 by Rob van Alstyne
I’ll be the first to admit ignorance when it comes to the legacy of overblown technical wizardry and awesomely dorky lyrical concepts that generally define progressive rock. I’ve never rocked out to Emerson, Lake & Palmer, don’t really know anything about Rush other than that drummer dorks seem to salivate over Neal Pert, and can’t say any prog-rock anthems have made a significant impact on me—aside from the occasional dance party moments taken to the next level by Styx’s “Mr. Roboto.” Given the amount of critical hosannas invoking the ghosts of prog-rock past currently being thrown at modern day outfit Aloha, however, I may just have to reexamine my past prog prejudices. Aloha’s latest, Some Echoes, filters the odd time signatures, abrupt dramatic flourishes and flair-heavy accoutrements of progressive rock dinosaurs through a modern indie-pop lens and is arguably the most exciting album I’ve heard so far this year.
 Led
by the high-pitched clear tenor of guitarist/vocalist Tony Cavallario, 28, Aloha’s
dense sound is full of surprises. Their songs’ melodies are equally likely
to be driven by a marimba, a mellotron approximating the sound of a string section,
a vibraphone or any number of tweaked keyboard and guitar textures. Having started
life as a frantic improvisational based art-rock band in Cleveland nearly a
decade ago, back when vibraphonist Eric Koltnow’s pervasive pounding was
clearly meant to be the focal point of every track, Aloha have since progressed
into a sleek multi-faceted rock ’n’ roll beast. Cavallario credits
much of the band’s evolution to newest addition TJ Lipple, who joined
the band as a multi-instrumentalist/producer after Koltnow’s departure
in 2003.
“We didn’t really have a defined role for TJ when we started working
with him [on the 2004 album Here Comes Everyone],” says Cavallario,
caught on his cellphone in the midst of a mammoth national tour. “He was
the producer/arranger but it wasn’t really known whether he was joining
the band for good. But right away, working with TJ was amazing; he just has
really high standards and I think that helped us go from sort of an easygoing,
improvisation-oriented band to a group that wanted to make a maximum impact
with every note. The really neat thing about playing with TJ is that if he hears
an instrument that needs to be there, he’ll just go and get it and play
it. Guitar, marimba, vibraphone, mellotron—it’s basically infinite
with him.”
Infinite is perhaps the perfect word to describe Aloha’s sound, or at
the very least far reaching. “If I Lie Down” comes off like an old-fashioned
torch ballad teleported to the year 2050, whereas first single “Your Eyes”
glides by as the perfect blend of sci-fi keyboard assault and whimsical love
song. The jangly, hook-heavy “Weekend” presents a heavily caffeinated
re-envisioning of Chicago post-rock stylings.  Some
Echoes is a record so rich with ideas that it’s easy to envision three
separate albums that could have stemmed from these sessions: one centered on
ambient late night lullabies, the other a woozy drug album for acid dropping
sunny days, and the third an apocalyptic post-rock record.
Perhaps part of Aloha’s unconventional sound can be attributed to their
atypical working methods. All four members of the band now live in different
cities, with Cavallario residing in Rochester, N.Y., Lipple in Arlington, Va.,
with the rhythm section of Matthew Gengler (bass) and Cale Parks (drums) still
residing in Ohio. Rather than distance driving the band apart, however, Cavallario
thinks the miles have only strengthened the Aloha crew’s commitment to
the music-making muse.
“The band’s recently gotten into the computer age,” explains
Cavallario. “TJ runs his own studio and can make demos at home really
easily. So we definitely have a little bit of [that] file-sharing, ‘Let
me introduce you to this chord progression kind of thing’ going on from
afar. But it’s never, ‘This is done: go and learn your parts.’
We send demos around and then we usually pick a time to get together for four
or five days before we’re scheduled to go out on a tour and just lock
ourselves up in the practice space and try to write stuff. We’re so into
music and playing together at this point that when we do get together, there’s
a lot of energy and excitement. There’s always a lot of intensity; you
can hear that in the music. It has this clattering sort of intensity to it,
and I think that’s because it’s the four of us trying to get the
most out of every minute we have together.”
 The
rare band to sign with a prestigious indie label solely on the strength of an
unsolicited demo tape, Cavallario and his band have come a long way since the
vibraphone heavy early days to their present comfy critical perch garnering
rave notices in both the indie (Pitchfork) and popular (Entertainment Weekly)
media—and they’re far from ready to declare the trip over.
“Aloha was the first band I ever wrote songs for,” reflects Cavallario.
“I feel like the first 10 songs you write are given to you from birth.
You don’t even think about it because it just comes out of your soul—you
can never recapture that feeling. Now it’s much more serious; music is
more my vocation than it’s ever been. There’s gravity to it but
that’s a great thing too. I can wake up and say, ‘Music is what
I do.’ I feel like at 28 I couldn’t make music that easily without
having that feeling. The bigger it gets and the more gravity there is to the
situation, the better we respond as a band. We like the pressure of figuring
out what comes next and trying to take it to the next level—we’re
not going to settle. We don’t make music to meet anyone’s expectations
but our own, but by the same token every time we make a record and we make our
label happy—our family and friends happy—it’s a cool thing.
The fact that we have some serious fans now, people who follow us and wonder
how we’re doing, that’s all exciting. I know for a fact that I could
never live without making music and I know I always will do it, but right now
I’m definitely enjoying what’s going on and the way things seem
to be headed.” ||
Aloha perform on Tue., May 2 at the 7th Street Entry with openers The
Winter Blanket and The Field. 5 p.m. $8. All Ages. 701 First Ave. N., Mpls.
612-338-8388.
For more information on Aloha check out their official website at MusicOfAloha.com.
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