That Punk/Garage/Rock/R&B Band Known As The Pattern

While the music biz struggles to find the appropriate label for the latest trend — is it rock or punk or garage? — most of the bands that have been creating the uproar during the past year are breaking down the barriers that segregate rock from punk from garage and blues and R&B and soul, helping to confuse those scurrying to classify them.

The Pattern — an Oakland quintet whose debut album, Real Feelness (Lookout! Records), was released Sept. 10 — are one of those bands, which also means they're very much their own band.

"Everyone wants to associate themselves with a very scientifically defined, specific genre, even within punk rock. And, to me, that's depressing," frontman Christopher Appelgren said during a recent phone interview. "I've seen it in the fragmentation of punk rock and in the underground scene since I was a teenager in the late '80s and early '90s. ... You imagine later on in life, looking back and going, 'These are my favorite things that I found in my journey in life.' It'd be great if that was somehow not limited to this very specific single sound — seems it'd be very lonely.

"That's what was great about music in the '60s," he continued, "and shows where you'd had Ravi Shankar and Taj Mahal and The Doors all playing together, where it forced people's minds to stay open. And that stays with you and [gives] you this larger landscape to traverse later on in life."

The Pattern's R&B-ish, boogie-woogie punk-rock 'n' roll isn't easy to pin down. But nonetheless it shouldn't be long before the media build a box to put them in. In fact, the category already exists — it's just the barcode that's missing.

Following a recent UK tour that flipped on the English press' "hype this band" switch, The Pattern are currently being lumped in with the movement led by The Strokes, the White Stripes and The Hives — who actually all have dramatically different sounds. The group finds the association simultaneously disheartening and advantageous. "The problem is it's limiting," Appelgren said, "because [when] you make music that expresses yourself, and it's defined in stylistic terms and in connection with the trend, or perceived trend, in music, then it can be a little bit depressing.

"We had a review [that] says something about me ripping off the lead singer from The Hives and our music being derivative of them," he continued. "But, historically and in terms of the timeline of each [band] and how we've been performing and where we come from, it just doesn't bear out to be true. So, [it's] a little bit depressing when you have to contend with that. But at the same time it does give you the opportunity ... having been in bands that have not fit in specific genres very well before, I can see that there's a plus side too. It's just a shame when it's used to break down or degrade what you're doing."

Appelgren is happy about the current rise of "underground" music. "What I'm excited about is that there are [some] really great bands that are getting played on mainstream radio," he said. "I love a lot of what is becoming popular now — a lot of stuff that is popular is just horrible to me too, but I love what The Hives are doing. I like The Strokes a lot, I think their record is beautiful and incredible and just amazing. So, I have no problem with that at all. I don't mind. If that means rock is back, that's great.

"I'm not a snob about being part of the underground," he continued. "I was never like, 'Oh, I'm excluding the rest of the world 'cause I'm in a special club.' I was part of the underground because that's where I found something real that spoke to me and my experience as a human being, artistically and musically."

As president of the East Bay punk label Lookout! Records (perhaps best known for releasing several Green Day albums before the group moved to a major and hit the jackpot) and the former singer for The Peechees, Appelgren has had his finger on the pulse of the underground music scene for quite some time.

If The Pattern — Appelgren, guitarist Andy Asp (former Nuisance lead), bassist Carson Bell and drummer Jym Nastic (previously of Black Fork) — were to end up on the cover of, say, Rolling Stone, Appelgren thinks the band would keep a level head. "I believe that I would make sure, whatever we get, we get on terms where we maintain our respect for ourselves," he said. "That's the most crucial thing that we have to be afraid of losing. There are fundamental things that are important to me, for myself, that I wouldn't jeopardize. My experience dictates that I wouldn't do something stupid, and ambition isn't necessarily stupid, but it does breed stupidity."

Gaining a following for their notoriously wild live sets and impassioned, furious sound, The Pattern have ignited a fast-spreading buzz over their new long-player, which follows up last year's release, a collection of singles dubbed Immediately. "Real Feelness is definitely a growth from Immediately," Appelgren said. "It's a lot more substantial; we took a lot more time and thought about it more. With Immediately, it's about what its name was — it was simply conceived from a burst of our initial inspiration and energy. And I love it for what it is and I love the way it sounds.

