Spider Bags
“Sure, you’ve heard bands like Spider Bags before; on first contact, you’d swear they were some half-remembered mid-1990s band that got lost in the college-radio shuffle among the Silver Jews, the Grifters, and Ass Ponys. But it’s been an awful long time since you’ve heard a band pull off this sort of southern-fried slop-pop with such charm, craftiness, and self-deprecating wit.” – Pitchfork (7.6/10)
“We need more bands like Spider Bags” — Popmatters (8/10)
“Every once in a while a band like Chapel Hill’s Spider Bags will debut with a record so good it makes me realize I’ve been way too generous with everyone else. A Celebration of Hunger (Birdman) is just the sort of thing I should be holing my hosannas for: a filler-free collection of openhearted, empty-bottled country rock fueled by bitterness and scalding wit.” – Chicago Reader
While the trajectory of some musical projects is painstakingly thought out, Dan McGee’s Chapel Hill-based Spider Bags came together in a series of happy accidents. Coming down to North Carolina in 2005 to record the band’s debut album A Celebration of Hunger with producer Brian Paulson, McGee developed a liking for the Tar Heel state. Upon losing his job as a truck driver in New Jersey, he came back to the Triangle, planning to remain about a week before driving west to parts unknown. “I didn’t have to work,” he says. “I just had to pretend like I was living in New Jersey. I was milking the state of New Jersey, so I could drink and write.”
But then everything changed for the vagabond. He met and fell in love with the woman that is now his wife. Suddenly settled, McGee invited down his longtime friend and frequent bandmate Gregg Levy to come make Spider Bags happen. And make it happen they have. A constantly evolving emulsion of dirty, but meticulously produced garage rock paired with countrified N.J. nihilism, the Bags are a bruised and bloodied bar band that’s also refreshingly intelligent. “It’s just rock ‘n’ roll music,” McGee says. “I love rock ‘n’ roll music. I love doing it. I love making it with my friends.”
Brimming with raucous energy and expanding the Bags’ sonic pallet into new territory, the 7-inch singles the band has been pumping out since last year’s Goodbye Cruel World, Hello Crueler World are a testament to their talent and ingenuity. And the new “Take It Easy Tonite” single continues the trend.
The A-side is based on the band’s tendency to party a bit too hard on tour. Every time the Bags pull in late to a town, they agree to “take it easy tonight.” It never works out that way. “By the time we get to the bar, you’re not taking it easy anymore,” McGee says, recalling drunken nights and minimal sleep. “It sounded kind of fun to write a hard-rocking pop song around the idea of ‘taking it easy.’” Mixed for over a month, the song is a dense, guitar-driven piece of psychedelic pop-rock with myriad layers and textures to explore. “I wanted it to be one of those things where you could just smoke a joint and lay down and listen to it and be like, ‘What is that? I didn’t hear that last time,’” he explains.
Similarly psychedelic, B-side “Shonda“ is a collaboration with the Bags’ good friends The Golden Boys. On tour together, the two bands stopped in Omaha, Neb. for a quick overnight recording session. The results formed the bulk of The Golden Boys’ 2009 LP Thee Electric Wolfman, but some songs ended up unused. This cut features the Bags backing up the Boys’ Bryan Schmitz for a late-night rock ‘n’ roll slow-burner. Heaped with overdubs including backwards drums and additional reverbed vocals, it’s a singeing breath of strung-out fire that’s sure to leave a mark.
Click here to buy “Take It Easy Tonite” from the Churchkey Records online store.
