Metro Pulse/Music/Soltero

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What:
Soltero with Rube Waddell

When:
Thursday, Oct. 17, 10 p.m.

Where:
The Pilot Light.

Cost:
$5

Soltero lets other people play, for once

by Tamar Wilner

Tim Howard has always been a man in search of a band. While other college students hammered out mediocre garage rock in three- and four-pieces, Howard quietly honed his craft in a cinder-block dorm room, occasionally descending to the dorm's serpentine, graffiti-encrusted tunnels to record songs on a four-track. "When I started writing songs in college, I wrote songs in my room on an acoustic guitar, and I thought, 'God, I need a band. If it's not a band, it's not real,'" the Soltero frontman recalls.

Wesleyan University (no, not Ohio or Tennessee Wesleyan; no, not the all-girls school) in Connecticut has long provided fertile ground for creative minds. Among its most talented graduates, one may count folk singer Dar Williams, The Good Girl director Miguel Arteta, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. (Alumni also include hacks such as Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay, novelist Robert Ludlum, and yours truly—Howard could be described as my best friend's boyfriend's best friend, but please don't hold that against him.) Somehow, Howard never found bandmates at Wesleyan, so he kept going it alone, recording two home-made CDs under the moniker, The Tacocat. After college, the Poughkeepsie, N.Y. native moved to Cambridge, Mass., and changed his stage name to Soltero (a Spanish word meaning bachelor or single guy). Just playing as "Tim Howard" was never an option.

"I guess I was just trying to avoid a singer-songwriter classification," Howard says. "I think it's because, as far as I'm concerned, the large number of singer-songwriters are terrible. No, no, that's harsh. A lot of them are working in a different genre. A lot of them are folk. I don't really know folk."

Listening to Science Will Figure You Out, Howard's first album as Soltero, it isn't hard to detect what music he does know. Pavement and Yo La Tengo exert their influences in Soltero's rough-hewn vocals and gently rolling guitar. Jaunty, jangly numbers like "laundrydaydreams" and the newer "fight song for true love" recall The Kinks, though Howard claims he's only listened to that band of late. Some reviewers have drawn comparisons to Neil Young and The Silver Jews.

Howard laces his songs with subtle touches—background whispers, distant bagpipes, clangs of a railway station's bell—that create textures rarely found in solo efforts. Some credit is due fellow Wes grads The Mobius Band, who played on the CD and whose guitarist/singer/ /keyboardist Ben Sterling produced the album, but most of the music and all the lyrics are Soltero's own.

Howard dips his cup into emotional wells, and many songs are drawn from the simple, everyday pain of being a single guy trying to figure girls out. But the album is remarkably free from self-indulgence, as he channels stories and characters outside of his own world.

"In a way I think that's probably related to me studying film in college," Howard says, noting he tries to find a "balance between displays of feeling emotion and trying to temper that with a certain narrative."

One of Science's best songs combines personal experience with storytelling. "the priest"'s lyrics explore religious renunciation and redemption, sensitive topics for Howard, who no longer practices the Catholic faith of his upbringing. He chooses to put his words in the mouth of a cleric.

"Now I just wonder, is this stimulation, or just simulation/ There's a sense of foreboding with a sweet sugar coating/ An amusing mosaic if you read Aramaic..." Howard sighs. "I tried once to pray but I had so much to say that it was all ignored/ I tried once to pray but I had so much to say that God got bored."

Science has met with a steady stream of small successes and increased recognition for Soltero. Fans as far away as Hong Kong download Howard's music and order CDs from www.solterosongs.com. Tower Records' Pulse! magazine chose Science as a best of 2001.

Responding to word of mouth, Providence, R.I.'s Handsome Records sought out and signed Soltero—a new CD, Defrocked and Kicking the Habit, will be released in early 2003. The album is his most collaborative yet, Howard says, though he's once again written all the songs.

But in the last few months, Howard has finally gotten his wish. Soltero has evolved into a full touring band with Casey Keenan on drums, Rocco Macri on bass, and Alex McGregor on guitar and keyboards. (McGregor's aunt and uncle, Herb and Kathleen Williams, live in the Knoxville area and have played bluegrass and folk around town.) Last week, the quartet opened for The Beatings, and they'll follow up with a dozen concerts throughout the eastern U.S. this month.

At the same time, Howard says he's finally embracing his solo side. He hopes to keep touring with the band, while playing the occasional gig on his own.

"I guess I just kind of got more confident with the idea of recording solo... I'm not scared of stigmas anymore."