Receptions for Milwaukee bands don’t get much warmer than the one that Space Raft received. There was no one reason why the local music scene embraced the group so enthusiastically right out of the gate. The band had an impeccable pedigree, with members who’d done time in esteemed acts like Call Me Lightning, Temper Temper and Mystery Girls, so they arrived with built-in good will. They also had a killer live show from the get-go, which always helps. And then they delivered the kind of undeniable knockout single that’s historically evaded even many of the city’s biggest live draws: “We Are Not Alone,” a sing-along summer jam of the sort that makes you want to throw your arm around a stranger out of sheer joy.
So Space Raft did everything right, even before they proved that “We Are Not Alone” wasn’t a fluke with a stellar self-titled debut LP on Dusty Medical Records in 2014. But, as singer/guitarist Jordan Davis admits, they also happened to be in the right place at the right time.
“You could be in a really awesome band for years, but if it’s not the right time people just might not be ready for it,” he says. “We were lucky to have lightning strike for us at a time when people were ready and their ears were open.”
Space Raft came onto the scene at a time when there weren’t a lot of big-ticket local bands playing the kind of unpretentious, inclusive rock ’n’ roll that this city has always had an appetite for, and the city responded. Their album received glowing write-ups from every local publication of note and their singles rang out on local radio all year while the band played one prominent local show after another. It all almost seemed too easy. But with those accolades came a lot of pressure.
“We finished the first record, the reviews started rolling in and everybody seemed to like it, which was all very encouraging, but then I found myself in this existential dilemma of, ‘Now what?,’” Davis recalls. “It was probably the record I’d made that was the most received in my life. You get somewhere and people acknowledge it, then it’s like, ‘Now I have to do one better?’”
Some of those anxieties inevitably crept into the band’s sophomore album, Rubicon, which is every bit as infectious as its predecessor yet stacked with songs about sleepless nights and self-doubt. “Walking in the winter sun / Ask myself, ‘Where do we go from here?,’” Davis sings over dizzying psychedelic organs on “Disconnection Notice,” before the song gives way to a guitar freak-out. Where the sci-fi fantasias of the band’s debut offered a sense of escape, Rubicon is grounded in cold, hard reality. The bleakest song the band’s ever written, “Red Arrow” offers an outraged account of the Dontre Hamilton shooting and the failure of justice that followed. “Our institutions seem to have failed us one more time,” Davis sings. “I hear them crying, ‘How can you just stand by?’”
Like its predecessor, Rubicon was recorded with Howl Street Recordings’ Shane Hochstetler, though Davis says this time the writing process was quite different. Much of Space Raft’s debut was conceived before the band was even formed, from music Davis started writing for a scrapped film project, but Rubicon was more of a group effort, written with the band’s strengths in mind.
“There’s a lot musically I can do with this band that I was never able to do with other projects,” Davis says. “Everybody in this band is supremely talented, so I feel very confident introducing material and about my ability to introduce ideas or get them across. I work really hard as a songwriter, but my songs would not be as good without those guys propping them up. So as a songwriter they’ve really enabled me to take more chances, to go out on a ledge a little bit.”
Rubicon is out April 15 on Dusty Medical Records. Space Raft play an album release show on Saturday, May 7 at Mad Planet at 9 p.m. with Midnight Reruns, Phylums and Platinum Boys, but first they’ll play as part of Turner Hall Ballroom’s Milwaukee Day 2016 celebration on Thursday, April 14 at 6 p.m. They’ll also play a live edition of WMSE’s “Local/Live” at Club Garibaldi on Tuesday, April 19 at 6 p.m.
