Will's Band Recommendation: Steel Train

I was introduced to Steel Train through their tour supporting Tegan and Sara (another band with which I was unfamiliar before then). Amber invited me to the concert and told me that I might like one of the openers considering their "psychedelic" tag on last.fm. While I didn't find it especially psychedelic, I was very interested as soon as she played "Dig" for me, and I obtained copies of all their albums at my first chance.

Steel Train performing in 2009

As "Dig" was on Twilight Tales From the Prairies of the Sun, I decided to listen to that album first. Due to a mistake with the repeat setting, I listened to the first track, "Better Love," repeatedly. I enjoyed the song sufficiently that I didn't get bored of the loop but moved on to "Road Song" after about five plays to hear what was on the rest of the album. I found just about all of the songs to be individually quite enjoyable. The warm vocal harmonies on songs like "Dig" and "Road Song" were excellent. Additionally, the instrumentations were also very good. The piano on "Cellophane and Glass" was brilliant, and Jack Antonoff's skill with the guitar was apparent throughout the album, especially on tracks such as "The Lee Baby Simms Show" episodes one and two and "Gypsy Waves." While the songs themselves were good their many stylistic shifts from the Ben Folds like, piano driven "Cellophane and Glass" to very folksy songs such as "Better Love" to the extended jams on "Gypsy Waves" to whatever "14 W. 95 Street High" is caused the album to suffer from a lack of cohesion.

The problems of Twilight Tales From the Prairies of the Sun were gone in Steel Train's second full length album Trampoline, and so were three members and much of the earlier style. The new sound was a much more upbeat, energetic indie pop one. The album begins with the energetic and musically cheerful "I Feel Weird." It sets the stage for the rest of the album excellently with its jangle pop sound. The album returns to the more folk rock kind of sound with songs like "Kill Monsters in the Rain" and "Leave You Traveling," and the influences of classic rock can still be heard in Jack's guitar at times. Something similar can also be heard in "A Magazine," which plays very much like The Beatles' "A Day in the Life."Their most recent album, Steel Train, follows the natural progression from Trampoline with more lively, fast paced indie pop. Even the album's few slower paced songs maintain the energetic feeling. "You and I Undercover" does this rather unpredictably: it starts with quiet, ballad-like piano and vocals, but then begins to build very quickly as the other instruments come in. Much like with their previous work, many of Steel Train's influences are quite obvious. Influences of Jack's new band fun. can be heard as soon as the "whoa-oh-oh" that starts off the album on "Bullet." "Fall Asleep," the closing track, uses essentially the often copied chord progression from Pachelbel's Canon but in a way that I actually found quite enjoyable. It's also hard to listen to parts of this album without thinking of Bruce Springsteen, and while it's more subtle, "Bloody Lips" reminds me a bit of the kind of sogwriting on Rubber Soul. I found Steel Train to be excellent from beginning to end especially enjoying "Bullet," "You and I Undercover," and "Bloody Lips."In addition to excellent songwriting, Steel Train deserve their reputation as an excellent live jam band. I look forward to seeing them in October.

Credit to Wojo4hitz for the Youtube video