The One Heart Army is back on the field this week, with Playboy Spaceman unfurling its standards and releasing its newest album, “And His Father.” The Juneau-based rock band will be holding a release party at the Rockwell Ballroom in Juneau on Saturday, July 9.
Throughout its entire length, “And His Father” is a serious album, but avoids becoming maudlin, despite the recurring themes of causality, legacy, and bereavement. Front man George Kuhar — working in partnership with his wife Bridget Kuhar, Simon Taylor, Jason Messing, and Nickolas Wagner — has put together a collection of songs that reflect a darkness which eschews nihilism and instead embraces absurdism and love, even when all other lights have gone out.
Death is an ever-present companion during the journey through this record, though it functions more as guide than a shadow. On “Anthology,” Kuhar narrates a dying man’s last words, “Don’t name your children after me, don’t pay my memory any creed, don’t write me down in history, when I die throw me out to sea.”
Not all of the tracks on the album are uniform in tone. During the middle — especially “If You Touch Something,” with its oscillating Talking Heads sensibility, and “Taking The Easy” with its copious cowbell — the band creates a space for playfulness amidst the gloomier musings. There are also consequences for interacting with something you’re not supposed to touch/want/say, a stark reminder of the tacit rules of the social contract. It’s unclear if the ponderings in “These Modern Times” are a lamentation of a past world that is lost, or a warning against a future we should work together to avoid (“Everyone gets the operation, and nobody knows what they’re paying for…”).
A few of the tracks on the new album will be familiar to anyone who has been keeping up with Playboy Spaceman lately. Earlier this year, the band released a free digital EP for “To Be Strong.” They also got together to record a live concert for 360 North, the Alaskan public affairs channel, last February, and premiered a few songs (a recording is available on the website, www.360north.org). Seeing the group play live, however, is a different experience than listening to one of its albums. I have been to Playboy Spaceman shows in several of its incarnations (as well as other projects and experiments by the Kuhars), and there are always added dimensions of spectacle — costumes, makeup, lighting, video projections, flowers, even a dancing pink gorilla that joined the band onstage at the 360 taping. There is also a give and take with the audience, a reciprocal energy loop that joins the room the room together with electricity, like a living bioluminescent siphonophore.
At its heart, the message of “And His Father” seems to be one of collectivism. Much like Playboy Spaceman’s last album, “One Heart Army,” there is a strong sense that this is about an individual’s journey through what is perceived as a solitary path, while at the same time acknowledging that we are just a small part of a larger order. Since they’ve become a five-piece band, the new record displays the group’s cohesiveness, with everyone’s voice and feedback heard. The irony is not lost on hearing the opening track, “This Is My Song,” which joins multiple vocals together during the chorus. This trend continues to the title song, which serves the dual role of anthem and elegy. “I had a dream that I could save myself,” sings George Kuhar, “but then I realized everybody else, I am the body, I am the blood, the living testimony of my father and his father and his father and his father and his father…”
I have been listening to the Kuhars’ music for years now (dating back decades to high school, when I walked around as a surly teenager with Bridget Kuhar on a Walkman cassette), and it has been interesting to hear the evolution of their sound. Although the music is still very much “gospel rock futuristic electronica,” it feels as though Playboy Spaceman has passed the temporal stage of newly sentient robots to a time in which humans are once again becoming hybrid organic machines. “And His Father” is definitely worth your time. Plus, if you grab a ticket to the release party, it comes with a download of the album.
The album release party will be held in Juneau at the Rockwell Ballroom (109 South Franklin Street) on Saturday, July 9, 2016. Doors open at 8 p.m. Playboy Spaceman will be joined on stage by local duo Whiskey Class. Advance tickets can be found on the band’s website at www.playboyspaceman.com, and include a digital copy of “And His Father.” Playboy Spaceman will be touring in Alaska following the release party in Anchorage, Healy, and other locales.
George Kuhar in the studio Playboy Spaceman’s used for its most recent album, “And His Father.” They recorded in a collective space for musicians called Peabody’s Monster. Courtesy photo.
The cover of Juneau group Playboy Spaceman’s most recent album, “And His Father.” Their release concert is July 9 at the Rockwell Ballroom. Courtesy image.
