(Carrboro, NC) -- Perfection is better in concept than practice, as most anyone who's lived with a perfectionist will tell you. It nearly brought down the Chapel Hill band The Honored Guests until they learned to scale their ambitions and expectations to a place where the means of playing music were as important as the ends of making the perfect record.That struggle is encapsulated not only in the title of the Guests' third album, Please Try Again, but also in the songs themselves. Sure, the album suggests The Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin with its richly layered songs, oddly shaped and resolutely catchy arrangements and dreamy countenance. But rather than being infused with hope, Please Try Again comes shadowed by a sense of frustration and dissipation, tracing a psyche at war with itself.
The Honored Guests began more than 15 years ago, in a Fayetteville basement where bassist Jeremy Buenviaje taught singer Russell Baggett how to play guitar. At college in Chapel Hill, the pair hooked up with drummer Andrew Kinghorn to form the terse, tense rock band Milo. Graduation scattered Milo's members in all directions, but the bond between Kinghorn and Baggett remained strong. They continued to exchange ideas while living in different European countries. When they returned to America, they again recruited Buenviaje, and later keyboardist Patrick O'Neill, to become The Honored Guests.
They chased their debut, Iawokeinacityasleep, with the challenging experimental pop of Tastes Change in 2006. They resolved to run themselves into the ground until they were able to dispense with the day jobs or, essentially, die trying. Lots of touring—a trip west, incessant regional runs—followed.
They returned home from tour, with the intention of creating a perfect pop album next time around. By May 2007, they had already laid down music for eight tracks. They would record as many as 25 tunes but by the end of the year, energy had flagged. The band’s intensity and self-confidence began to wane.
Three years later, with a good portion of their twenties behind them, lead singer Russ Baggett was inspired to, well, try again. He bought an acoustic guitar and started fingerpicking some songs in his bedroom. These songs crystallized a new perspective. Less polished and overwrought, and shaped around simpler acoustic lines, The Honored Guests finished the songs relatively quickly. Within two months, the band had completed the batch, dubbing it the Into Nostalgia EP.
Once the band reached that point, Please Try Again came together in a few months. With seven or eight tracks wrapped, a thematic pattern emerged, and the album began to focus itself. You can trace this story in these songs. During the sweeping opener "Paper Trails," Baggett is in "the winter of your discontent," his ashtray "full with the push and the pull." During the lilting "Talk Talk Talk," he seeks to recover the time lost to a failing endeavor. Finally, with the closer, "Opportunities," there's a rather downcast pall ("tricking themselves into thinking its meaningless, maybe it is," he sings) and a final declaration: "It's a slow death ahead if we don't get out of here."
The Honored Guests are not only promising change; they're delivering it: Baggett's resolved to never be caught in that anxious trap again, and he's already begun writing for the new album. They've added cellist Elysse Thebner, whose multi-instrumental abilities allow the band to better re-create the sound of the album.
On Please Try Again, amid the layers of handclaps, samples, swelling backing vocals, gauzy keyboards, percolating drums and shimmering guitars, you can hear the travails that rendered it.
Please Try Again is available now from Breakfast Mascot Records. For tour dates and more information about The Honored Guests visit www.thehonoredguests.com. *Bio taken from Chris Parker's article running in the August 25th issue of THE INDEPENDENT.
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