The Features Play Funk n Waffles

Something was keeping the hipster
minions away, and the first thought was that the diluted turnout might
have had something to do with the fact that the gig was the same night
as game two of the World Series between the Yankees and the Phillies,
and that the New York faithful might have been in a facility where the
broadcast was airing and the brews were flowing. Then reality dawned
that the hipsters that’d most likely attend typically wear pants
tighter than those of the baseball players, and if anything, there were
hundreds of tardy people out there struggling to zip up. So the World
Series deterrent became an unrealistic possibility.

By 9 p.m., the bands said to hell with
it, and decided to start rocking, and the 40 or so people that had
pants on got their block rocked off by some serious old-school type
garage rock: The Dead Trees from Portland, Ore.; The Whigs—a band that Dave Matthews signed to his ATO Records label in 2006—from Athens, Ga.; and The Features,
rolling out of Sparta, Tenn., and probably the best band you’ve never
heard. The latter two groups have both opened for Kings of Leon
recently—which in a euphonically righteous world would be vice-versa,
as KOL deserve no more print than this here line—and are also regulars
on the Sirius/XM Radio channel “Sirius XM U.” Being that these groups
are at the mouth of the mainstream and have developed a countrywide
cult following, and being that a billing like this is rare for
Syracuse, especially in a hotbed of favorably demographic pretention
that is a university area—especially one the size of SU—it was very
perplexing as to where the would-be crowd was.

The Features are the current buzz band,
and arguably, the best of the bunch. Their current hit “Lions,” off
their new, sophomore album, Some Kind of Salvation (429 Records), released
in September, is one of those tunes that gets stuck in your head on
first listen, but doesn’t suck. It has one of those choruses that you
just love to mumble along to, as it has no words and just a lot of
nonsensical woos and hoos—but that’s what made the type of music
they’re riffing off vagrantly bad ass in the first place. The Features
feed off the same vibe that bands like The Stooges and The Ramones came
to epitomize: all rock and no bullshit.

But where they differ from bands like
that, is that these geeks actually display musical dexterity, and while
their songwriting may be devoid of the lyrical poeticism of, say, Jim
Morrison or Nick Drake, there’s a certain depth to their music one can
appreciate even while going raving mad from the energy of their
performance. The band—with Matt Pelham on lead vocals and guitar, Roger Dabbs on bass, drummer Rollum Haas and keyboardist Mark Bond—weaves a sound that can be described as the rhythm section of Joshua Tree-era U2 takes a melodic dose of Rhino Records’ Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968, while wearing too-tight pants.

The setlist consisted of 12 three-minute bursts of sounds, and were mostly tunes off their new album. (The band’s debut, Exhibit A (Universal),
was released in 2004.) While obviously the drums and the keys remained
stationary, Pelham and Dabbs used every square inch of Funk ‘N Waffles’
confined stage to jump and move to the rhythms of their grooves. And if
it wasn’t for the awkward skinny-dip like “who’s going to jump in
first” all-night-long hesitation amid the coy bundle of strangers, it’d
seem hard to not bounce around the room with the same passion. 

The diminutive Pelham let out some
menacing, screaming vocals along the lines of Nirvana’s “Scentless
Apprentice,” but in the next breath, could calm with the harmless
lullaby comfort a la Blind Melon’s Shannon Hoon, such as in the song
“Whatever Gets You By,” which features a kind of whimsical verse,
before going heavy into a cacophonic, harmony-fueled chorus. The
influences in this band seem to run the gamut of popular music over the
last 50 years, and whereas some bands arrange certain songs to sound
like this-or-that-era, The Features just let the musical pieces they’ve
picked up through the years fall back into place, which is what gives
them an identity all their own, and sets them apart from the rest of
the hacks contaminating the airwaves these days like the KOL. 

The organ was a staple in groups of the
lysergic era, and is rarely seen in most modern bands. That’s a shame,
because when it’s used right, the organ can penetrate unknown territory
beyond the limitations of exclusively strings—think The Doors and
Booker T. and the M.G.’s. And The Features’ Bond finds a way to pattern
his strolls along the keys in a way that doesn’t overstep on the
dynamic of the group, yet delicately gives the music another seamless
texture that rings delightful to the ears. And despite his dorkier—but
probably funnier—Mo Rocca guise, he lets loose like Jerry Lee Lewis on
a steroid rampage during many-a-song, stopping short of wiping his feet
on the keyboard.

Other standout tracks they performed on
this night were the sparse and primitive drum-driven “The Gates of
Hell,” “Big Mama’s Gonna Whip Us Good,” an almost jump-blues punk
ditty, and “The Drawing Board,” which featured the cleverly simple
circular logic chorus that tells the tale of oh-so-many love stories:
“Every time we reach the end/ We just meet back here and do it again.” 

While records seem to be a frighteningly
dying art form, The Features’ new release is an antiquated nod to those
days of future past when listening to an album straight through was an
experience in and of itself—much like reading a fine tome. And if you
get that maudlin feeling to actually purchase a CD/record, you can’t go
wrong with The Features’ newest cut, and hear some of the tunes that
many-a-Syracusan missed their chance to see live.

Turns out there was a reason for the
criminally under-attended scene. Chuck’s Café and Bar—Funk ‘N Waffles’
next door neighbor—was having their Halloween party, despite it being
three days premature of the actual holiday. Waiting to get in their
door was a line about 70 deep—70 percent consisting of dames adorned in
costumes that revealed more skin than your average boner-fide Maxim
magazine. And who could blame the gents for waiting outside to ogle the
trick-or-treat eye candy, instead of standing around watching nerds in
tight pants play some kick-ass music. This review might not have been
had this reviewer been hip to what was going on next door, but the
night was still young…