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Friday Full-Length: Misdemeanor, Five Wheel Drive EP

Posted in Bootleg Theater on August 14th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

Maybe you know this one and maybe not. Sweden’s Misdemeanor‘s origins date back to an initial four-song seven-inch that showed up in 1997, but it might be what they did the following year for their second EP, Five Wheel Drive, that they’re most known for. Naturally, they weren’t the first European band to travel to America to record, but they might’ve been the first specifically to do so within the realm of desert-style heavy. In Feb. 1998, the five-piece — the only lineup I could find was vocalist Vera Olofsson, guitarists Jenny Möllberg and Sara Fredriksson, bassist Jenny Lindahl and drummer Mia Möllberg, but I’m not sure if they were all in the band at the time — made the trek to California to work at Rancho de la Luna alongside luminaries like studio co-owner David Catching (earthlings?) and Brant Bjork (the latter ex-Kyuss and then of Fu Manchu).

Not an insignificant journey to cross the Atlantic and the North American continent to put just under 14 minutes’ worth of material to tape, but the results speak for themselves on Five Wheel Drive. The band would track four songs — “Snowballing,” “Gizmo,” “Venom” and “Love Song” — at Rancho de la Luna and take a producer credit alongside those of Catching and Bjork, and further make the most of their time by having the studio’s other co-owner Fred Drake (also in earthlings?) misdemeanor five wheel driveappear on keys for the opener and sign up Slo Burn-era John Garcia for a guest vocal spot backing the chorus in “Love Song.” They were in the studio for three days. Imagine that experience. In 1998.

And again, the EP reaps the reward of their efforts. “Snowballing” is the longest inclusion at 4:21 (immediate points), and begins with a swaggering, fuzzy riff and a post-Kyuss push that shows Misdemeanor as contemporaries of Dozer and Lowrider, but has that added crunch that Rancho de la Luna was able to capture at the time, the melodic vocals carrying smoothly over grit-toned distortion. The title manifests in a building wash of noise at the end that’s either a swirl contribution from Drake — if there are actual keyboards or organ on the song, they’re obscure in the mix — or a guitar effect, but either way it subtly plays off the innuendo in the name of the song.

This leads to “Gizmo,” which is catchier and holds its own tonally, moving a bit faster and with an underlying edge of punk. It’s not quite riot-grrrl aggro, but makes the point well with quick turns on drums and a lean toward its chorus that makes its 3:25 runtime feel equal parts short and sharp in its execution. “Venom” is about the same length (3:22 if you want to be precise) and goes deeper into the grunge aspect of Misdemeanor‘s sound. Especially in the verse, it seems to be more in conversation with the northern end of the Pacific Coast, though it still holds its desert place tonally, and as it crosses the two-minute mark unfurls a surprisingly massive-sounding, did-I-just-hear-that riff for all of a measure before running back into the hook. Noisy and buzzing, they don’t pull back for the verse again as they had earlier, but it’s an effective finish for another efficient run of quality late-’90s heavy rock.

Tucked at the end, “Love Song” is even shorter at 2:49 and welcomes Garcia with a choice central riff and yes-we-like-Kyuss shove through the verse leading to the energetic chorus that he joins, echoing the lines and drawing out the “you” behind the lines “Babe, you know I love you so/And babe, I’ll never let you go” with his trademark flourish. They’re into the hook twice in the first minute and a half, which is fair enough, and a short wah solo follows. Back to the verse, back to the chorus, finish with a charge and that’s it. Structurally, it’s as barebones as Misdemeanor get on Five Wheel Drive — get it? because there were five of them? — but they’re nonetheless able to make an impression through basic songwriting in addition to tone, groove, melody, and the company they’re keeping. Like the EP as a whole, the last component track does a lot more work than it might at first seem.

