One gets the sense that Milwaukee’s Sat. Nite Duets aren’t a band that imposes a lot of rules and restrictions on themselves. Over the last couple of years the group has leaped from the grab-bag prog of 2013’s Electric Manland to the tight, bubblegummy garage-pop of this year’s Los DJs EP. The group’s next album could be a world-music rock opera for all we know. But while no sound is off limits, some naturally take precedent over others. With five songwriters tossing ideas around in that group, there’s not a lot of room for leisurely soft songs in Sat. Nite Duets’ queue, prompting band member Stephen Strupp to record a solo album on the side, Danke Für Das Gilt.
“I took the solo route on this one because I had written these softer songs that don't quite fit with Sat. Nite Duets,” Strupp tells the Shepherd. “It also gave me a chance to indulge in some of my ‘acoustic riffs’ and little things that there's no room for on a Sat. Nite Duets album with five songwriters sharing the time.”
That’s not to say Danke completely rips up the Duets’ usual playbook. The record is draped with the expected Pavement-isms (peep the knotty, “Give it a Day”-ish groove of “Care Coordinator”), and Strupp packs his shaggy tunes with cheeky pop culture references, shouting out to ELO and the Harley-Davidson Museum, backseat quarterbacking the Carolina Panthers and dedicating an entire track to a week lost trying to make it through Miloš Forman’s endless historical drama Amadeus. With one songwriting voice anchoring these sessions, though, Danke feels decidedly more personal than the typical Sat. Nite Duets release, the study of one guy and the thoughts that consume him. It’s a bit like Beck’s lo-fi masterwork One Foot in the Grave in that regard, a wistful account of wasted days from a songwriter powerless to stop wasting those days.
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“I would say it's a lot of fall and winter songs,” Strupp says of the album. “Usually I'm a summer guy and I get down when it's cold and gray, so this was an attempt to stay busy and make something out of that instead of just feeling sorry for myself. Not that I'm giving up on feeling sorry for myself anytime soon.”
You can stream Danke Für Das Gilt below.
