A Call to Arms

Prowler shouts En Garde! You best be at the ready this time.

by A.D. Amorosi

BEWARE PHILADELPHIA: (L-R) Ryan Kerrigan, Tyler Griswald, Keith Greiman, Mike Stazseski and Kat Paffett of Prowler.

When booty-funk ensemble Prowler released Communizzle in 2006, Philadelphia should've thrown 'em a parade worthy of Hamels and Howard. The local rump-shaking electro quintet achieved what few Caucasians, maybe only LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture, have since the '90s: combined slick and sassy production techniques with dense, dark soul and complex breaks.

Communizzle songs like "World Domination" and "Uh Huh Yeah"? Couldn't get enough of them. Should've had DFA remixes for them, or locally grown revisions from the likes of Pink Skull.

Yet while P-Skull's live-band electro-funk debut Zeppelin 3 was (deservedly) celebrated wildly, Prowler was left in the cold.

"We're not ones to crave recognition," says Prowler guitarist and drummer Ryan Kerrigan. Kerrigan along with vocalist Keith Greiman, bassist Mike Staszeski, keyboardist Kat Paffett and percussionist Tyler Griswald (to say nothing of "sixth Prowler," producer Darren Blase) formed whatever Prowler was in 2000 — a dirty rock 'n' roll act with a Twisted Sister drumbeat — before they turned toward the funk. But we'll get to that. "We've been honest to ourselves and what we want to produce. We know how long we have been doing this, and there are others around town who know our history. That we play shows where bunches of people come to get sweaty and thank us afterwards is recognition enough."

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

That's all well and good. But I'd like you to recognize Prowler. And their new CD En Garde! forces you to do that. Everything that was Communizzle is brassier, denser and funkier now.

Melodies with big dynamic production? "Holy Most."

Songs about tax-free shopping with slap-happy disco beats? "Beware Delaware."

Vaguely salacious tunes with waddling basslines that the band promises is about kittens? "Spooky Pussy."

Rugged tracks that sound like Danzig? "Jimmy Legs."

Danzig? Yep. You can still hear elements of Prowler's chunky rock-out past.

"Since most of us go as far back as elementary school, the true thump of Prowler was beaten out on jungle gyms in the middle of Pennsylvania years ago," laughs Greiman.

"Prowler reared its head first ... as a gutter-rock act playing loud tunes with a drummer who made everything sound like 'We're Not Gonna Take It,'" Kerrigan continues.

En Garde!'s "Beware Delaware" was one of those original Prowler songs — pretty much exactly the same as it was then. "Only now there's a whole bunch of cowbell," adds Kerrigan. He goes on to say that when they lost that dreaded drummer (un-named, better off for everyone) Prowler named itself "Plump," tried "something new with drum machines" and recorded early versions of songs that wound up on Communizzle.

Then it gets tricky. "We dissolved Plump, took a break again and came back as Prowler but with the other guitarist of Plump and the bassist of the original Prowler. The original Prowler had the dirt and the rock; Plump had the dance and the pop. With this current version we brought both of those together."

Kerrigan doesn't care much about trends, but he is a pragmatic man. Mention the notion of timelessness and he laughs. "The idea of timeless is great, but it would be foolish to think in five years it will not sound dated. We're a technology-based band, and we used different technology than we did on the first record and are already using newer stuff for the songs we are working on now."

The guys in Prowler get that they were doing the DFA/Talking Heads/Happy Mondays Caucasoid funk before the curve caught on. No matter whether it was poppier or harder-edged, the band did what it did to achieve what Greiman calls the boom-bap principle. "The dance-rock, party-time thing has obviously become a popular sound out there. But our boom bap has stayed intact. We've always just been a bunch of folks who enjoy each others' company and this is the noise we make."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Prowler will play Sat., Dec. 20, 9 p.m., $10, with Reef the Lost Cauze and Dice Raw at Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 866-468-7619, johnnybrendas.com.