Local Indie-Pop Holdouts Very Truly Yours Drive 1,000 Miles to Find Their Audience
By Andrew Clayman
Published with edits in The Chicago Reader, July 2009
With their jingle-jangle melodies and puppylike stage personas, Very Truly Yours can seem harmless, mild-mannered, even a bit precious. But in their own way, they’re rebels— recently becoming the first and only Chicago band to play the New York City Popfest.
“I wouldn’t say our music is revolutionary or anything,” says singer-guitarist Kristine Capua, “but it’s certainly different. Aside from us, I can’t even think of another straight-up indie-pop band from Chicago. Maybe they’re all in hiding, I don’t know. But our style of music has just never really fit in here.”
When Capua says “indie-pop,” she means something a lot more specific than pop played by indie bands. To badly paraphrase KRS-One, if pop is something you do, then indie-pop (sometimes called “twee”) is something you live. It’s music custom-made for cult devotion, with a philosophy rooted in the DIY tradition of punk but an aesthetic indebted to the Rickenbacker guitars, la-la-la’s, and lovelorn lyrics of the Byrds and the Beatles.
Initially popularized by early-80s Scottish bands like Orange Juice and The Pastels, indie-pop soon found its niche among bookish daydreamers and hopeless romantics on both sides of the pond, with the UK label Sarah Records and Olympia, Washington’s K Records leading the respective movements. It was the cult bands on these and other small labels that galvanized twee’s uniquely coed subculture, with its penchant for seven-inch vinyl, handmade fanzines, and thrift-store couture. Indie-popsters might acknowledge the Smiths and Belle & Sebastian as pillars of the pantheon, but they revel in the relative obscurity of the genre’s most beloved pioneers—Beat Happening, Heavenly, the Field Mice, Tiger Trap—and jump at any opportunity to share their passion with others in the know.
The New York City Popfest is just one of a growing number of annual indie-pop events in the U.S., which includes gatherings in San Francisco; Athens, Georgia; and Northampton, Massachusetts. But no such festival—and apparently no such scene— has found its plot in the Chicago indie landscape. When Very Truly Yours made their trek to New York this past May, it was really as much an escape as a pilgrimage.
Chapter 1: Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying
Formed less than a year ago from the ashes of a band called the Lorimer Sound, Very Truly Yours allowed Kristine Capua, 25, to fully embrace her indie-pop passions for the first time.
“An old bandmate of mine introduced me to Heavenly in college,” she says. “That’s when I first started really getting into the whole indie-pop thing. At the time, I had indie-pop records around, but it was more of an afterthought. I called it ‘cute music.’ I remember posting an ad on a message board during my freshman year, looking for bandmates, and I didn't know how to classify the sound that I wanted, but I described it as ‘cute.’ People called me petty—like I was just a girl who wanted a cute-looking band. It was disappointing.”
Fortunately, Capua eventually found a more understanding guitarist/boyfriend in the form of Lisle Mitnik, 25, who had come to indie-pop through the traditional progression—Beatles to Smiths to Belle & Sebastian. With the veteran rhythm section of bassist Dan Hyatt, 39, and drummer Andy Rogers, 33, filling out the line-up, Very Truly Yours set forth last summer on what would be a bumpy road through a Chicago music scene far more interested in metal, hip-hop, and garage-rock than sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.
After managing only a handful of sparsely attended gigs across six months, VTY finally got their first big break this past February, landing a slot opening for Brooklyn’s new indie-pop heroes the Pains of Being Pure at Heart at a sold-out Schubas show.
Jennifer Reiter, half of the indie-pop promotions group Colour Me Pop, had a hand in setting up the concert. “I’d been dreaming about a band like Very Truly Yours since I moved to Chicago six years ago,” she says. “But it’s just very difficult for a band like them to get on bills in Chicago with artists that are like-minded or share a similar musical knowledge and background.”
Capua concurs. “If we ever really want to grow in Chicago,” she says, “we have no one to really latch onto and build a fan base with.”
That makes nabbing a gig with a Pitchfork-approved national act like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart even more crucial. Reiter understood that, and helped Very Truly Yours onto the bill as a sort of parting gift to her Chicago friends. By May, she had permanently moved Colour Me Pop to the greener pop pastures of London. “I just got tired of being the most enthusiastic person in the room,” she says.
Reiter had been trying to promote indie-pop shows and club nights here for years, hoping to re-establish the area’s mostly forgotten ties to some of the genre’s earliest American labels (including Picturebook Records in Barrington, Sunday Records in Rolling Meadows, and Parasol in Champaign). To her dismay, however, the mythical Chi-town twee scene of yore never materialized, despite healthy crowds at shows by more established international acts like Camera Obscura and Jens Lekman.
“I could not wrap my head around why those same fans wouldn’t want to hear the actual records out at a club or support a similar band in their own town,” Reiter says. “I guess I knew it would take a while to build up a following in Chicago, but I didn’t anticipate that there wouldn’t actually be a real indie-pop community to tap into.”
Of course, some Star Wars fans go to conventions and read fan fiction, while others just like watching the movies from time to time. If VTY wanted to convert more casual pop fans, they’d have to start following the example of their friends in the Pains of Being Pure At Heart, who quickly transcended their Brooklyn indie-pop niche to become a band that can fill midsize venues all over the country and abroad.
