Mustard Couch, Sunshine Vandals, Space is Kind
Grand Emporium
August 9, 1999

Review by Mark Cuthbertson

There was a little something for everyone at this show: fast and happy, lighthearted fun rock; spacey, brooding tunes with great hooks; blues-based gritty rock 'n roll; jazzy-bluesy rockin' fusion; radio-friendly pop; dissonant diminished-scale tunes. Certainly more styles were represented than the number of bands, yet all were musical and tastefully done.

Mustard Couch brought the biggest grab bag of styles I've seen in a while without losing their distinct flavor from one song to another. Andy Smith crooned and smoothly reached into his falsetto over the moodier, jazzier chords, spoke over some of the funkier grooves, and spent most of the evening varying the amount of grit in his Weiland-esque baritone voice, giving each melody a high degree of musicality despite the inaudible backing vocals. Guitarist Brad Becker brought in the funk with phase-wah chicken pick'n, threw out rockin' riffs reminiscent of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, or Tool, turned the tunage a shade of blue, stirred up the angst, and soloed over it all. In fact, it's been a long time since I last witnessed a guitarist solo so often. However, Brad did so very tastefully and somehow managed not to reveal his favorite riffs via repetition or use a "crutch" to navigate over the myriad of styles. Bassist Jeff Romines locked onto Darin Anderson's beats, which occasionally broke down into half-time sections or varied feels with tasteful kicks and transitions. Romines filled the space left by a lone guitarist and drove the intensity of the songs with bright and punchy arpeggios or slapped passages through the louder moments and laying back on long, sustained, pillowy notes in the quieter/moodier ones.

Usually, when I hear a band start out with something that sounds bluesy, my attention span starts to dwindle as they get lost in my memory banks of countless blues-rockers. Mustard Couch did not have this problem, though. Each time I felt myself start to think the song was predictable and bland, along came a tasty new spice into the mix without seeming out of place.

The Sunshine Vandals are a young, promising, and well-seasoned group for a bunch of young guys. Their fast, melodic punk 'n' roll pleased many an ear and would have started quite the mosh pit with a larger crowd. Timbo's vocals were Green Day-ish without the fake accent, and Dallas and Brady drove the tempo at top speed throughout the set. Like many young bands of this sort, their strength (a unified, energetic sound and style) is also their greatest weakness. After two or three songs, nothing new was to be heard, really. A few songs with different feels, tempos, and dynamic changes could really make the set more enjoyable and each song more distinct, but like most bands in this genre, they are opting for the unified extreme at this time.

Warrensburg's Space Is Kind arrived after being asked on short notice and reminded me once again how rich the area is with good bands, as long as one is willing to test the unknown. When the vocals were clearly audible (I had to strain and concentrate at times), Kim Watt's vocal tones are most easily comparable to a ranging combination of breathy and airy (most like Shallow's Julie Shields) to glossed-over emotional cries (such as those of Belly's Tanya Donnelly). Guitarist Brian Goodman united with Chuck Irons's bass lines over Robb Shantz's beats to form an early-Pearl Jam sort of groove in some of the verses and transitioned into hook-laden choruses with stop time and dynamic changes that made each song musically developed and distinct. "Sweet" was a highlight for me, with its melodic hooks in the bridge, dynamic ebb and flow, and the heavily-textured major 7ths in the guitar part.

The band has a CD in the works and hopes to share their Kind Space with Kansas Citians more often.

--Mark Cuthbertson