A powerhouse with supershort songs? That’s just Unnatural
Dean Whitmore is enjoying a post-work beverage and chatting about how he started Unnatural Helpers when a punk-rock Audrey Hepburn strides across the street. Kimberly Morrison, a fast-talking, thin-legged energy force, pleads for a beer from her latest bandleader.
A chuckling Whitmore hands a Pabst to the bass player, and after a gulp she talks about her honeymoon in Europe, where she came down with a nasty case of food poisoning. Still, that hasn’t taken the bounce out of her step, or the mischievous glimmer out of her eye. She’s in love, see?
Sure, she digs her husband and all that, but she’s really head-over-heels with her new band, Unnatural Helpers.
“She’s like that with everybody,” sneers the graffiti scrawled outside the band’s Capitol Hill practice space. The tagger’s words - surely someone’s personal vendetta regarding another woman - fit Morrison’s band-hopping past.
“I know I’ve been in way more bands than the average person,” says Morrison, who has done previous stints with the Rotten Apples, the Intelligence, New Fangs, the Instants, Thee Flying Dutchmen. … She says that when she gets bored, or finds a band drifting off in a pointless direction, “I either quit or get myself kicked out.”
She’s currently in four bands: Unnatural Helpers, the Hacks (next up at the Comet on Nov. 23), the Fall-Outs and the Dutchess and the Duke.
The latter, a psychedelic-folk duo, recently signed with Sub Pop spinoff Hardly Art after playing its first and only show, in San Francisco. Even so, Morrison says her heart belongs to her newest crush, Unnatural Helpers. Led by drummer-singer - an unusual combination - Whitmore, who works in sales at Sub Pop, UH features guitarists Chris Martin of Sub Pop’s Kinski, plus Mike Wurn of the Fat Cat Records act Welcome.
The other night, Whitmore was comically whining that everyone else in his band is on a label, “and I have to put my own records out.” He really has only himself to blame, for writing the explosive, garage-punk songs that are far too short for the marketing needs of most labels. An 11-song demo comes in at just over 15 minutes - but what a barrel of fun that quarter-hour is, with crushingly snide songs like “Earwax” and “Dirty, Dumb & Comical” (listen to samples on MySpace: http://myspace.com/unnaturalhelpers).
The short songs, Whitmore says, are “not really a conscious effort. The songs we’ve recorded so far seem done to me at that length. I wanted everything in those songs to have a purpose and not just some sort of regurgitation of itself so that it ends up being the requisite 3 to 4 minutes or whatever.”
He may never land a major label deal, but that’s not what drives the soft-spoken musician: “The only thing I’m concerned with is making good songs and records.”
Unnatural Helpers released its first CD last year, with a different lineup. “I’ve always loved the Helpers,” Morrison said. “I remember telling Dean, ‘If anyone ever quits, you better call me.’ ”
When a previous bass player broke his elbow, that opening presented itself. Morrison’s first Unnatural Helpers show was July 19 at Neumos. It didn’t bother her that she already had a gig with the Fall-Outs that night, and had to dash from one club to another. “I’ve done three different shows on the same night.”
Monday night, it was just one show, as the Unnatural Helpers stepped in for another band and played the Rendezvous/Jewel Box Theater.
Before the show, Martin, who had just returned from a Kinski tour, warned, “We haven’t practiced for a month, and we’re all kind of drunk.”
Though there were some rough edges, the Helpers’ set was still a minor marvel - each song a rush of controlled chaos, aural adrenaline. Where many bands are all about egos, this one seemed like four ids, tapping into primordial aggression. From his drum kit, Whitmore’s shout-singing seemed like urgent, coded messages.
While the Helpers might have been half in the bag and half out of tune, their raw energy fused gut-to-gut connections with the audience. A small crowd was highly appreciative of Whitmore’s powerhouse crew.
They’ll do it again at the Funhouse (9:30 tonight, $6).
More from the clubs this week:
• Another explosive, on-the-rise Seattle band also plays the Funhouse this weekend. The Valley - sounding like the Fuzzed-Out Sons of Mudhoney - plays from its guitars-gone-wild new EP at the Funhouse (9:30 p.m. Sunday, $7). The Valley’s “Come Down” was featured as NPR’s song of the day on Nov. 1.
According to the Valley’s Web site (www.thevalleyrules.com), when the band first got started in 2000-01, it was judged “Too ‘punk’ for the rockers, too ‘rock’ for the punks and way too loud and heavy for the indie-rock crowd.”
• Ballard’s Tractor Tavern has a diverse weekend, with Scott McCaughey’s garage-rock veterans the Young Fresh Fellows playing tonight (9, $10). The Maldives, a talented new alt-country band, saddle up Saturday at the Tractor (9:30 p.m., $8).
• Tacoma’s moody Mono in VCF - drifting leisurely in space somewhere between psychedelic Beatles and Massive Attack - hosts a listening party for its new album at the Pacific Science Center Laser Dome (8 p.m. Wednesday, $5). Kim Miller’s vocals are dazzling on “Escape City Scrapers,” a mini-
movie of a song that is the highlight of this exceptional, self-titled album.
Tom Scanlon: tscanlon@seattletimes.com