The Liars Club

The Armchairs are fucking with you, but they're not fucking around.

by John Vettese

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Published: Aug 10, 2010

[ rock/pop ]

When I turn back around, the four guys gathered at the table have all taken off their shirts.

Their bare chests are covered in white stickers plucked from gourmet cheese wrappers. Yet they remain poker-faced, continuing the conversation nonchalantly as we sit on the roof of Kensington DIY space The Ox, pausing only occasionally to tear cheese labels (and chest hair) off each other.

"So, moving along," says Andy Molholt, singer-guitarist of The Armchairs. "I don't mean to derail what you have in mind to talk about."

Matter of fact, this is exactly what I have in mind. I didn't expect dairy sticker exhibitionism, but I expected something. In their two years on the Philadelphia scene, the band — Molholt, keyboardist Michael Chadwick, bassist Andrew Morris and drummer Mike Harkness — have developed a reputation for playfully messing with their audience (at a recent show, Morris read aloud from The Communist Manifesto while the band space-jammed behind him), fellow musicians (when opening for Toy Soldiers at the TLA, they repeatedly hollered "stay tuned for more racist bands" between songs) and journalists interviewing them (well, cheese stickers).

They walk the tightrope between absurdist performance art and solid pop-rock. Their new Science & Advice, released this week on South Philly label Punk Rock Payroll, is a mind-bendy variety show of breezy psych tunes ("Trees"), jaunty British Invasion hooks ("Little Sammy Ghetz") and lysergic instrumentals ("What for My Cow Eating There?"). It recalls Ray Davies, Brian Wilson and the Apples in Stereo, but more free-spirited.

The first name the band brings up, however, isn't a musician. Not exactly.

"It's all part of our Andy Kaufman obsession," Molholt says when asked about The Armchairs' antics.

I ask about how a subversive 1970s comedian could influence a rock band. Chadwick corrects me. "He didn't consider himself a comedian," he says. "He wanted to be a song-and-dance man."

Neal Santos

Known for performance eccentricities — reading The Great Gatsby aloud, lip-synching to records from a phonograph, abusing spectators through his alter ego Tony Clifton — Kaufman challenged audiences expecting a more commonplace form of entertainment. Molholt explains his admiration: "He would bring people to the brink, and he would bring 'em back. And then he would bring people closer to the brink and over the edge and then he would bring 'em back, ya know?"

Likewise, The Armchairs operate on two principles: Their crowds shouldn't be passive participants in the show. And the show, like any good entertainment, should provoke a reaction, one way or another. The philosophy took shape when Molholt and Chadwick's recording project at Columbia College of Chicago became a performing band back home in Philly, augmented by UArts roommates Morris and Harkness.

The discussion turns to process. Is their act planned? Improv'd?

"On the way to a show we'll come up with random ideas," Harkness illustrates. "'Tonight's theme is mentally retarded sharks — go!'"

Molholt says brainstorming and free-association are where the majority of their sketches and pranks come from; Morris adds that radio appearances, like a WQHS session themed around the Roaring '20s, are sometimes scripted.

"But depending on how we're feeling that day, depending on what we brought with us, depending on all these different circumstances," Molholt continues, "different things will come out of us."

Including their music. It might be easily overlooked amid the spectacle, were Science & Advice not such a ridiculously catchy album. A clip-clop piano and McCartney swagger defines "Gloria," whereas the slower "Solar Puff" moves in a drifty Donovan sway. But the band has enough personality that stylistic forebears aren't overbearing.

"The Armchairs are a ball of creative energy," says labelmate Chrissy Tashjian of Dangerous Ponies. "They really stretch the bounds of pop to make such an exception for the strange and bizarre without you noticing right off the bat."

"Their ability to construct well-written songs with their down-to-earth lyrical approach sets them apart from bands that take themselves too seriously," adds Frede Zimmer of Punk Rock Payroll, "while simultaneously keeping them out of the genre of bands that are only known for not taking themselves seriously."

The band prefers not to worry about how they're perceived. "Once you see an artist doing that, trying to tiptoe across eggshells, it's obvious," says Molholt. "You're not fucking cool, you're just trying to be what everybody wants you to be."

Which is easy enough to say on the eve of their debut full-length's release; they haven't yet had to deal with the weight of expectation on a broader scale. Morris agrees, calling it a problem every musician faces. Artists don't (usually) live in isolation, they are fully aware how people view them. "And what do you do with that?"

"Keep 'em guessing," says Harkness.

Chadwick ponders quietly, then offers, "One thing that I think is gonna make the dynamic of the whole process a lot better and more interesting is the point at which we can all afford really nice samurai swords."

Molholt laughs. "Everybody thought you were going to say 'quit our day jobs.'"

Exactly.

(john.vettese@citypaper.net)

Fri., Aug. 13, 9 p.m., $10, with The Extraordinares, Hop Along and Agent Moosehead, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 877-435-9849, johnnybrendas.com.

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