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Shadowlands
Rogue’s Wave evolve into a real band
BY SIMON W. VOZICK-LEVINSON
Related Links

Rogue Wave's official Web site

On a damp Wednesday afternoon in Oakland, Zach Rogue is at home emptying the dishwasher. "Today is the first day of rain we’ve had in a month," he says when I get him on the phone. "Isn’t it amazing how the rain affects you? You just want to curl up and hide." It’s not the most glamorous way for a guy to spend the day after a new album by Rogue Wave hits stores. But Descended like Vultures (Sub Pop) — the sophomore album by his introverted guitar-pop outfit — was made for days like these.

Rogue Wave, who play the Middle East downstairs this Wednesday, emerged last year with an even humbler mumble, Out of the Shadow (Sub Pop). Recorded mostly alone in a friend’s bedroom, the disc was drenched in Garden State existentialism brought on by a failed stint in Web development. "I didn’t like the direction of my life, it didn’t give me much satisfaction," Rogue recalls. "When you have all these songs rolling around in your brain and you don’t do anything with them, it can get depressing, and there’s this weight. You feel alone in a conversation or in a room because you’ve got these distractions."

By the time he started work on Descended like Vultures, Rogue had recruited three band mates. The full line-up gives his musings some much-needed spine: drum rolls and needling guitars punctuate the opening "Bird on a Wire," and warm echoes of shoegazing reverb blanket Rogue’s navel gazing. He reached these choppy waters by going with the flow. "Those songs just need to be expansive. They need to sound big. That’s what the songs call for. It’s not really a conscious effort to say, ‘We’re going to be louder now.’ It seemed like it wanted to be propulsive and explosive and go for the throat a little bit." Yet the rush of new sounds, born from hours in the studio "just throwing ideas against a wall," can be jarring. The album climaxes with its first single, "10:1," which builds to a scratchy squall and then crashes into the gentle emo balladry of "California."

And the transition to playing as a quartet had its bumpy moments. "It’s four personalities instead of one. Everything changes at that point — the whims of people that aren’t just me start rearing their heads. It’s a lot of responsibility keeping it all together. I have enough arguments in my own head." But he’s satisfied with where those creative tensions have led. "The relationship we have in the band, that’s a big thing for us. The novelty hasn’t worn off yet, and we’re still building on that. I like it . . . . for now."

Descended like Vultures is still very much Rogue’s album, particularly in its lyrical themes. His shy, sing-song vocals often sound like excerpts from an ongoing interior monologue. "You could never publish my love," he half-heartedly warns early on, then swallows his pride a few tracks later with a sighed "Screw California and friends who are never there." By the closing "Temporary," he’s alone again, his tone defeated but barbed ("Sometimes I feel so low, I can’t go on knowing").

"It’s not about me. The quote-unquote confessional singer-songwriter — that doesn’t interest me." That might have been hard to believe back when he was, in all but name, a solo singer-songwriter. But Descended like Vultures’ haphazard reaches — missteps included — are the product of band chemistry. These songs of longing and frustration wouldn’t work as well without a few rough edges, and the sometimes ragged execution makes them all the more likable.

Besides, Rogue’s mind isn’t set on rock-star perfection. "I’ve been discovering that our audience are not the coolest kids. We’re never going to be the leading-edge band. The good thing is that there’s a lot more uncool kids than cool kids."

Rogue Wave + Mazarin + Bon Savants | Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave, Cambridge | Nov 30 | 617.864.EAST

 


Issue Date: November 25 - December 1, 2005
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