americanaUK
November 14, 2006

The Saturday Nights Quaeenslandicus (Independent, 2006)
"Saturday nights all right for listening"

This band is from Chicago and you can feel some of that defiant Shellac sound, some of the heaviness of Amphetamine Reprile bands, though bundled with a pop sensibility, so that songs like Change My Mind suggest, at one moment, sludge and the next, sunshine. They construct 10 minute epics that sound like Galaxie 500 jamming with Joan of Arc, that is jerky narcotic waves of guitar swirling around steadfast vocals, blissed out moments, senses elastic following the guitars into wormholes, more fuzz than the Metropolitan police, shake your head to clear your ears, they still ring with the melodies tucked away hidden in the noise. Sometime sounding like a rockier version of Okkervil River There is a Sign is swooping swoonsome stuff with the guitars alert like crabs eye poles, pivoting buffeted in the current of guitars. They are happy to make you wait 7 minutes paddling through molten lakes of guitar play, for the heat to die down in order to promptly change course and settle into a conventional song structure before it blows and hot ash guitar notes rain down bring The Pragmatician to a marvellous climax. An impressive debut like they will ever sit still.

by David Cowling

Indie Workshop.com
May 16, 2006

The Saturday Nights
Queenslandicus

When it comes to local-level rock, I've got big-time blinders on. I wear huge Boston goggles, my brain crammed with names, faces, stats, clubs, dives, history, bragging, good bands, bad bands, local heroes, fallen stars, and sometimes a song that makes it all worthwhile. It's impossible to feel a city's rock circuit pulse without living there. Unless you can tell someone you might catch their band, and then either not go and feel guilty or actually go and have a blast, you can't really feel it. Or unless you can overhear stories, gossip, politics, or know that the alt-weekly has it all backwards, man. Every once in awhile though, you're treated to a musical gift from a foreign city, offered like a novelty snowglobe or over-sized key or how World Series mayors gingerly agree to eat the opposition's trademark cuisine.

The Saturday Nights are a rock band from Chicago that write pop songs. I read about their 7" single ("Stranded" b/w "Juliana Convince Me", both included on this album) last year, the power-pop allusions appealed, and I mail-ordered it. A few months later this CD was done and I wrote asking for an advance copy, and they sent it. The Saturday Nights are nice fucking guys.

I have no idea how they are situated in the Chicago scene that I know nothing about. They seem to play pretty regularly at solid local rock clubs, maybe over to Indianapolis. They are not metal, overtly arty, folky, country, angular, disco, electro, or trying to get signed to Touch and Go, Drag City or Thrill Jockey. From the sound of things at least, they aren't trying to jump on any trends except rock music with verses, choruses, bridges, and other little tricks that make songs listenable and memorable, played with energy, skill, and emotion. I don't know how long they've been playing in Chicago or in different bands, but they sound like they have some experience behind them. They definitely know how to craft songs in a throwback sense, indeed like mid-tempo power-pop classics and critical touchstones like Big Star and The Raspberries. Too comfortable in their own skin to be written off as retro though. There is a subtle range to their sound, with spiraling, fuzzed out twin guitar solos and a Neil Young & Crazy Horse kind of hooky-yet-heavy crunch, honest vocal harmonizing, concise power-ballads (not ironic) and some stretched out epics. There is the occasional lilting, plaintive Yorke-ism in singer/guitarist Paul Forman's lead vocals. They also tastefully pull a Stone Roses trick on their final track, "remixing" themselves into an extended dance ending. It's a great, not slick but produced effort done by Carl Saff (of Saff Mastering and project The Warmth with Forman). A true Full-Length (50+ minutes actually) from a band that could find fans young or old, hip or otherwise, in any town or city.

They seem to be in pursuit of the perfect song on every song, songs that have been put together with talent, thought and rehearsal space sweat and played with on-stage confidence. Their sound on record is airy and placid, the pace so unhurried and ballad-heavy that it almost seems punk up against masks, laptops, fashion punk/hardcore/disco and animal names. Now they are far from bland local cheeseballs mind you, that truly embarassing kind of bad yet self-important local band or naive songwriter types. They are the kind of band you hope grows into say, a Wilco or at least continues to develop and get noticed. Maybe I'm out of touch but I am kind of surprised this kind of band is still being formed in 2006 and being done so well. Maybe this is the Midwest, in all its stereotypical earnest soulfulness I'm hearing. Of course people still make this music. Of course people still want to listen to albums by rock bands. Right?

