The Chairman Dances are a self-described “wordy indie rock band” from Philadelphia, consisting of Dan Comly, Eric Krewson, Luke Pigott, Ashley Cubbler, Ben Rosen and Kevin Walker. Fresh from 2014’s The Death of Samuel Miller on Grizzly Records, the band put out the EP Samantha Says this past May, a release recorded with producer and songwriter Daniel Smith in his New Jersey Studio.
The EP is essentially an art-pop character study of the eponymous Samantha, the forty-year-old protagonist (That is, if she’s reliable regarding her age) brought into a surprisingly detailed relief across the five songs. As the title suggests, opener ‘Self-Portrait’ serves as our introduction. Samantha’s first-person description is somehow all the more authentic in its indecisiveness, the nebulous, changeable and sometimes conflicting details amass into something far more convincing than a straightforward or lucid profile. Samantha feels human from the first verse, fragile and fragmented and fierce to a point, self-aware and self-depreciating and funny with it. She’s not optimistic or pessimistic but rather both at once, hope and despair tempering one another to create a wry dreamer, a romantic realist. A human, basically.
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‘Looking For a Man’, a song caught between dreams and reality, finds Samantha in the company of one Charlie, a person inclined to pour too much wine (or maybe not enough) and ask if she ever thinks of their love (“I mutter Yes, dear and call on every last saint above”). In between disillusioned words about Charlie, Samantha outlines her ideal man, starting specific (5’9″, waist size 30, a generous heart etc.) and gradually lessening her requirements so that the the truth of the situation unfolds. It’s not so much that she’s unhappy with how Charlie exists in the relationship, but rather how she does. “I would surely settle down,” she says, “In a suburb of Cleveland / If it meant that I could be myself / For just part of the day.”
‘Saint Anne Medal’ shifts the focus away from Samantha’s introspection and thus opens up her world, introducing characters we don’t know in situations we can’t quite grasp, thrusting us into a life with all the connections and complexities you would expect. Here too the Catholic theme develops (after the Augustine reference in the opener), furthering the sense of family, tradition and duty, something expanded on in the subsequent song, ‘Consolation’. Fulfilling the ‘wordy’ promise, the song skips through a tale of grief and reprieve with Darniellian deftness, finding Samantha overrun by the growing feeling that nobody can properly understand her, that she’s forever alone in a world operating on a slightly different frequency. Think twee-indie-movie meets George Saunders, the situation sad and serious yet laced with a dry humour, although the laughs are maybe nothing more than disbelief grown too big to contain. Despite all that the song’s upbeat melodies and harmonies maintain a joyful air which, coupled with the lyrics, manage to paint the miseries on show in an almost positive light, not the limit or lack of life but rather the proof of it.
“I sat reading when the call, harsh, familiar, crass and curt, caught my ear. Why do you memorize such lies? said gruff Henry, lean and tall. I do believe he tried to flirt. He flung my book, he flung my heart into the tide. But the line that caused my fall and left me reeling, on alert, came from Jennifer. She’d surely empathize. [Jennifer:] Why would anyone recall the poems of saints, sackcloth for shirt, some zealots blubbering about the poor, their helpless cries? Consolation—is it so much to ask for? Is it too much to ask for?”
As you might guess from the title, the closing track ‘The Joyful Mother of Children’ finds Samantha a parent. “The long loneliness is over,” she sings, swamped by motherhood and engulfed in gratitude. “I found myself mouthing thank-you throughout the day”. The track is Samantha’s redemption, the validation of previous hopes and dreams, a reward for never quite surrendering faith. Indeed, the development is literally Biblical, echoing the joy of Psalm 113:9, serving as Samantha’s passing from confusion to peace.
“I found myself the joyful mother of children. I look out on the backyard, neighbours calling their sons in. I found myself asking, Ten more minutes? They’re just kids after all, not doing us any harm”
While ‘literary rock’ isn’t always an apt term, Samantha Says shows that rock/pop albums can aim as high as fiction in terms of character development. Throwing out the notion of binary happy-or-sad songs, the EP instead opts for something in between, or rather everything at once. Samantha is happy, sad, optimistic, pessimistic, cynical and hopeful within each song, let alone across the EP, and if you want your art to somehow imitate or represent life then surely that’s the only way to go. Basically, the release sounds like the product of a band finding confidence, cementing their aims and direction and realising how much scope for experimentation there is within songwriting. These are the bands you should keep an eye on. If you like The Mountain Goats, Okkervil River or The Smiths (without the terminal gloom), then you’d be a fool not to check them out.
You can buy Samantha Says now from The Chairman Dances’ Bandcamp page.
Cover art by Natalie Short