Metro Pulse/Music/The Features

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File the Features under pop/rock

by Leslie Wylie

The Features is the kind of band that High Fidelity-minded relativists live to contextually untangle. By an amalgamation of its critics’ musings, you’d think the Features sound like a hybrid of the Kinks, the Cars and the Shins, fronted by Wayne Coyne and with a Rentals keyboard score, covering psychedelified Pavement in the Elephant 6 clubhouse under the supervision of the Who.

But what’s any of that supposed to mean, really? Features guitarist/vocalist Matt Pelham has no idea.

“Sure, we tend to lean toward stuff that is a little bit older than newer, and I think that plays a big role as far as how the songs come about, but we don’t imitate the bands we listen to,” says Pelham. “Everyone in the band has completely different musical tastes. Whenever a song gets brought in, everyone looks at it through their own music, and it comes out sounding more unique than if only one of us was calling the shots.”

Fair enough. After all, decade-confusion itself has gotten to be a little cliché, and Pelham seems quite content to dodge comparisons to the mod squad of neo-revisionist bands reliving one decade or another—and comparisons to any band, for that matter.

“There’s kind of a subconscious thing that makes people want to say that we sound a certain way. It’s like we have a Farfisa organ so they say we sound like Hot Hot Heat, or we’re from the South so we automatically sound like Kings of Leon,” Pelham says. “I’ve noticed with a lot of the U.K. press, especially, they’re digging pretty deep to try to find something to compare us to, and a lot of the stuff they come up with I’ve never even listened to.”

Even well-intentioned genre labeling, like the band publicist’s “new wave for the next generation” press sketch, doesn’t make much sense to Pelham. New wave, a catchall category for music spawned in punk rock’s late ‘70s-early ‘80s aftermath, crested a long time ago.

Pelham gives the description some thought and the benefit of the doubt: “Maybe if I was a little more up to date.... I mean, we definitely have ‘80s influences, but I don’t consider us to be new wave by any means.”

So, having swept all sense of context under the rug, what remains boils down to four 20-something guys—Pelham, Roger Dabbs (bass), Parrish Yaw (keyboards) and Rollum Haas (drums)—who play “pop/rock,” as Pelham puts it neatly.

They’re also four guys who have a record deal with Universal Records, through which they intend to release their first full-length album, Exhibit A, late this summer, and a contract with indie record label Fierce Panda (connected with Supergrass, The Faint, Polyphonic Spree, Death Cab for Cutie), which has been releasing singles in the U.K. and handling overseas record distribution. They’ve done a couple of European tours, and their Knoxville show follows on the heels of a performance at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin.

Not bad for a vinyl-loving band out of Murfreesboro, where the present lineup has been based since 1998. Over the past six years, the Features’ universe has undergone some fairly major shifts, both artistically and personally. Pelham has gone from being a music school kid to a father of twins, a somewhat surreal experience he chronicles in The Beginning, the living room session EP that was originally released in 2001 and is being re-released this spring.

The Beginning is a great example of the Features’ unusual ability to shuffle one concept through different levels of auditory consciousness, from the pink fluff-lined part where dreams hang out to the part that more closely resembles a garage band’s practice space, through a hallway maze of crunchy guitars, Moog synth and “la-la-la” choruses. From the first track, “Stark White Stork Approaching,” in which Pelham watches his unborn twins kicking each other in the head on the ultrasound, to the last, “Two by Two,” the Features sculpt the un-sexiest of subject matter, parenthood, into sing-a-long rock ‘n’ roll that’s as playfully catchy as it is deliberate and complex.

Pelham says that he didn’t have any reservations about using honesty, rather than coolness, to gain leverage with listeners. “I guess we were just wanting to put out a recording, and that’s what was gong on at the time. I think if anyone I knew had a problem with it, they probably wouldn’t tell me, but as far as the press goes it seemed to be pretty well received. Maybe some people out there are more appreciative of something a little different.”

Paternal instincts don’t seem to have dampened the intensity of Pelham’s stage presence or his rumored predisposition to throwing himself into drum sets and guitar amps. Meanwhile, other aspects of the Features’ performance, like songwriting, keep evolving with age through a kind of constant fidgeting—with influences, instruments and styles—which, as it turns out, may also be the band’s best defense against pigeonholing.

“I’m always surprised with how a song turns out, and I hope I always am,” Pelham says. “We don’t try to make music that’s supposed to sound a particular way, and I don’t think that would be any fun. I’d rather just write songs and let them come out how they’re supposed to. Whatever happens, happens.”