- Andy Tefft

Subter
May 2, 2006

Queenslandicus – The Saturday Nights
2006
Self Released

To say that I’ve been looking forward to Queenslandicus for the better part of a year would be a drastic understatement. Truthfully, I’ve been a fan of Paul Foreman’s work since Vinylstar worked their way into my life five years after the band finished their run together. The two debut tracks, which have been available on the band’s website for ages now, hearken back to when rock was a pure entity, the brief glimmer of massive creation that was the Post-Elvis/Pre-Disco era. The ten track LP, Queenslandicus is ripped from numerous facets of this wonderful time, eliciting memories of rock’s bygone eras.

The Saturday Nights, arranged in a traditional four-piece setup, provide music obviously influenced by everyone from the Rolling Stones to the Smiths, to Pink Floyd and with a dash or so of Led Zepplin. The recipe is aided by the Chicago music scene that the band calls home. Fronted by Foreman’s vocals (a union of Morrisey and Cinjun Tate to form a unique entity) and a helping of psychedelic word-craft, the album displays phonic ranges from distorted guitar riffs to tambourines and in the background somewhere, an electric organ haunts the soundscape.
Likewise, the tracks seem to run the genre gamut from the straightforward rock song “Juliana (Convince Me)” to the mod-influenced “Fire in the Hearth” and on towards the albums opus track “The Pragmatician.” The pure diversity amongst the albums selections can either be seen as a boon or fault, but either way, Queenslandicus provides a varied set of tracks with their own set of influences and each stands as an individual homage to a bygone era of rock music.

This album is a self-release, and so supplies are limited. You won’t find it in your local record store, nor on Amazon.com. To purchase a copy of Queenslandicus click here.
Rating - 8.1 out of 10

by P. Bradley Robb

Dusted Magazine
May 9,2006

The Saturday Nights hail from Chicago, a town where a lot of bands do well playing within and around existing frameworks, building a fanbase around the familiar. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this approach to music; this approach happens everywhere. Not every band is going to reinvent music on its own terms, not even a little bit. But you have to look towards what is being re-familiarized; you gotta look at context and the times and places. What plays well, what’s in time for today versus what is timeless.

Last fall, I received a very unassuming, two song 7” single by this band, thrown like drunken darts to members of the press. This wasn’t a managed decision; nobody hand-delivered it to whomever fawns over pop bands nowadays. It was an antiquated idea and I’ll bet they are still pushing boxes of it around, but what mattered was that the songs – “Stranded” and “Julianna Convince Me” – were of a ridiculously high quality, langorously performed with an ear for exquisite detail. Again, for a throwback pop band, detail is everything. This is not the most modern method of offering up a teaser release, but then again, they probably realize that they’re not a modern-sounding band most of the time, either. These songs evoked memories of both classic power-pop (the honey-stung balladry of Big Star, Badfinger, and the Raspberries) and more recent devotees to hazy, good-looking fuzz (Sloan, the Brian Jonestown Massacre). “Stranded” was two and a half minutes of bliss; “Julianna Convince Me” melted on my turntable like warm syrup. I was out one slipmat and extremely intrigued by what, if anything, would follow from these guys, because it is just … impossibly rare to connect with a band this quickly.

Queenslandicus arrived, without label support, in a cardboard sleeve. Self-released and gasping for air, the album delivered on the promise of the single, and the full picture was displayed. Inside its 10 songs is promise fulfilled; a band that presents a sound that is at once original and evocative of nostalgia for other perfect pop, woven together in such a manner that it’s almost impossible to tell where the influences end and the genius begins. You’ve heard bands like Belle & Sebastian, Galaxie 500, Yo La Tengo, Teenage Fanclub, and the earlier solo albums by the Beatles. These are all active, valid jumping off-points within their sound, as are the bands mentioned above. There are many, many bands that would cite those same influences. It’s in the way that the Saturday Nights totally own these sounds that makes them stand far and away from the pack. You won’t get the feeling that you’re listening to some knockoff band that couldn’t write or play without constant affirmations of their talent. Sounds like this are premeditated, but in this case, match perfectly, fit like a velvet glove, and are so charming and debonair, you’ll think you were drugged while listening.