"But we didn't want the same thing for our album, because an album is a different kind of a statement," he went on. "I like the way that the two things work as companion pieces to each other. The sounds on Real Feelness are a little softer, and it's got more depth of sound sonically. My hope is that people don't take that as less exciting or less raw. [We didn't buy into] 'OK, if it sounds fucked-up, then it's gonna be intense and exciting.' We wanted it to hopefully achieve some real excitement and some real intensity and true drama — not based on just the production settings."

Combining British Beat and soulful grooves with punk snottiness and rock 'n' roll dirt and grit, Real Feelness is a high-energy, swaggering, attitude-drenched record of tunes to get the party started. Produced by Alex Newport (known for his work with Icarus Line, At the Drive-In and Mars Volta), the album is also crisp, driving and forcefully powerful.

Appelgren said he put a lot into the lyrics. "I went and rewrote all the lyrics to the songs that were gonna be on the album," he said. "This idea came to me that I really wanted to make sure that I was clear with my intent with the lyrics; that I was satisfied with the words and the way that they expressed the ideas.

"My original ideas and sketches for the songs were a little bit more simple, a little bit more reactions to the music," he continued. "Then when I went back and rewrote them, they were more cerebral and calculated. I think our band, on the superficial level, is a certain kind of experience where it's fun and lively — more of an explosion. But I wanted it to have a second intent, personally, with the lyrics. So, there's a more cerebral element there to be discovered."

Appelgren said his words are born out of both an appreciation for '70s conceptual-style songwriting and punk-rock angst. "I feel like my lyrics fall into a place where they're somewhere in between the weird allegory story songs of like the '60s and '70s, which is an idea of the kind of lyrics I try to write," he explained. "But I can't totally escape the ghetto of punk rock and '80s and early-'90s emo where you can't help but preach to yourself and your friends and try to tell a lesson in a very plain way. I somehow mix those two things together.

"I'm very subconscious about my lyrics, and sometimes what I end up doing is making them a little more obscure, using little personal codes for myself," he continued. "I like doing that, 'cause I think it creates interesting phrases and ideas and visual imagery."

Appelgren said the lyrics are fairly straightforward. "A lot of the concepts for the record and for the songs are fundamentally simple," he said. "They might be about just a moment. Like, 'Fragile Awareness,' the first song on the record, is about a moment of doubt in a relationship where maybe you don't really know what you're doing or how you got to where you are. And the next song after it, 'You Are You,' is a song about self-destructive tendencies, but like trying to write it as an allegory, using characters.

"The weird thing about the lyrics I write is sometimes there's a specific idea, but there's also a specific place in relation to that idea," he continued. "And that's the hard thing to convey when you're explaining, 'Oh, this song is about this,' 'cause you're not always conveying a sense of place or sense of relationship between concept and circumstance. It's weird, because this does range further than what I think are people's expectations for our band, or think is charming about our band.

Appelgren wants to leave the songs open to interpretation. "I don't want to hide the meanings of these songs," he said. "I wanted them to be clear. But, at the same time, I'm not going to absolutely unravel what these things are for [listeners]. And I'm not gonna explain away the discovery. I much prefer someone to try to engage me or guess about the meaning of the song than to give them some definitive meaning."

"The Best Hate the Rest" alludes to a common creative paradox, which many should find easy to relate to. "I think when I do something artistic, you feel like it's a struggle to not be [like] the rest, but it's also a struggle to be the best while doubting that you are the best," Appelgren said. "And that's what the song is about. It's a struggle to say something about who you are that is true, but that's also beautiful and valid and important.

"And also about not being able to do that for fear of failure," he added. "That fear of failure lives very close to me, and I felt it a lot growing up and being a teenager. It almost turns into resentment toward the world and towards how unfair the world can seem."

While the group would like to be a success, Appelgren said making music is its own reward. "It's a very a satisfying form of expression," he said. "I really feel like I have something to say and communicate; something individual."