I-70
Conner are four young guys from Lawrence, Kansas - about thirty miles from Kansas City on Interstate-70. I've been to Kansas, and driven around on those highways, from Oklahoma, to Kansas, to Missouri. It is pretty, in a big-sky, large fields kind of way. But unless you're in one of the bigger cities, there isn't much there. Corn Wheat fields [The Corn fields must have been in Oklahoma... lots and lots of them]. Open Sky. You get the idea, right?
So then, these guys Conner - Bryce Boley on drums, Phil Bonahoom on bass, James Duft on guitar and vox, and Tom Wagner on guitar - make this crazy tight rock music that channels Joe Jackson and late 70s Elvis Costello and the Stones. They've certainly got chops, and Duft's vocals are great. They get compared to the Strokes a bit too, which I can see, sonically speaking, but if it is Strokes, then it would have to be The Modern Age 7" Strokes, before they got so clean and overly-produced. This track has some great guitar work on it too - a little Dinosaur Jr. or Pavement-ish in the second half maybe, and the solo in the last bit reminds me of the new Hockey Night stuff Mark posted a while back - a wicked-tight rock package basically.
Conner's first full-length, Hello Graphic Missile, was released this week by Seattle-based Sonic Boom Recordings, and is thirteen songs worth of fantastic pop-rock. Check out their Myspace page to hear and download a few more songs, and visit the Sonic Boom store to pick up Hello Graphic Missile for a mere twelve bucks, or you can go to iTunes to download a copy. Recommended.