IQEQ's 'Loco/motive'
ROSE DEMENT
Culture Writer
Issue date: 3/10/08 Section: Culture

IQEQ's second album, "Loco/motive," is a progressive rock/alternative release that fuses styles from a plethora of genres.

IQEQ mixes heavy riffs into quieter jazzy moments with Sublime-like elements of beachy sounding pop-rock.

This album flirts with bits of physcadelic rock, reggae and blues, thereby giving diversity to this Boise band's collection of songs.

Mainly mellow vocals with a few heavier moments and interesting imagery make up the majority of Thomas Kershaw's vocal style on this collaberation.

Each of the members (Kyle Letne, Dan Mcmahon and Nate Paradis) also contribute their voices to some extent on the album.

On parts where more than one voice is heard at the same time the harmonies often give an ethereal quality to slower hypnotic phases.

Kershaw explained the meaning of the band's chosen name, "Well there's the obvious intelligence quotient equalization, but there's a few [interpretations]. If queens ever quantified, if quantity equaled quality and my favorite: if questioned exit quickly."

He also said that IQEQ uses bigger musical ideas than his introspective side project.

Dan McMahon's alternate strokes of clarinet, synths and piano add interesting textures to the band's songs.

His piano and clarinet playing range in tone and mood from a

romantic, Old World Italian feel to the improvisational tone of a blues saxist.

Energetic drums and bass work together well on this album, giving the more obscure pieces of its faster tracks a danceable quality.

Main percussionist Nathan Paradis shines in his very subtle volume dynamics and build ups. He seems to have a good sense of where less is more.

Bassist Kyle Letner adds spunk to the quartet and also contributed in the writing of the album's most ecclectic track, "Conversations at the Dinner Table."

This also mixes spoken words with suspenseful musical ambience in the background of a voice and tone reminiscent of Jim Morrison's vision of apocalypse.

"We call it progressive garage jazz, [but] our music's pretty hard to describe actually. The last album is more conceptual, but after we finished it we decided we wanted to make another one, right now," Kershaw said. "We all had songs and decided to go with them. This album is kind of a hodge-podge of everyone's ideas. The only song we really collaberated on is the title track, 'Loco/motive.'"

Jazzy grooves stray off onto dramatic tangents within many of this album's songs.

An experimental approach to structure is employed at the instrumental climaxes.

These sections sound chaotic and dissonant in moments, as if multiple solos are being played silmultaneously and vying for the lead.

What works about these trippier points of the album is that amid the polyphonic confusion the auditory spotlight shifts to each instrument and player.

Blues and jazz fans may appreciate the unexpected harmonies, while some more pop-oriented listeners may feel these periods of dissconnection linger a bit too long from the rest of the song.

Either way, it adds originality to "Loco/motive" and always reels itself back in toward the catchy, more homophonic melody it sprang out of.

After some thought, Kershaw said, "If I was asked to choose one lyric to summarize our philosophy it would be the part in the song 'Loco/motive' that says, 'it all must grow and change and turn and burn, it's all the same since the beginning, until the end, until we're gone.'"

He continued to describe more of the meaning behind the words he writes by explaining his views on the simalarity between beauty and truth.

"Even horrible, horrible things are beautiful because they're true, it's real. It's what is life. People with drug addictions and whores and stuff ... it's ugly but it can still be art. Because there's a dark side to everything," Kershaw said.

Check out IQEQ on MySpace at www.myspace/iqeq, or at the in-store performance on April 4 at The Record Exchange.


- thanks Rose!