Styling themselves “America’s Local Band” and committing to the bit with every fiber of their collective being, Cheekface (originally local to LA) have charted a path that by now has seen them visit a slew of major junctions in this country which they’ve designated their transcendental hometown. Finding themselves in the footsteps of great so-designated “talk rock” artists, what began as a project not even guaranteed to see the light of day found an eager following for songs that, often in uncomfortable levels of specificity, catalog the absolute weirdness of existing in the current moment. A trio of albums on from those uncertain origins, the band has its own fan demonym, co-signs from notable critics, and a must-see sing-along live show that is as like as not to include some form of baked good making it to the front of the stage.
Formed primarily of singer-guitarist Greg Katz, bassist-vocalist Amanda Tannen, and drummer Mark “Echo” Edwards, they’ve recently recruited a fourth member in Alex Johnson of Why Dogs Why to help the band incorporate more instruments in live performances. While the band centers around Katz’s rapid-fire vocal delivery, selling every ounce of neurosis he puts forth about therapy (a lot) and the politics of quinoa (only once thus far, I think), their music is generally equally as uptempo. With this anxiety-driven danceability, Cheekface could share a bill with just about anyone, and recently toured with the likes of Jeff Rosenstock, finding commonality in their self-effacing, darkly comic, yet earnest songwriting. Their style has a legacy here in Boston, too: while there’s a bit of Malkmus or James Murphy in his delivery, Jonathan Richman of The Modern Lovers comes to mind as a principal forebear to Katz’s demeanor.
Their set begins with ‘Eternity Leave’ from their debut Therapy Island, which is an apt choice considering that even in its brief length it exemplifies the nature of an “original Cheekface composition”. That phrase is repeated by Katz throughout the night, and has also snuck onto the streaming pages of their last two albums, possibly a bespoke imprint of Katz’s New Professor Records. The song has one-off quips designed to get a laugh and remain enduringly quotable, but simultaneously provides a commentary on life that tosses out a retinue of touchstones from the cycles of mundanity to the difficulty of the job market, and the tug-of-war in which people find themselves trying to feel better amid all of it. While not all of their compositions are this short, the band are pound-for-lyrical-pound among the most efficiently potent songwriters around today, compressing eighteen songs (or more, depending on how you count) into a set that doesn’t stretch far beyond an hour’s length. ‘Eternity Leave’ is also an excellent case for Johnson’s addition, whose keys provide a second layer of melody that wouldn’t be possible with just three musicians. Tannen’s bass defines the character of most songs, particularly the oddly-syncopated ones where it pairs with Katz’s voice to give it additional dimensionality when both elements arrive at the exact same time.
The cry of the next song is “Success is cringe – I wanna be on the fringe”, one of many lines that does double duty, played both for humor and as a kind of mission statement for the band. But while Cheekface is certainly possessed of a charming weirdness, the democratized nature of their subject matter, as well as their candor between songs and on social media, might make it hard to stay there. Katz has routinely opened up the band’s Instagram for all sorts of questions from Cheek Freaks; and not only has the band historically been candid online about the nature of the industry, they unfailingly do pro-listener acts like posting set times for each show – a small gesture in terms of character count, but very helpful. (Supposedly “the Doors” open each night of Cheekface’s tour, but I’ve never seen them.)
To spoil much at all of a Cheekface song with a transcription would be an error, but Katz’s writing sometimes builds in some fourth-wall-leaning sections, such as the call-and-response of ‘“Listen To Your Heart.” “No.”’ or the deliberately-cued phone-waving in “Featured Singer’. The band weaves in some of the ‘Cha Cha Slide’ into the latter, a musing on the odd ways songs are manufactured and the strange places they wind up living out their lives in their efforts to make it to listeners’ ears. There’s an abundance of repeated phrases, often carrying across songs, and Katz’s nervous narrations like in the particularly-breathless ‘Pledge Drive’ sell the need for those kinds of constant reassurance. “No one is mad at me!” “Everything is fine!”
There’s odd lore about songs like ‘Next to Me’ – subtitled the “Yo Guy Version” – and a medley sandwiched into ‘Don’t Get Hit By A Car’ that mocks the song’s own “generic chord progression” where Katz conducts the crowd in a round arrangement of The Velvet Underground, John Mellencamp, and Cake; all in addition to their “original Cheekface composition.” ‘Noodles’ becomes vaguely terrifying when the crowd all sings its one mantric phrase in unison, a bit more unhinged with each utterance; and surely Cheekface deserve some sort of recognition for ‘We Need a Bigger Dumpster’ being so catchy despite it containing the word “cough” a literal dozen times in the post-pandemic era.
With the end of the night approaching, Katz states, “This is not the kind of band that plays an encore,” and for a moment talks about the band’s appreciation for Boston’s DIY scene, referencing bands like Piebald, Cave In, and Speedy Ortiz as inspirations they looked to who came out of the area. The band seem genuinely humbled by the community they’ve created out of their own music, and this should come as no surprise: Cheekface exists by working the act of not taking yourself so seriously into an art form; self-awareness, self-acceptance, and maybe a little bit of self-improvement outlined by their thoroughly humanist humor.
Photos and review by Collin Heroux
