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Choo Choo La Rouge
By JONATHAN DONALDSON
del.ico.us
reddit!
Boston's Choo Choo La Rouge were never going to paste a concert flyer to your forehead. But where does that get you in Boston, where even the best bands can be reduced to hucksters in their efforts to pedal the hamster wheel that is self-promotion? OK, so I've resorted to hyperbole. Choo Choo La Rouge aren't even really from Boston anymore. Yet Boston is where the memories live, and where the band still convenes to record and essentially become Choo Choo La Rouge.
"I guess people want to know where you are from, and this is where we started," says guitarist and songwriter Vince Scorziello. According to Scorziello, spreading out over the East Coast (Boston, Philly and Providence, R.I.) was something that the group viewed as: "Let's see how absurd we can make this. Let's see if we can make it from three different cities." The result was a very good new album (Black Clouds), written, rehearsed and recorded in binges over the past four years.
"Moving to Providence, getting resettled and having a son put a lot of pressure on me," says Scorziello. But sometimes writers thrive on pressure, and Scorziello seems to have no problem fucking around with the moods here. The sinewy pop of "Black Cloud" finds the band in lock-step, toying with a simple but ominous metaphor; compare to the cheerful strum of "Coffee Spoons," which kindles the forgotten summer but is much more dark. "I had a dream of me doing yard work and having someone you really care about dying in another room," says Scorziello. "The happier you get in life, the more you have at stake.
"On some of these songs, I'm trying to get away from being clever and getting more into primary colors," says Scorziello. And, to kill the metaphor, I'd say most of these songs sound blue. Not red, as the band name suggests, and oh definitely not yellow.
[Choo Choo La Rouge CD release party with The Big Disappointments, Impossible Hair and The Operators. Fri 8.21.09. P.A.'s Lounge, 345 Somerville Ave., Union Sq., Somerville. 617.776.1557. 8:30pm/18+/$11 for ages 18-20, $8 for 21+. paslounge.com]
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