Paul Foreman and Finn Swingley are the frontmen, with Foreman writing seven of the songs here and Swingley picking up the slack. Foreman is responsible for the 10-minute epics (“You Crafty Devil”) and the sticky grenadine waterfalls of colluded psychedelic fuzz (“Catacomb,” “Julianna”). Swingley works more closely; he’s responsible for “Stranded” and the supremely hazy “New Atmosphere,” and his material has a decidedly more vintage, traditional feel to it. Both work, to the point where I would have otherwise assumed that the same person wrote all the songs. The rhythm section of bassist Jason Brammer and drummer Joe Daley hits hard, with deliberate force. It all seems so natural. Production is hot and close, but also has a depth that resonates. (Said depth is important when you’re leaning on buzzsaw guitar effects that you let ring out to Iowa and back.) After years of mostly mastering other people’s records, Carl Saff steps into the engineer and production spotlight like a seasoned veteran, providing analog synth touches and giving these songs just enough gloss.

If bands of this kind want it, there is a world for them in between the loop of just doing it for fun and having their friends’ support, and getting on some Dante Alighieri-model treadmill of hot coals, egged on by some go-nowhere manager who is content to grind the group into dust. This area in between has no glass ceiling, no beginning or end. This is where tiny differences between two bands that sound alike from afar – the differences that separate mediocrity from greatness, one of genre’s most pressing fallacies – come to light. The Saturday Nights are on this path, defying the whims of the public and the fickleness of the market. There really isn’t any other choice for these four guys, and there probably never was. Queenslandicus is a damn near perfect pop album in search of a crowd. I’ll be standing up front.

By Doug Mosurak

Dusted Magazine
January 13, 2006

the Saturday Nights
“Stranded” b/w “Julianna Convince Me” 7”
(self-released)

Winning, innocent power pop lullabies from Chicago that prove beyond all doubts that the genre never died. “Stranded” is the more classic of the two, every note aching for release and with the time-honored arranging styles of past masters such as the Raspberries. It’s a beautiful song, one worth repeating. On the other side, “Julianna Convince Me” rolls along with the confident swagger and loads of guitar noise that Sloan or the Brian Jonestown Massacre are better known for. Shows great promise! Clear vinyl and it came with a nice little 1” badge. Excellent.

www.thetripwire.com
August 10th, 2005

Who are The Saturday Nights? Good question. Their bio is wrapped in vague mystery, talking about how drummer Joe Daley cuts the sleeves off of his sweaters, JB (Jason Brammer) plays bass like Carol Kaye and Paul McCartney, Finn Swingley (real name?) has a mammoth record collection and guitarist Paul Foreman takes Lake Shore Drive to band practice. Informative, not quite, but included with the bio in question was a clear-vinyl 7" with two songs from this unsigned band's forthcoming debut album. I LOVE getting promo vinyl. It's such a nice change of pace from crappy no-art CD singles, so I (of course) put it on right away. What I heard made me smile, not just because the music was good, but because it proved that the wave of great new bands coming out of the city of Chicago is showing no signs of slowing down. A-side "Stranded" commands immediate attention. After a quick acoustic guitar-strumming intro, the song leaps into dreamy pop landscapes with bubble gum trees and candy cane street lights (well... in my head at least). Though there's only four members, layers upon layers of textured sound abound, providing a merry-go-round of profound underground sound that surround the vocals in a fortress of musical dexterity. Just two minutes and thirty seconds long, the indie pop gem ushers in thoughts of The Beatles, Beach Boys, Phil Spector, and heads bobbing back and forth while smiling a lot. The B-side, by contrast, is a lurking, sneaky, sexed-up rock & roller called "Julianna Convince Me". Fuzzed-out guitars, slow pounding drums and wailing guitar solos show that this young quartet has a few tricks up their collective sleeve. I can't wait to hear the rest!
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-Reviewed by Matt DuFour