“I don’t feel like we’d ever have to blow up like the Pains did in the past year,” Mitnik said back in early May. “But they played Popfest last year and weren’t really anybody, and now here they are touring the world. I don’t really have any lofty dreams that that would be us. But playing Popfest certainly represents the best opportunity we’d have to reach that wider, sympathetic audience.”
Chapter 2: The Charm of the Highway Strip
Popfest organizer Clyde Barretto had previously released an EP by Mitnik’s solo project, Fireflies, in 2007, and that connection proved valuable this winter, when he formally invited Very Truly Yours to join the line-up for NYC Popfest ’09.
The months that follow are the most tumultuous in the band’s brief history. Hoping to fill out their sound, in March they recruit Katie Watkins, 26, from local folk-pop duo Katie & Pat, to play keyboard and sing backup vocals. April is dominated by the recording of a new EP, Reminders. And in early May, Very Truly Yours finalize plans for what has become a weeklong tour--six shows in six cities-- culminating in a prime-time slot at New York’s Cake Shop on the final night of Popfest.
The band’s enormous rental van, “The White Whale,” becomes a home on wheels, taking the determined quintet 1,000 miles en route to what they hope will be the promised land—with no guarantees of ever finding good parking. By the second night of the tour, the band is learning that Chicago is not the only town with indie-pop deficiencies. At a dive bar in Akron, OH, they’re the opening act for karaoke night, and the natives are restless. A few random passersby chant “You suck!” through an open window directly behind drummer Andy Rogers’ head.
“I’m definitely looking forward to a more receptive audience,” Rogers deadpans afterwards. He and his band mates are chatting about Popfest goals in between heated contests of a Scrabble-like word game called Bananagrams-- typical rock n’ roll stuff.
“My goals are probably more modest than anybody’s,” says bassist Dan Hyatt. “I gave up a long time ago doing this for fame or fortune. I do it because every time I stop playing music, I become really depressed [laughs]. You know, I hope people hear Kristine’s songs and that they really like them, but for me it’s just about the joy of playing with this band.”
“Best-case scenario for Popfest,” adds Katie Watkins, “the venue is packed, the sound is pristine, and we play flawlessly and get signed to a label. Worst case? Everyone hates us. But even if they did, twee kids are way too nice to say so.”
Chapter 3: Consolation Prize
After a final warm-up show in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the White Whale rolls into New York City on Friday, May 15, a couple days before Very Truly Yours’ date with destiny. The band’s east-coast shows have drawn small but enthusiastic crowds, but those gigs were small potatoes compared to Popfest, whose lineup includes cult heroes like Rose Melberg (Tiger Trap, the Softies) and the normally reclusive Swedes the Radio Dept.
Very Truly Yours are in their element here, rubbing shoulders with indie-pop devotees from around the world and dancing to DJs spinning Tullycraft and Black Tambourine. When they take the stage at 9 PM on Sunday night, after an exhausting weekend of celebration, it’s for a tightly packed crowd of cardigan clad comrades.
“Hi, we’re Very Truly Yours from Chicago,” Capua says sweetly, provoking the sort of respectful applause usually reserved for war veterans. With visions of label signings and European tours dancing in their heads, the band breaks into its ironically titled opener, “Homesick.” Mitnik’s guitar is jangling beautifully, Capua is cooing with confidence--and then . . . the brush with disaster.
Something’s gone terribly wrong with the Cake Shop sound system. Distracting bursts of static pepper the mix, and Watkins’s keyboard goes completely mute. Considering the stakes, the ceiling might as well be collapsing too.
“Yeah, safe to say we were freaking out a bit,” Hyatt admits, “but we collectively kept it together in the face of adversity, which is the best you could hope for under the circumstances.”
Though they’d hoped to make a better first impression, Very Truly Yours soldier through the rest of the song. Soon the technical problem is fixed and the band’s set starts to pick up steam. A cover of the 6ths’ “Falling Out of Love (With You)” gets the crowd firmly on their side, and the response to their set-closing one-two combo--their new single, “Reminders,” and the infectious “Pop Song ’91”--is the kind of enthusiastic ovation the band can only dream about in Chicago.
“I was really surprised when people in the audience were singing the words to ‘Pop Song ’91,’” Capua says, referring to a track the band released on a Cloudberry Records EP last year. “That was great. Overall, it was just nice to be able to have an empathetic audience, and to be surrounded by people who are just as passionate about indie-pop as I am. When it was over, I was somewhat sad, because we were going home, and it was like, ‘Well, now what?’ In New York, we didn’t have to beg our friends to see us. The shows were sold out because people genuinely wanted to see them.”
“Playing is much easier when you’re working with the crowd’s energy rather than fighting it,” Mitnik adds, a month removed from the adventure. “So far, though, Popfest hasn’t caused the sea change that I secretly hoped for—but didn’t exactly expect. It’s actually been somewhat frustrating, having played all over the place, to then have trouble getting a gig back here in our hometown. But, it's okay, because I understand the Popfest thing was just a fantastic singular opportunity, and this current frustration is what 99 percent of bands go through. At the very least, it was nice to transcend just being a band playing some songs, and feel like we were really part of something greater.”
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