Five Wheel Drive wound up released in 1999 through original-era MeteorCity, which was then run by Albuquerque, New Mexico, natives Jadd Shickler (now of Blues Funeral Recordings) and Aaron Emmel. Its catalog number, MCY-006, places its between the UnidaDozer split (discussed here) and Spirit Caravan‘s Dreamwheel EP (discussed here). Again, fine company to keep all around. Misdemeanor would have another 7″ out before they released their self-titled debut full-length in 2002, and another as well before 2004’s High Crimes and Misdemeanor, which was their second and apparently final album. A 2005 EP, Stay Away, was released digitally — which at the time basically meant it was posted to MySpace; it’s still there, in that sad abandoned corner of pre-mobile social media, though I wasn’t able to actually make the songs play — and that was Misdemeanor‘s last offering to-date. They have no current online presence to speak of — Facebook, Instagram, website, etc. — and one suspects that like so many bands, they fizzled out.

Fair enough — hey, we’ve all been there — but that only serves to make what they did on Five Wheel Drive feel even more special. A then-relatively-nascent band embarking on what was a once-in-a-lifetime trip together to do what they thought would best serve their music. It’s a beautiful idea, and 21 years after the fact, the work they did stands up stylistically. They’d never get the kind of attention as some of their male contemporaries/countryfolk, but this EP, short as it is, is fueled by such passion that to consider it on any other level would be an injustice.

I’m somebody who believes strongly in the power of sharing music. Obviously. If you know this one, take the reminder and give it another visit. If you are unfamiliar, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to get yourself introduced. Maybe, if you’re up for such a thing, you can chase down a copy of the CD. In any case, I very much hope you enjoy.

Thanks for reading.

So, my father died this week. Monday? Tuesday? Aug. 10, so Monday. I’ve talked a couple times in this space about his health issues over the last couple months, his fall in July and subsequent long hospitalization, emergent dementia, transition to a rehab center, and so on. He was at a place called Weatherwood in Pennsylvania, finally having left the hospital, and reportedly went in his sleep Monday morning. About 40 minutes before I got that call, I had been on the phone with someone else from the facility and asked how he was doing. “About the same,” was the response. He was dead at the time. So it goes.

My response, for the record, to being told: “Fascinating.” Spock would be proud.

We did not get along. Ever, really. He was 40 when I was born, and as he once told me, too tired for a second kid from an unintended pregnancy, which I was — the irony of my own inability to produce biological offspring is not lost on me. I am thankful The Pecan does not have to carry my genetic baggage.

But my father. Ultimately, he was a man who despised himself and a long sufferer of mental illness, never able to put himself in a position to do the work of healing from his abused childhood. Knowing that might have made him a more sympathetic character in theory, but it hardly made him easier to be around. He was a zealot Catholic and a bigot, and abusive in his own, non-physical manner.

He and my mother split up in 1995 but never divorced so he could remain on her medical insurance. At the end of his life, I was the one of my family who had the most direct contact with him, and as such, I have been spending most of this week in touch with his sister and her husband in North Carolina, where he lived before deciding in his decline to move to senior housing in Allentown, PA — he hadn’t moved yet, but fell while staying with a friend — and sorting out the particulars of his burial with a funeral home. He’ll be buried in PA. No service, both because of the firelung pandemic and because he wished it.

I’ve certainly written his obituary in my head many times. Many times. In the last few months, even. I reserve the right in the next couple weeks to post something of the like. Whether or not I actually get there probably depends on time, which is in short supply as ever.

To wit, The Pecan is up and will want retrieving momentarily. The urgency of a dirty diaper.

But that’s been my week. There is a kind of preternatural upset that comes with his death, but I wouldn’t say I’m in mourning or struck by grief. The Patient Mrs. lost her father, with whom she did not speak, a couple months ago and felt the same way. I’ve done my time mourning the fostering relationship we didn’t have when I was a child and the friendship we never developed as adults. He loved me in his broken way. The lesson has always been who not to be.

Great and safe weekend.

FRM.

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