If the overly background-music-esque landscape of indie rock symbolizes buying a condo and going to grad school, then the wind-tunnel guitar assault of Evil Beaver is the old Times Square. Drink down a Schafer Beer in the street then stumble into show world.
“There is definitely a strong metal influence because we all grew up in the Midwest,” lead singer and bassist Evie Evil said. “It’s subconsciously reflected in the way I write music.”
Evil Beaver started out five years ago as a duo, with Evie on bass and Garry Beaver on drums (the rock persona aspect of the band absorbs their former last names). As the songwriting evolved, so did the size of the band. Pleased to Eat You, the band’s second album on tiny indy Johanns Face, comes closer to the band’s sonic live shows.
“As far as the music, my personal taste is to blow people’s heads off,” Evil said. “To this day, I’m still perplexed by my own lyrics, but several songs on the new recording definitely come from gut wrenching, personal places.”
Producer Dave Trumfio, who has given his signature shiny-but-grimy sound to Hole and Wilco, produced both Beaver releases.
In major markets like Chicago and L.A., Evil Beaver T-shirts and underwear have more buzz than the band’s music. Evil is proud the band’s logo has become a fashion statement representing female sexual assertiveness and de rigeur for chicks who want to look like they could mop concrete with a man’s face and still get a second date. “It’s a real empowering phrase to women,” she said.
The early ’90s saw a spate of hard-rocking alternative bands fronted by women and breaking the stereotype of reflective creative-writing-oriented girls traveling around to coffeehouses with acoustic musings about post-feminist women. While the snarl and raspy vocals of Evie Evil both owe a bit to the likes of Jennifer Finch of L7, Evil Beaver is more stoner revelry than statement.
Its place in the current music scene is among a new set of whiskey-swigging bands that represent an emerging longing for real Dionysian, Robert Plant with his shirt-open guitar rock. The Darkness would be the most prominent, Coheed and Cambria would be a post-modern variation on that theme. Other than these two, the rest in that category just happen to be fronted by women. Betty Blowtorch, Nashville Pussy and the Bell-Rays are all smaller-venue-playing examples.
What differentiates Evil Beaver, especially on Eat You, is the lack of shtick and conscious connecting of Black Sabbath throb and hair-metal wail to more recent low-fi sensibilities.
As far as the history of rock and making counter-culture statements, Evil feels that even when the lyrics are oblique, the group experience of live shows makes music an effective soapbox. “Even if you have one person on a stage speaking, what that guy is saying is going to be felt more deeply in a room of 500,” Evil said.
Evil Beaver has had the opportunity to speak its mind with bombast, feedback and throbbing bass as an opening band for the White Stripes, the reformed Pixies and Steve Albini’s Shellac. Many bands that tilled the soil for Evil Beaver’s sound are fans and personally asked the band to tour with them. “I’m not living in any million-dollar house, but the bands we’ve played with — the things they’ve done — is the fulfillment of a dream,” Evil said.
Writing heavy music is a process that Evil says “involves heart and soul — it’s visceral.” She sees the minor return of metal (witness Motley Crúe’s recent tour success) and revival in the melodic, stone quarry sound as answering to what she feels is “this inherent need people have to just rock out.”
Currently on a West Coast tour, Evil Beaver plays Madison’s High Noon Saloon May 9 before heading to Europe for international negotiations made with loud-amped sweat and cans of beer crushing beneath stomping feet.
In the United States and Europe, with the band’s fan base growing, Evie sees her diplomacy turned up to 10 as she is successfully getting more people to experience Evil Beaver.
Correction: Due to a reporting error, this article should have said that Evil Beaver was started by Evie Evil in 1999 and should not have said the name was derived from both frontrunners’ last names. We regret the error.
