VHS or BETA

VHS or BETA
Louisville Dance Rockers Bring On the Comets
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Knoxville Voice, July 2007



They may have named themselves after an obsolete ‘80s conundrum, but with a new album and tour this summer, the men of VHS or Beta are poised to stay quite relevant, thank you.

Due out this August, Bring on the Comets is the much-anticipated follow-up to 2004’s template of dance-rock revivalism, Night On Fire, and it could vault VHS or Beta back into the conversation with the upstarts who stole their thunder three years ago (namely, The Killers and Franz Ferdinand).

Rather than returning to the proverbial well for inspiration, however, this veteran Louisville, KY, band has tossed aside its go-to formula of The Cure through a Daft Punk prism, and has re-emerged with a far more organic and unpredictable sound—albeit one still guaranteed to put the necessary asses on the dance floor.

“I think the main reason for the switch was that we lifted any limitations we’d put on ourselves prior to this record, as far as instrumentation and things like that,” explains drummer Mark Guidry. “With Night On Fire and previous records, there was a sense that we had to use these certain tones or create a certain feel, but for this record, it was all in the open. It was just whatever we wanted.”

For almost ten years, Guidry, singer/guitarist Craig Pfunder, and bassist Mark Palgy have been fine-tuning their interpretation of guitar driven dance music, both borrowing from the masters (New Order, Echo & The Bunnymen, Duran Duran) and infusing their own unique, Kentucky-fried sensibilities. Despite their passion for that style of music, though, it soon became clear that the band would have to expand its horizons to achieve greater success.

“I don’t think we were necessarily limited by the genre (of dance-rock),” Guidry says. He then pauses and reconsiders. “Well, I guess you could kind of say, maybe we were. There are certain things that go with dance music—certain drum tones, certain keyboard tones. I know with Craig and Mark, they would always try to mimic keyboard or synth lines with their actual guitars. We’ve kind of stepped away from that and gotten to the roots of the kind of music that we really embrace. We’ve opened up our palette, basically.”

To help galvanize that process, VHS or Beta employed the aide of producer Brandon Mason (Secret Machines, David Bowie), who helped carve out the band’s warmer, poppier sound on Bring On the Comets.

“Brandon was a very strong motivator,” Guidry adds. “He got us to a point where we haven’t ever been before.”

For good measure, the band also called on some old pals from their Louisville stomping grounds, including singer Jim James, guitarist Carl Broemel, and keyboardist Bo Koster-- all of whom are members of the critically revered indie outfit My Morning Jacket.

“Well, we’ve been good friends with those guys (MMJ) for a long time. So when Craig started writing a lot more with piano, we decided that we wanted somebody who could really add a certain touch to that instrument. We all knew Bo (Koster)—he’s a good friend of Craig’s—and Craig just asked him if he wanted to come in and track these piano parts. And that kind of morphed into having Jim (James) come in and do some background vocals. So it’s more along the lines of, ‘we’re good friends with these guys, so let’s have them come in and hang out and lay some tracks down with us.’ It was just a good time really.”

Stylistically, the angular club rhythms of VHS or Beta wouldn’t seem like a great collaborative fit for the psych-country wonderment of MMJ, but as Broemel’s lovely steel guitar winds its way around Pfunder’s vocals on the epic ballad “Stars Where We Came From,” the overriding importance of a shared geography becomes strikingly apparent.

Certainly, Louisville isn’t known for one particular type of sound or breed of band, and VHS or Beta is hardly riding the coattails of Louisville luminaries like Slint. Nonetheless, Guidry recognizes the positive attention his town’s scene has been receiving in recent years.

“I can’t say for sure what it’s about,” he says. “The town (Louisville) has always had a love of arts and music and stuff like that. I think it’s just that certain cities get the limelight every once in a while, you know. We happen to have it, kind of, right now.”

When Bring On the Comets hits shelves on August 28, Guidry, Pfunder, and Palgy hope to be earning their city even more attention. And behind instantly catchy, radio-friendly tracks like “Love In My Pocket” and “Can’t Believe a Single Word,” the mainstream fortune that narrowly eluded them last time around might finally come calling.

“We definitely think about that stuff,” Guidry admits. “‘Can’t Believe a Single Word’ is going to be the first single, and I think it is going to be pushed to radio. We didn’t necessarily write that song to be a radio hit, though. We just liked the way it sounded.”

Regardless of how conscious the push toward crossover success might be, Guidry is very honest when it comes to acknowledging such factors, especially in the wake of 2004, when the group was essentially out-marketed by other like-minded groups.

“Well, you have to care somewhat,” he says. “I mean, you have to look at it a little bit like it’s a business. We are trying to sell records. But, on this record, for instance, we wrote what we wanted to write. We weren’t concerned about where music is going these days. This record was primarily for us. We hope our fans love it. We hope the critics love it. But that wasn’t our major concern. This is also the first time the cycle has felt right for us. It seems like for our past records, we wrote material and then recorded it years later, so it didn’t catch that point in our lives the way we wanted it to. This record does that.”