Starship landing

And there’s plenty of intelligent life

By Sam Pfeifle

Extendo-Ride Starship play Geno’s, May 4, at 10 p.m., call (207) 772-7891.

TAKING OFF: Jay Lobley, Joe Lops, and Peet Chamberlain (Brandon Davis, not pictured).

For a lot of young bands, landing a gig at Geno’s with no support can be a little nerve-wracking. Sure, it’s a good club, picking up steam and loyal fans again. And you’re the headliner, baby, as loosely as that term is used for a club that holds maybe 200 people. Problem is: you’ve got to come up with three hours of material.

Extendo-Ride Starship (formerly the Extendo-Ride All-Stars, and soon to be Extendo-Ride Slutphase, apparently) have that problem solved. “I’ve written like 200 songs since I was 14,” says guitarist/bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Peet Chamberlain. There could be another hitch in the plan, however, as “only about 20 of them are good.”

But that’s okay because everyone else in the band — Joe “I’m not really a drummer” Lops; Jay Lobley, the guy with frontman looks; and 18 year-old guitar sensation Brandon Davis — have all written about 200 songs apiece, too. So there’s plenty to go around, and you never know what you’ll hear.

All four went to South Portland High, and “we all had four-track [recorders],” says Chamberlain. “So we’d record stuff and trade them back and forth and bash each other.”

“Extendo-Ride was our ‘label,’ ” says Lobley, kind of sheepishly, “and every month we’d have a new ‘album’ out. Then we’d review each other over the school email.” Lobley points at Chamberlain. “He gave me one and half stars one time.”

These guys clearly love music, and love to play around with it. “We’d make up bands for ourselves all the time,” says Lops. “Then we’d make up band members, and they’d have solo albums.” What this has done is give the Starship incredible range through genres, from indie rock to punk to jazz, with every member commanding a multitude of instruments.

They don’t have an official recording yet, but ask them to make you a tape, and they’ll give you something special. In fact, they’ve been known to just give out tapes at their shows, with no promises as to what you’ll find.

The specimen I was treated to was heavy on the indie, reminiscent of the Belle and Sebastien collective out of Scotland: ironic, semi-humorous lyrics; lo-fi, clangy guitars; and warbly, Nick Drake-ian vocals for the most part. However, the tunes change with the writer. Chamberlain’s keys are beautiful, for instance, on “Love Theme from Footjobs! The Musical,” then you figure out he’s just pulling your leg.

The biggest question is whether they can balance their laissez-faire approach to song-writing with their desire to be considered as serious musicians. “That’s something we have to deal with. We don’t want to be the Barenaked Ladies,” says Lobley, referring to the popular joke-rockers from north of the border. “I love it how people say their new album is darker. Yeah, I think they sing about a car crash or something. That’s pretty dark.”

“But I think every band ever has had some humor in their music,” says Chamberlain. “Except maybe Creed. You don’t have to have meteors flying at you in your video,” as Creed melodramatically do.

“Well, we probably would have done that if we had thought of it,” says Lops.

In many ways, the Extendo-Ride boys are very much in line with the second wave of indie-pop rockers. With bands like Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Caustic Resin, and Halo Benders, they respond to the popular rock of their day by taking radio pop structures and making them better.

In the early ’90s, an earlier wave of indie rockers, bands like Pavement, Archers of Loaf, and Yo La Tengo, responded to what alt-rock had become — guitars amped like it was Shea Stadium, Eddie Vedder seeming to sing vocals for every band — by stripping it down. They arranged their songs in much the same way, but the guitars sounded like guitars, with individual notes audible, and they just sang, without trying to emote every freakin’ line.

Now, in a strange combination of the Backstreet Boys and Limp Bizkit, Built to Spill layers power guitars over Beach Boys vocals. Modest Mouse has a live drummer playing dance beats over a voice that actually sounds like a real person could be singing it; what you might call the people’s 98 Degrees.

The musicians of Extendo-Ride have the potential to start hanging with some of these guys musically. They certainly have the guitarist for the job in Davis. “Tony Boffa called him like the best guitarist in the state,” says Lobely, as if resigned to the fact. The 18-year-old Davis was actually the impetus for the current band, after Lobely’s brother played him a couple of the Extendo tapes. “We started as Avant Gill, that was Brandon’s thing. But we didn’t want to play all his songs, so we changed the name.”

It started out as “we’ve got a gig, let’s make up a band,” says Lops. In fact, they once wrote 12 songs in 20 minutes during a session down in Connecticut where Lops and Chamberlain went to school for a year. “There was a Goof Proof preparatory kit sitting on the ground,” says Lops, “so we were Goof Proof.” Don’t be surprised if one whole set of their Geno’s show is by the band Goof Proof, but make no mistake, whatever band shows up on Friday, they’ll be good, hip, and fairly obnoxious.

And if you’re lucky, they’ll play Springsteen’s “Glory Days.”

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