From the Quad City Times -- October 13, 2004
'Lite brigade
David Burke
It took two years from the formation of The Metrolites — the self-proclaimed surf-spy-crime jazz-rockabilly-science fiction-noir-lounge band — before the group's first CD was released.
The Metrolites was founded in October 2002 by Scott Morschhauser and "Nervous" Neal Smith, former members of The Kabalas, which made a name for themselves nationally with a mix of rock with Jewish klezmer folk music and polkas. The two joined with guitarist Kathleen Gallagher and drummer Josh Duffee, and bass player Devin Kirby-Hansen was added to the roster 18 months ago.
The band quickly gained a following in the Quad-Cities, especially at its home-away-from-home, the Copia Martini & Wine Bar in The District of Rock Island. (The bar even has a martini called The Metrolite, with Hypnotq, pineapple juice and "other hep ingredients." "It's not a knock-you-out kind of drink," said Morschhauser, a martini afficionado.)
"All of a sudden, things started to roll on their own and snowball. Then you kind of lose control of it, and it kind of goes from there," Morschhauser said. "People asked, ‘Can we buy your CD?' So the demand was there from the beginning, it was just a matter of playing catch up."
But, Morschhauser said, he and the rest of the band didn't want to rush into a recording.
"We said if we're going to do it, let's do it right," he said. "It was like The Kabalas' ‘Time Tunnel,' which was our best work there, we didn't want to do anything until it was close to being that good."
The result is "The Metrolites in Spy-Fi," an 18-cut CD with the recurring theme "The Man From M.E.T.R.O.," done in four different styles throughout the album. There's a mix of instrumentals and lead vocals by Morschhauser, with one song sung by sax player Smith.
Morschhauser plays the digital xylophone, rhythm guitar and the theremin, an instrument unique in that it's not touched — sound waves create the music that's a staple of vintage scary movies.
"The Metrolites in Spy-Fi" is retro in several ways — including bringing back the concept of the album, Morschhauser said."It's a real album, in the sense of the old days where it was a whole album, not a bunch of hits," he said."There's a lot of diversity, and I think the diversity makes it cohesive in a strange way," Smith said. "Even within one song, we're jumping genres. So some of those genres carry over into one song.""We tried to weave a thread, where from the time you pick it up in the store and look at the cover picture and back picture and listen to each song, that it's connected," Morschhauser said. "There's something weaving in and out."Four of the five members of The Metrolites have writing credits on "Spy-Fi," and each group member had a say in the final sound of the CD."We're all doing arranging," Morschhauser said. "It's a band full of good musicians and good songwriters."The three songs that aren't originals are covers of favorites written by songwriters including Burt Bacharach ("The Blob")."It's not like we couldn't write three more songs," Morschhauser said. "We wanted to do these songs."The album was recorded by Mark Johnson at Brass Sail Studios in Rock Island, and members of The Metrolites say they stretched his creativity as well. Duffee's drums, for instance, were recorded not with a microphone on each drum, as many bands do, but with two overhead mikes, more common in the recordings of the 1940s-'60s.Duffee, who has his own orchestra that's become a staple of Bix jazz festivals, was a protege of Joel Dick, drummer for The Kabalas, who died from cancer in March 2003."I was thinking, ‘How would Joel have done this?'" Duffee said. "I wanted to keep a sound like his going with the band, because he would have had the drum spot if he were still living."I dug deep into everything he taught me for that."Kirby-Hansen said he wanted to keep an even level with the bass."My biggest worry with my parts were, are they going to be heard or are they going to be listened to? I didn't want to do something that would really stand out — we already have at least two instruments doing chording, and at least two solo instruments — and I wanted to fill in just where I needed to come in," said Kirby-Hansen, who is also the founder of the band Braille Illustrated. "I didn't want to call too much attention to myself.""Where there's a gap and daylight, there's a bass part there," Morschhauser said. "It's a playful bass part, and Paul McCartney had a playful bass part. It was easy to listen to."Smith said he's proud of the lyrics The Metrolites had written — some he said even ardent fans couldn't make out in a crowded bar atmosphere."You can understand the words, and that's a good thing," he said. "There's a lot of word play and a lot of irony and things like that going on."Morschhauser invested $15,000 to record the album on his label, Go-Go-Golem Records. The first printing of 1,000 copies has been selling briskly, he said, and he's already planning on a second printing.He and the rest of the band said they're weary about national exposure, considering the publicity given The Kabalas in the 1990s."The industry is really different now than 10 years ago. Our goal is not ‘major record deal,' because those are horrible right now," Morschhauser said.On the Internet, the band is targeting advertising on Web sites for fans of B-movies, spaghetti Westerns, film noir and "any hep cat kind of thing," he said."We're going in like surgeons and deliberately targeting wherever we want it to go," Morschhauser said. "We're finding the markets through magazines and Web (sites) and people who would be interested in this kind of thing."Besides, Smith said, major labels "wouldn't ‘get' this.""They didn't get The Kabalas. Everybody else did, but not Los Angeles," Smith said.The band worked to not only on the words and music, but the quality of the sound, thanks to Johnson. They'd stack it up against any big-time band."One thing that a lot of people have been saying ... is that ‘Man, it really sounds professional, like a real album.' I think people are expecting a 16-track in Scott's basement," Kirby-Hansen said. "That's really not what they're getting. People are not only impressed with the songwriting, but the song quality."David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.