Taking flight

Helicopter helicopter play Portland By Starlight

By Sam Pfeifle

Helicopter helicopter play the Skinny, April 7. Call (207) 871-8983.

HELICOPTER HELICOPTER: they’re good good.

They may not deserve it, but the lamentably defunct Lincolnville get credit on this front for regionalizing Portland’s place in the Northeast pop scene.

Or at least for making Portland a part of it. Thanks to their show piggybacking, Portland played host to bands like the Sheila Devine, the Banjo Spiders, Orbit, and the alt-pop outfit hitting the Skinny Saturday for a CD-release party, Helicopter helicopter.

Whereas CD-release gigs were once just for hometown heroes, bands in the Northeast are beginning to develop pockets of fans in a number of cities — Worcester, North Hampton, Boston, Providence, Burlington, even Buffalo — all within a touring van’s reach. Rather than simply focus attention on one hometown, bands are cultivating multiple hometowns to make up for the relatively small size of the one they may hail from.

“We’re a really hard-working band,” says Helicopter helicopter’s singer/guitarist Julie Chadwick. “We’ve really tried to get regional followings. Some bands, they just sit on their asses in the cities that they’re from.” And that can get old in a town like Portland or Burlington, VT where there are only so many clubs to play, and only so many fans to gather.

“Buffalo, for instance, is a really big market for us,” says Chadwick. “We’re doing an in-store up there, we’re going to a radio station. It’s almost as big as [hometown] Boston. It’s the same thing in DC. Now we show up and people come out and see us.”

“You really have to get out there,” she emphasizes, “because no one’s going to do it for you.”

It helps to have an impressive product to get out there, and Helicopter helicopter have it with their new album, By Starlight. Like Squids and Other Fishes and Analog and Electrical Fields, their two earlier releases on Lunch Records — run by members of Orbit — this new release is filled with grinding guitars, heavy on the pedals, and highlighted by the vocal coupling between Chadwick and primary vocalist/fellow guitarist Chris Zerby. On occasion, the two have the chemistry of John and Yoko.

However, this new effort is more polished, more thoughtful, crisper, and, to paraphrase Letterman, easier on the ears. Zerby’s vocals, always good, sound more plaintive and less angry here. Chadwick plays more to her strengths: Patti Smith lead punk vocals — hailing back to her time with the American Measles — on tracks like “Trembling,” and haunting background information underneath Zerby on the album’s final cut, “The Afterworld.”

Drummer Ned Gallacher has been a constant pleasure, and here he is crashing and hell-bent when he should be, and appropriately subtle on the slow numbers. He “also plays a huge role in song arrangements,” notes Chadwick. As for rhythm-mate bassist Shawn Setaro, he’s the third in something of a merry-go-round, but he does seem to “solidify the rhythm section,” as intended.

“We had always been about a good hook,” says Zerby of By Starlight, “but with this new record, we definitely made an effort to streamline the sound and cut out the fat.” Don’t think this is some overproduced radio effort, however, as Zerby goes on to note, “Our pedal boards are as huge as ever.” And that means plenty of distortion, bordering on grunge, as every alt-pop outfit should deliver.

They also deliver good, quality angst. Zerby, as the main songwriter, crafts wonderfully morose lyrics that document our generation just like an important band should, though he would deny it.

“They’re not statements about our generation,” he says. “They are more personally related to people I know and have known in the past . . . There’s no big message behind them.” Of course, in knowing the same type of people we all know, he’s done just what he says he hasn’t. Have a few friends still living out their college fantasies into their late-20s? So does Zerby. “And just once,” he asks on the opening track, “I’d like to hear, how you managed to stay wasted all these years.”

On “Trembling,” Chadwick might be speaking for those same wasted souls, watching dot-commers and the like find success while they waste away. “You were almost something,” she sings, “and I was trapped like a trembling god.” But Zerby later counters. “How did you get so unfortunate,” he asks, “cracking your knuckles to get through the day.” How many of us know that person, bong in hand, “rolling your eyes at me. Nothing ever gets you down.”

Of course, “The lyrics are meant to be vague enough to mean different things to different people,” says Zerby, so maybe I’m reading too much into them.

Regardless, this is the kind of album, and the kind of band, that could, and should be all over the radio, and probably would have been three or four years ago when Oasis hit, and pop actually cared about harmony and songwriting. As it is, “We’ve gotten a lot of college radio air-play with all our records,” says Chadwick, “but that’s something we’re just starting to explore. It’s really hard for an independent band to get on commercial radio, but there are some bands that actually do it.”

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle at phx.com.