"We're a very loud band, and we're from Chicago," Fake Limbs frontman Stephen Sowley tells the Scene, "so the comparison we've gotten more often than not has been The Jesus Lizard."
On record, it checks out — the Windy City band, playing Friday with Nashville indie darlings Bully at The Basement East, does play a similar type of big, burly Middle-American noise rock as did David Yow & Co., with an unapologetic, borderline-butt-rock streak reminiscent of New Jersey's late, underrated Rye Coalition.
Onstage, though — which is where Fake Limbs really shine — the comparison starts to break down. Where with the Jesus Lizards of the world, a kind of recklessness came with the territory — like, if you're in the audience, get up front at your own risk — Sowley's group is operating at a time when bands are coming around on the importance of creating a safer atmosphere for fans who just want to watch shows without having to keep their heads on a swivel.
If you go to small club gigs with any regularity — not specifically to see punk, hardcore or metal bands, just anything remotely up-tempo — you can probably remember the last night you had ruined by an unwanted boot to the face from a crowd-surfer, or an overserved one-man mosh pit barreling into you repeatedly from behind.
So can Sowley. "Please don't get me wrong, I love [The Jesus Lizard's] records," he says, "but that's something I've never aspired to, being a frontperson. I've gone to so many hardcore, punk and experimental shows where that shit happens, where you have this frontperson who's just out there to really create an unnecessarily aggressive moment with a crowd that's just trying to watch a band play."
When Fake Limbs perform, guitarist Bryan Gleason, bassist Mat Biscan and drummer Nick Smalkowski churn away noisily — no slow songs — while Sowley, comically long microphone cable in hand, makes the entire venue his stage.
"I'll run around, do weird interpretive dances, wear funny outfits ... [all] essentially to cloak the fact that I cannot actually sing," the 38-year-old explains over the phone with a hearty laugh. "Anytime I see an opening, something I can crawl under or climb on top of, I'm going to go towards it. ... [I'm going to] use the space that's left open for me and exploit it.
"There's a lot of moments where there's a guitar solo, an instrumental passage of some length, where I don't want to do the Robert Plant air-guitar thing," he goes on. "So that's where I go into the crowd. There'll be times when I'm just kind of like, 'I'm chilling, I'm watching the band play,' and the crowd has just turned and is looking at me and I'm motioning, 'Turn around, that's the show, right there.' "
As over-the-top as Fake Limbs' sets can get, for Sowley — who's not a small man — maintaining that sense of spatial awareness is key. "I haven't mastered it yet," he admits, "but it's something I'm always thinking about."
Proving further that being an aggro person isn't a prerequisite for playing aggro music, a lyric sheet reveals Sowley's half-yelled, half-spoken rants as at once sarcastic and vulnerable, sort of like a Midwest counterpart to Matt Korvette from similarly minded East Coasters Pissed Jeans. The first Fake Limbs record, from 2012, was humorously yet earnestly titled Man Feelings. 2013's The Power of Patrician Upbringing is their second and latest; they're recording their third this year.
While the group is still relatively new, its members have deep roots in Chicago music. Biscan and Smalkowski made up the rhythm section in post-punk three-piece Builder/Destroyer. Gleason currently plays bass in another trio, the Superchunk-y Burn Permits, and Sowley — whom the three originally recruited, the story goes, after a legendary karaoke performance — spent the better part of the past decade working as studio manager at Steve Albini's esteemed Electrical Audio.
Sowley and Bully singer-guitarist-producer Alicia Bognanno became friends during Bognanno's college internship at Electrical a few years back; not only was she the only intern he ever entrusted with his studio keys, he remembers literally crying when she moved on. But the two kept in touch, and their groups have since forged a sister-band bond — the Nashville gig, Fake Limbs' first-ever in Music City, concludes their second jaunt across the Midwest and South together. The first one took place last fall, right around when Bully's breakout single "Trying" — off its 2015 debut Feels Like, the Scene's landslide local album-of-the-year — first cracked the Billboard's Twitter Emerging Artist chart.
Fake Limbs' decidedly radio-unfriendly music probably won't be following suit, but Sowley promises early arrivals Friday a set that'll make an impression — without leaving a mark.
"Being a frontperson it can be easy to overstep bounds," he explains, "and I don't want to ruin anybody's good time. But I would like to remind people that it's OK to unfold their arms, shake off their insecurities a little bit, while also making sure the space is still inclusive."
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