Much
like the suburbs from whence it sprang, Skittish is a bleeding, sweating,
writhing ball of human nature, bursting at the seems, but ultimately suppressed
and packaged in neatly crafted boxes. Songs and suburbs have seedy underbellies
to spare.
Skittish masks every bruise and blackened eye with handclaps and harmonies;
every well trimmed lawn and uber-catchy melody are woven together by subversive
humor and an undercurrent of anarchy. Yes, this is quite ambitious, but anything
less wouldn’t matter. And to matter, in this prepackaged world, is an
admirable ambition indeed.
The 2004 brainchild of recent college graduate Jeff Noller, Skittish breached-birthed its way into the world through a meltdown of other main-stream rock projects. Noller had played in many soulless pop-rock bands during college, but the always vibrant Minneapolis music scene seemed poised for a change of sound. Wanting to do something different, Noller quit his other bands and retreated to his suburban-Minnesota parents’ basement with Protools on a Mac, and some second-hand instruments to record ‘…from my parents basement.’ This collection of quirky songs, and his passionate live shows, gained the one-man-band local notoriety.
Subsequent touring led
to burnout and crisis of faith in music. An application for the Peace Corps
was hastily filled out, and altruistic self-satisfaction slowly set in. But
inspiration, it seems, strikes at the most inconvenient times.
In mid-2005, while waiting to hear back from the Peace Corps, Noller began
writing songs that spelled out a story of innocence lost and regained. The
story of people in bad situations needing a change. The story of a girl that
would do anything to get away, a boy left behind, and the world views that
separated them. In one month, he wrote Tragedy of the Commons. The Peace Corps
would have to wait.
Tragedy of the Commons, taking its name from an Economic-Geography term, is a modern day mix tape of various stories the main character collects on her travels. The different sound of each song reflects a different personality she comes to know. It was written, recorded, and entirely played and sung by Jeff Noller in his basement between the months of September and December 2005.
His beautifully irreverent
arrangements lend their style to songs of deviant love, outcast rallies, and
a rather danceable number about euthanasia. Most of all, Tragedy of the Commons
recaptures the immediacy of youth. When any day could seem like a tragedy
and the harsh pulse of the future stood still, and opened wide, to allow our
every whim to whisk us away under a big, multicolored, bundle of balloons.
Fully committed to music, Noller included his most trusted cohort: a multi-instrumentalist
and award-winning vocalist, Siobhan Meehl from St. Paul.
Together, with bizarre
videos hand crafted by Noller, they make up the bleeding, sweating, writhing
live entity known as Skittish. Independently potent, they stormed the CMJ
charts in 2006, hit the road on a national tour, and received critical acclaim
for their performance at SXSW in 2007.
Rumors of an ambitious double-album and strange new stage shows encircle the
band as they look ahead to ’07-’08 tour dates.
As the protagonist in “Pass the Punch” says: “I don’t
want to be fixed, I just want to be heard.” Tragedy of the Commons exists
so Skittish can be heard.
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