THE SCENE
Outsiders who fit in
By David Wildman, Globe Correspondent, 11/29/2001
"Oh my God! You have the cassette? That is so embarrassing!"
Medea Connection drummer Tanya Paglia sounds as if she can't decide whether to be amused or mortified. I've just informed the Boston band, which also includes guitarist Daniel Brockman and, since last year, bassist Steve Farmer, that I still have its first tape, made four years ago.
Far from an auspicious debut, the muddily recorded four-song cassette of thrashing, New Wave-inflected metal provided a glimpse of an outfit whose artistic ambitions outstripped its then musical limitations - not necessarily a bad thing. Although Brockman facetiously compares the self-titled tape to "Y Kant Tori Read," singer-songwriter Tori Amos's notoriously hideous debut - on which she rehashed bad hair-metal riffs and saccharine Paula Abdul pop - it shows how far the band has come.
"The Bell Ringer," the group's third full-length CD (and its first for Boston's Curve of the Earth label), is a dark labyrinth of moods and textures that veers from dense and pummeling (the Husker Du-ish "Spectral Halos") to contemplative and majestic (the Sonic Youth-esque "Serpentine Walls"). At times, the music even threatens to consume Paglia's and Brockman's fantastical lyrics about truth, time, love, and mortality. The band celebrates the CD at the Middle East Dec. 1.
Early on, the MC's dramatic stylistic shifts got quizzical looks. After all, the band took its name from the Greek myth of Medea, an outcast whose relationship with her husband and children was problematic at best. Paglia says Medea "was the ultimate outsider and that was something we could identify with." Says Brockman: "We'd play on bills where we were either the most evil-sounding band, or we'd play with these experimental art bands where we'd be the only one that played actual songs. So we'd say `What's wrong with us?' "
Brockman's cover artwork for the band's albums, depicting a surreal cosmos of winged stallions, star-spangled planets, and Medea herself, adds to the mystique surrounding the enigmatic group. The illustrations are meant to evoke the golden era of panoramic gatefold covers (remember all those old '70s Yes and King Crimson sleeves?).
Even something as conventional as getting married - which Brockman and Paglia did last May - was given a Medea twist. Two songs on "The Bell Ringer" were composed for the wedding. Farmer was awarded a special musical job: He banged a gong as the couple were introduced
What's in store Hip-hop trio Anti-Pop Consortium drops by Other Music Harvard Square (90 Winthrop St.) tonight at 6 for a freebie before headlining T.T. the Bear's.
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