'Cause I'm a Creepoid

How four Philly indie thugs found their sound.

by John Vettese

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Published: Jul 27, 2010

John Vettese THIS IS GOOD: Anna Troxell sings as Creepoid rocks The Ox, June 12.

[ rock ]

Pete Urban takes a drag off his cigarette and laughs about a phrase friends use to discuss his band.

"Indie thug."

If all you know of Creepoid is the drifty, echoing folk tones on their Yellow Life Giver 7-inch, the descriptor might strike you as dead wrong.

You just need to spend more time with the band. Urban, for instance, reminisces about getting in rumbles after playing shows with his old group The G (which also featured Creepoid's husband-wife team Pat and Anna Troxell).

As we walk into the row home on the Manayunk hills housing the band's studio (and the Troxells), I'm greeted by a pit bull. Genni is an 8-year-old rescue who couldn't be more docile and friendly. But still, "People get freaked out by her," Urban says. "'Cause she's a pit, y'know?"

Next, study the band's own pedigree. Ten years ago, Urban and Pat Troxell, natives of Willow Grove, forewent college to hitchhike to Austin, work long nights at clubs like Emo's and play in hardcore and noise rock bands. They returned to Philadelphia and formed The G, a righteous combination of "Touch Me I'm Sick" fuzz-pedal riffs and Anna Troxell's fierce vocal delivery.

So how'd they arrive at the doorstep of lush, languid psychedelic rock?

"I'm turning 28," laughs Anna. "I'm not tryin' to thrash anymore."

Last winter, as The G was waning, Pat and another old friend, Sean Miller, began tracking home demos with a softer bent. Pat played drums, Sean played guitar and sang. Anna joined in on vocals and percussion. The group asked Pete what he thought about adding slide guitar, so he flipped an electric on his lap and grabbed a bottleneck.

The slide careens in a distant, reverb-y corner of the band's basement tapes. Combined with Anna's voice, tentative and haunting this time, it is probably what invites the dream pop and Mazzy Star comparisons — particularly on the sensual rise-and-fall of "Pink Tag Sale."

Pat shrugs it off. "Nobody in Mazzy Star has fucking Black Flag tattoos," he says. "Nobody in Mazzy Star records in their basement on 30-year-old equipment."

Miller explains that their studio constraints — everybody gathered between four concrete walls, playing live — had an influence on how the songs were performed while recording. "We had to hold back, so it didn't compromise the sound quality," Miller says. See them in concert, and you'll note much more crash and roughhouse rumble to Creepoid's delivery.

It's all relative. The songs on Yellow Life Giver — and the more recent digital single, Graveblanket — are clipped and dirty. Behind a soaring violin, you hear the hum of idling amps. As the arrangements swell, the audio fractures in fuzz. But each instrumental nuance remains distinct and evocative. "Rotten Tooth" recalls the narcotic neuroses of K Records-era Beck; "Stranger" suggests Sebadoh, or a more recent Philadelphia parallel. "We're recording pretty much the same way Kurt Vile is," Miller says while explaining the nuances of their Tascam mixer. "Except he's one guy doing everything." Whereas, with Creepoid, the members hash out each mix collectively.

This takes the existing tension of the performance — the players, strained, sweating, just barely holding their sounds back from a breaking point — and compounds it with the tension of personalities. Of which the band is an unusual mix; half college grads, half nomads; half blue-collar, half professional. Anna is an adjunct art history teacher at La Salle and Miller is a graphic designer; Pat works construction and Urban has a seasonal job on an organic farm near Mount Pocono. Even though they joke about this as we sit in their backyard, there is a palpable divide.

And yet the blend works. "We have this kind of unintentional professionalism," Urban says. He, Miller, and Pat have a variety of past musical undertakings, and learned from each. Even though Anna is only in her second band, Urban continues, her (relative) outsider's perspective has made some of the strongest aesthetic contributions to Creepoid, "these brilliant ideas."

"We know exactly what we have to do," he says. "Our only real obstacle is each other."

Pat ruminates on the band's deep roots; the guys have been friends since elementary school. They befriended Anna in high school. Pat's old hardcore band even played her graduation party. For whatever the differences in their life paths, their relationship is sound. When Creepoid gets in scuffles, it knows how to deal.

"It's the old-school saying, 'locals only,'" Pat says. "We've all known each other forever. It's when you bring people in from outside, that's when there are problems."

"That's why I definitely think we're a punk-rock band," he continues, giving surface listeners another reason to do a double take. "It's very intense for us."

(john.vettese@citypaper.net)

Creepoid plays Sugar Town Sat., July 31, 9:30 p.m., $8, with The Sky Drops, Frisky or Trusty and DJ FCK Yeah, Tritone, 1508 South St., 215-545-0475, tritonebar.com.

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