The Kid stays in the picture.
Indie bands playing
Test Pattern one last time

www.zwire.com - 12/15/05

Like Conor McGuigan, Eric Schlittler follows the age-old indie tradition: If you want something done, you Do It Yourself. When he heard things in his head, he formed a band; when he wanted others to hear his hearings, he started a label; and when he found a contingent of likewisedly-inclined, he put their hearings out there too.

Way Out There.

Kid Icarus is, of course, his band, and Summersteps is his label. The band's moniker's nicked from a classic NES game; the label's named for the seasonal stairway of Eric's old Moscow abode. Initially Kid Icarus was Eric and a revolving door of revealers, now it's morphed into a ready, steady foursome rounded soundly by guitarist Justin Marchegiani, bassist Ted Baird, and drummer Thad Moyer.

Summersteps began as the stamp under which to press the issuances of Eric's Kid; it too has evolved, and now serves both as a refuge for some of Scranton's swellest soundslingers Marshmallow Staircase, Lewis and Clarke and Psychatrone Rhonedakk, among them as well as a forum for the tributary musings to Outsider legend Jandek.

But it is to the Kid that we must first turn. Like indie-alt poster boy Jeff Tweedy, Schlittler's a foremost a fan. And he goes well outta his way to be so, scouring the racks and the stacks and the facts of our melodic existence. Currently purring on his decks are '70s forgottens Judee Sill (an Asylum alum) and Bill Fay (Time of the Last Persecution), Lousiana's-own Quintron (who reportedly come off like a cross between Denny and Jonze), his old pal and hero, Brother JT (he of the very Original Sins), and, yes, Neil Diamond's Rubinified 12 Songs.

The fandemonium is evident in his My Spacing (citings range from Syd Barrett to Sedadoh), it is evident in his hype sheets (nods to Robyn Hitchcock and John Cale), and it is evident in the now-then sound of his playfully acute Kid.
Kid Ic's latest, The Metal West—which btw is hyperimaginatively imaged by a Finstered Miss Cassie Rose Kobeski—high-fidelically follows the lo-fi charm of Summersteps slabs Maps of the Saints (1999) and Be My Echo (2002). Lyrically cast with characters that'd make a Crews man proud, and sinned in enough self-soak to keep Cormac McCarthy an outward-bound solipsist, The Metal West is about as incongruous an offering as beautiful incongruity can beget without whiling away the pure pop sheenery of it all.

Bear witness: "Beekeepers on the Edge of Town" is like The Amboy Duking it out with some psych-screened Gang of Bloc Partiers, trippy, pithy, proto-post neo; the seasonally apropos "A Retail Hell" is a Badly Drawn Belle & Sebastian done to Minutemen proportion; "My Anthracite Headache" is so wondrously Guided By Voices that one would swear it must come from above and could well be Scranton's theme song, though the exalted Chamber might not get the nod of it all; "White Church Road" (this hack'sutmost fave) travels down and breaks up as if Elliot Smith were in the very head of the songster; as does "Field Song and Record," though the latter does so even more melancholically (if that's possible), while the Flamingly-titled "Her Song for Beth and The Sideshow" is like a loopy Liplock around a Moogwamp by Mogwai.

Then there's the tributations. Down In A Mirror (which could well be titled Down in A Minor), like it's predecessor, Naked in the Afternoon, boasts some of indie's most cred-worthies—Moore, Bright Eyes Low, then; Tweedy, Brother JT, the Mountain Goats now—in addition to some of Scranton's finest. Spooky and sad and as far inside the Outside as Daniel Johnston or Roky Ericson (Is it a coincidence that Texas makes for such great inner shakes?), the Jandek tribute is a tribute to a world well beyond just about everything there is to be beyond about.

And a tribute to the fortitude of the man known as Kid. Schlittler's come a long, long way since the heydays when he and his muse-accomplice Miss Cassie Rose left cassette tapes on the floor of New York City record stores. Kid Icarus nabbed Spins Band of the Day back on August 12; where they were plugfully compared to the likes of Pavement and Beck, and scores upon scores of the rabid and ribald are slingin Kids praises. Best: Not only is his stuff now officially available in the racks of the same stores he once floored, but he and his cohorts have been hitting that some of that same big town's most exalted stages.

And of course Kid Icarus does Scranton. If you've seen 'em once, you know enough to see 'em twice, thrice, more. If you haven't yet had the pleasure, well now's the high time. Summersteps Sound Series continues apace this Saturday the 17th at the space soon-to-be formerly known as Test Pattern. On the bill: Doses, Yer Sweet Chimneys, and, slipping in for the incredibly auspicious occasion, the inimitable Brother JT. Whether you come to celebrate the Sound of Scranton or you come to mourn the loss of Scranton's indie friendliest venue, you simply must come. 'Cause if you don't do it yourself, no one else is gonna do it for you.