Just a few months ago I had to put the smack down on the Pattern's Immediately EP, citing the inevitable problems of taking a (reportedly) good live garage band and trying to catch their energy in the studio. Singer Chris Appelgren's balls-out whining stuck out above the textbook two-guitar garage rock, and as for the songs, they just weren't there. This disc wasn't going to convince Americans to ditch The Hives and buy domestic.
But their first full-length, Real Feelness, is better in every way. I'll skip the comments on how similar they sound to the other garage acts touring post-Ramones America right now: a good time is a good time. The first track, "Fragile Awareness", comes raging like a schoolful of kids let out early for a bomb scare. Appelgren's "pitch? fuck the pitch" vocal stylings soar and swoop around the band's clean, battering attack, which allows just a hint of sweat-- but they also let up for some trickier riffage: there's that great barbed hook on "Selling Submarines", and the perfect denim-jacket power harmonies on the "The Best Called Rest".
More interesting are the moments where Appelgren exposes more about his past-- and not just in a cock-rock way (though "You or You", about his indifference to which groupie he takes home, is snazzy). "Selling Submarines" is about drug-dealing, and Appelgren has said that his mother was "a very low-level cocaine dealer," a heavy inspiration for a briskly catchy pop-rock confection. And then there's the risky closer, "Rangefinder", on which we discover that Appelgren is really, at heart, one sappy motherfucker:
It's an acoustic love song, absolutely unguarded. The lyrics are unabashedly sentimental, and Appelgren's voice is bare and sneer-free. "When you develop your photographs/ And hang all your pictures to dry/ I will appear as a small red star/ Patiently watching the world passing by." Yeah, that's cheesy, alright-- so cheesy it could only be on a record with the name Real Feelness. Hell, I get embarrassed just listening to it. But I won't heckle it for the simple reason that more risks ought to be taken in indie rock these days. And while this track might be a step in the wrong direction, it is a step nonetheless.
As for the future of The Pattern? I don't know where they plan to go after this. This genre revival's passing us by faster than you can say "Swing Kids". But there's always that remote possibility that they'll transcend their pigeonhole and come with something harder, or just better. Garage rockers do the darndest things.
