petals rang the bell :: strange furniture / i touched my finger

Comprised of childhood friends Shane Tripp (lead vox/gtrs), Ben Weissenborn (drums; formerly of Ship Shape w/ Coloreater[!]), Andy Howse (bass), and Brandon Grubaugh (gtrs), Grand Rapids indie band Petals Rang the Bell plays a delicately loose style of rock that aesthetically recalls the surreal/modern-but-rustic qualities of indie faves like Wilco and Red Red Meat/Calexico while still doing their own whisky-soaked ambien thing.

Throughout their eponymous self-produced debut lead singer Shane Tripp's raspy-sweet vocals and lyrics compose visual narratives that recall the golden age of music videos - quick edits build surreal visuals by contrasting the nightmarish/otherworldly with the daily mundane. In "I Touched My Finger," Tripp begins describing a surreal scene in which clumsy, urine soaked, aroused pajamas walk into his house. He ponders donning them before firing off a series of non-sequiters that take the piss out of The Everyday and remind me of everything i always loved about Kurt Cobain's lyrics: "But oh, I just could not go through with It / I found a reason not to pay my Rent / Oh i felt so Innocent / Only I'm Intelligent / Everyone else is an Idiot / Puppies and Kittens are all Hideous." I could quote him fr pages and pages, just rest assured its all thoroughly tweetable stuff.

Musically the band mirrors the twists and turns of Tripp's lyrics but each musical change is fluid and natural, more evolving than relentlessly epic (dun worry baybee, eez not a prog). The guitars weave through Howse and Weissenborn's ever-shifting rhythms, flourishing in ornate patterns without becoming tangled, while said rhythms do their own dynamic weave, looping in and out to create a series of fractal cat's cradles.

In summary, the boys are doin' it, doin' it, doin it wellolol, j/k, no foreally tho, THEY GOO. Head over to http://petalsrangthebell.com/ to stream the album, and why not buy a digital copy fr the low low price of $5 USD while yr there? At the very least, like em on facebook and hit up one of their shows for a real cool time, their next is at Holiday Bar in Grand Rapids on Feb 17th.