Exile in Girlville

West Philly themeweavers The Chimeras make rock 'n' roll Herstory.

by John Vettese

[ rock/pop ]

"That's Colleen, that's the ideal," says Matt Turnbull. "At least to me."

"Lorraine reminds me of that character in Sunset Boulevard," says Adam Cooper. "A washed-up actress who still thinks she's beautiful."

Turnbull smiles. "And then there's Gladys. She worked at the Wendy's on the way to the cabin where we recorded."

It's late December and the members of The Chimeras, West Philadelphia's premier thematic rock band, are gathered around the corner window at Fiume, a few blocks from their practice space. Their new record, titled Her, just arrived from the pressing plant and they're passing copies around the table, picking apart its song titles — all of which are women's names.

Their last record, 2007's Party of God, also had a unifying thread; It told 12 different stories based on news accounts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a sweeping work of creative nonfiction. By comparison, Her is an inward journey, 13 character studies.

The bubbling psychedelic stream of opening track "Colleen" is, as singer-guitarist Turnbull explains, an attempt to capture an archetype, an afternoon idyll with his feminine ideal.

"Lorraine" concerns an aging Hollywood maven, a stand-in for North Philadelphia's famous Divine Lorraine Hotel. "It's this old building that has historical value and beauty to it," says bassist Cooper. "But it's still kind of decaying, going through all these different hands of people buying it."

Some songs are metaphors and others more firmly grounded. The conversation turns to broader themes. Singer-guitarist Dan Ferry smirks at his end of the table. He's a guy who speaks slowly and carefully. "What did Cormac McCarthy say on Oprah? 'There's no women in my books because I never understood them'?" He laughs, pauses and continues, "A lot of girls — and it's hard to say without sounding misogynistic — but I wouldn't put up with them if they were guys. I don't understand the logic in how they act. I don't understand their emotions."

For Ferry, this album is a kind of fact-finding mission. But he eschews the all-too-common, condescending fashion of men trying in vain to write from a woman's point of view. The "I"s in these songs are guys.

"I'm not so sure if the songs draw a line in the sand about what a man is [or] what a woman is, either," says drummer Il Shim Pearlman. "Like the song 'Leigh,' she's generally a bad-habiter, not fitting into society. That doesn't need to be a woman."

Of the band members, Pearlman was the most resistant to following up Party of God with another thematic work. Their first two EPs were free-form, and he says, "My personal goal for this album would be that the songs transcend the concept."

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They do — and you can trace that right through to his drumming, which often matches the lyrical mood. "Madeline" is set at a funeral, its narrator bitter, and Pearlman thumps a frustrated staccato rhythm on his toms. The music in "Darla" is pleading but graceful, ending with a cymbal splash that reverberates brilliantly on headphones. 

Her is rich in timeless rock riffs and specific reference points. "Jasmine," for instance, takes generous cues from Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" (they claim the homage was done unknowingly; I have my doubts), then dovetails into the hazy Lou Reed dreamscape of "Simone." "Leigh" is Cooper's tribute to Arthur Lee and Love. "Britney," with its acoustic guitar, harmonica and 3 a.m. footstomp beats, sounds like something off the mellow third side of Exile on Main Street.

But don't think this is rehash or regurgitation. From Muddy Waters to The Stones to The Walkmen, rock is all about studying classic forms and spinning them in your own way. These guys get it: Check out the airy, interlocking guitar licks and jangly strumming on "Audrey," a Lee Miller-style wartime romance that resonates in its own unique way. It's the album's pop pinnacle, the best song on Her — and Her is The Chimeras' most well-crafted and refined work to date.

As we're settling up, we return to the theme and its origins. There's a knee-jerk tendency to assume songs like these are thinly veiled autobiographies, but Her's stories are probably too varied and conflicting to pin down like that.

"It would seem cheesy if you thought it was girls we know," Ferry says. "But it's not, and people shouldn't assume that."

So, if the stories in Party of God were drawn from the news, where did Her come from? Turnbull says they might've begun with the name of an actual person — like Gladys, at the Wendy's in the Poconos — but the fiction began immediately after.

"They definitely started somewhere and ended somewhere else," says Turnbull. "You have to get a name from somewhere. But then they take different forms, they do different things, they finish months later and it's something else."

(john.vettese@citypaper.net)

The Chimeras play Fri., Jan. 29, 9 p.m., $8, with Caterpillar, Al Duvall and Busses, The Khyber, 56 S. Second St, 215-238-5888, thekhyber.com.