your URL to be onbeinganangel420.com? They’re full of surprises!
Absinthe Father
The solo project of Haley Butters (also a great name) has the best song title I’ve come across in a while: “Three Beers Deep Crying at the Metallica Documentary.”
I mean, who didn’t get choked up seeing the titans of thrash-metal reduced to a bunch of clowns in Some Kind of Monster? How did that happen? But Butters’ lyrics detail a more conventional, wistful look at a former relationship, which apparently ended with pizza-related collateral damage:
every pizza place has my number blocked because of you
and that’s okay
It’s hard for me to pay attention to the rest of the song because I want to know more. What happened and why? When I was a freshman in college, I bounced a couple of checks—this was 1,000 years ago—at Wiseguys Pizza in Columbia, Missouri, because I didn’t understand how checking accounts worked. But they didn’t ban me!
Back to the song. Absinthe Father specializes in low-fi bedroom pop, or what Butters has described as “tweemo.” That sounds too cutesy to me, especially considering how Butters put it in an interview:
Everyone always asks me, “What does your music sound like?” and I’m like, “I don’t know, like, being alone… in the dark… in your room.” What kind of question is that? Definitely not something to put on to party with.
That reminds me of a quote I often think about from Tim Kinsella of Cap’n Jazz and Joan of Arc. A long time ago, The A.V. Club’s Chicago edition interviewed him. In describing his music, he said, “My natural bias isn’t toward getting people psyched to party.”
And what about Absinthe Father’s name? Naturally, it’s a play on “absent father,” but the goofy pun turned out to have more meaning than anticipated.
When I moved to Ohio from North Carolina for school, I was figuring out a lot about myself when it came to gender identity—I’m non-binary—and I didn’t know how to talk about it, and I turned to alcohol to cope with it. I realized, “Oh shit, this literally runs in my family.” The more I thought about the name, I was like, yeah, it definitely ties into feelings of not having a totally present father figure and struggling with alcohol in general. And it stuck. I kind of want to change it, but I don’t think I’m going to.
Good, because the first rule of Band Name Bureau is never change your name.
Tropical Gothclub
There isn’t a lot of info out there about Tropical Gothclub, because it’s a new project by Dean Fertita of the Waxwings, Queens of the Stone Age, and the Dead Weather. He also served as touring keyboardist for the Raconteurs. In case the Death Weather and Raconteurs connections don’t make it obvious, Fertita is down with Jack White, and White’s Third Man Records is releasing Tropical Gothclub’s self-titled album on November 4.
While the name Tropical Gothclub is pleasingly evocative—I just picture a lot of sunburns—Fertita doesn’t have much to say about it:
The TROPICAL GOTHCLUB songs are like concept cars. They were meant to be put into future production once they were reimagined and redesigned so everything is tightened up. Creatively things changed and my options weren’t just black and white. They were also fluorescent.
Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm. But goths in the tropics! Hilarious!
Chameleon Lime Whoopiepie
With this name, there is a 0 percent chance Chameleon Lime Whoopiepie could be from anywhere besides Japan. That it’s a polyglot group led by a woman named “Chi-” with neon orange hair and ostentatious style just follows logically.
It wasn’t always this way. In an interview, Chi- describes how, back in middle school, her friends described her as having “eyes like a dead fish.” For years Chi- put lots of energy into being jaded and over it, but she found music years later. When she connected with a group called the Woopies, it all came together.
There is an American snack called Chocolate Lime Whoopie Pie, and one day, the Whoopies came up and asked me, “Wouldn’t it be cute if this was our band name?” So, we were inspired from that name and changed ‘Chocolate’ to my favorite animal, ‘Chameleon.’ I have a thing for chameleons—I love the way they live.
Chi- admires how chameleons can disappear into their environments, unlike her. Yeah, nothing about Chameleon Lime Whoopiepie blends in.
POST-SCRIPTS
I’m sad to inform you that BNB/Year in Band Names alumni Vagina Witchcraft has broken up.
Terminal Vagina (“heterophobic and high”) is still going strong.
Soft and Dumb’s self-titled album came out last Friday, and it’s worth checking out.