WILD LIKE CHILDREN

Why look to London for a summer soundtrack? Tilly and the Wall have cooked one up in our backyard.

“It’s really nice to be able to get your emotions out instead of having to worry about punching somebody in the face,” says Neely Jenkins, Tilly and the Wall’s insouciant, side-swiped-banged singer, with a laugh. “It’s like, you know what, I’m just going to write a song about you.”
    She’s referring to “Pot Kettle Black,” a fight song injected with a slapstick solo (“Oh my god. Did you hear her?/ About that bitch/ Uh-uh. What a ho”) on the Omaha quintet’s third, technically untitled, album. (At press time, it’s dubbed O for the artwork that will go inside the oval-shaped frame). “It’s sort of tongue-and-cheek too ’cause I definitely talk about people. I feel like gossiping is sort of an ancient tradition used to pass down stories; it’s a bonding thing with your girlfriends,” Jenkins explains. “Yeah it really is,” heartens Kianna Alarid, the band’s sparklier vocalist with a platinum blonde bob and “Madre” tattoo. “Thankfully we each have two girls who will listen.”
    There are lots more of us giving ear to the beguiling Midwesterners (rounded out by tap dancer Jamie Pressnall, guitarist/singer/Jamie’s husband Derek Pressnall, and keyboardist Nick White), so it’s hard to imagine who would shit-talk Tilly and the Wall to begin with. When the flagship band on Conor Oberst’s Team Love label released Wild Like Children (2004) and Bottoms of Barrels (2006), they carved out a niche in indie rock for hand-clapping and tap-dancing percussion, spandex and sequined ensembles, and lyrics with enough exclamation marks that the most dispirited of shoegazers couldn’t help but crack a smile.
    The Tillies aren’t fighters, but in “Pot,” they attack us with familiar, spirited antics: crashing cymbals, Riot Grrrl-esque pep-rally yells, and a ten-person stomp group. “We play around with taps so much in the studio; this was like, what can we do to make that sound way bigger?” says Jenkins. “We actually recorded it in Neely’s old school gym. Jamie was up in the bleachers, we were down on the gym floor,” adds Alarid. Is a “Smells Like Teen Spirit”-inspired music video to come? “Yeah!” they answer in unison. “That would be insane! We should do that…”
    Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that all three ladies are former schoolteachers that they can command your full attention. Live, they line up in a row like a fun-loving family act—Alarid in a fluoro ’80s romper, Jenkins accessorized by bells and tambourines, and Pressnall tapping her heart out in a tutu. But it’s no gimmick. The new record rolls and tumbles—Tilly revisit their tried-and-true idiosyncrasies like layered Latin horns (“Cacophony”) and boy-girl call-and-response choruses (“I Found You”). Producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley), who mixed the last two Tilly albums, but tracked with the band this time, stylized ’50s tack pianos in “Jumbler” and xylophones in fuzzy, synth-tinged centerpiece “Chandelier Lake.” A standout dance track is “Falling Without Knowing,” in which honeyed vocals and harmonic breakdowns create a Sleater-Kinney meets Pat Benatar atmosphere.
    “Oh my gosh! My cousin emailed me the other day…” erupts Jenkins. “He goes, ‘I was listening to Pat Benatar’s “We Belong” and you should cover that, that’s such a Tilly song!’”
    Not so Tilly in the Wall is the electro-inflected pop jewel “Beat Control,” that the band released on seven-inch vinyl and as an iTunes single this past spring. In the trippy music video, Alarid— amidst hippies and hieroglyphics—sings classic club lyrics: “Let the beat control your body/ Come on we can rock this party/ All night long.” Church organs and crunchy arcade game samplings call to mind CSS, actually, who the band toured with last year.
    “I think it’s cool because everyone brings what they want to the band. Once there’s a song started, it’s like, what if we added this or added that, so it takes on a new life,” explains Jenkins, then adds, “But we live in the same city so it’s not all that surprising that a lot of the time we’ve got the same things happening.” From sharing song writing duties to having outré art-punk collective Ssion direct a music video, touring the globe but returning home to tutor kids, get married, and hold open calls for their album cover art, Tilly and the Wall at once cradle the heart of America and have danced their way out of it.


SAMANTHA GILEWICZ

This story was published on June 1, 2008.