Collision Corpse

For zombie lovers Conversations with Enemies, it's the most wonderful time of the year.

by John Vettese

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Published: Oct 27, 2010

PUMPKIN POP: Conversations with Enemies, clockwise from top left: Seth Sheffler-Collins, Josh Craft, Paul Montgomery, Monika Julien, Jessica McKay and Jen Sperling.

Neal Santos

[ rock/pop/braaaaiiiiins ]

The first rule of being a zombie-themed indie-pop band: A huge Halloween weekend is a must.

Fishtown sextet Conversations with Enemies deliver with a weekend most undead. Friday they headline at Millcreek Tavern in West Philadelphia, performing songs and skits in festive attire. And Sunday they're part of the massive Murder Show festival at the Ukie Club in Northern Liberties, with a dozen other local groups.

But band leaders Josh Craft (vocals/guitar) and Jessica McKay (drums) want to be clear: Their act isn't seasonal. Nowhere, OK, the band's narrative album/comic book telling a love story of the damned, came out in August. A regional tour is planned for Jan­uary. They first emerged in spring of 2009. Conversations with En­emies is a zombie band the whole year 'round.

"I like zombie movies," Craft explains. "We both like horror films, all genres, good ones as well as bad."

McKay offers the relentless Saw series as one of their fixations, before detailing how their movie tastes met with music.

"We were messing around in our basement and came up with this really terrible song," she recalls. It was a three-chord pattern and lyrics to the effect of "I'm a zombie and you look good to eat/ Why don't you come over and I'll have myself a treat."

"It was really bad," McKay says.

But it was also lighthearted and fun to play, Craft says. The duo decided to recruit some friends and see what might happen if they took this zombie idea more, um, seriously.

A year and some later, Conversations with Enemies released the completed Nowhere, OK, a 10-track romp echoing the sprawling shout-along pop of collectives like Architecture in Helsinki and Los Campesinos! It just as easily recalls the campy theatrics of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Craft says the latter parallel is no accident.

"Both of my parents were in traveling theatrical productions," he says. "It's how they met." In elementary school, Craft even had a bit part in the Broadway revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. "I grew up surrounded by theater, it's something I would eventually like to do," he says.

Nowhere, OK's tragicomic through-story would certainly lend itself to a lively low-rent production, something akin to what their Philly peers The Extraordinaires did with Ribbons of War in 2005. A cowboy named Billy and his girlfriend, Desiree, look to escape their tumbleweed Old West surroundings, but she's killed in a shootout. Billy makes a deal with the devil to bring Desiree back, but she returns as a zombie — and will not be made human again until our hero does the dark lord's bidding.

If it seems like Craft took a bunch of B-movie tropes and puréed them in a blender, well, he kind of did. If that's not your thing, most the songs stand well outside the concept. Sure, the standout "Night of the Living Dead" is indisputably horror pop, but it's a blast to dance to. There's not much question what album closer "Reanimated" is about, but its arrangements and melody are killer. And were it not included in this song cycle, the mariachi-rocker "Road to Nowhere" could be a song about any couple, living or undead, looking to escape their busted one-horse town.

"You can interpret the songs in different ways," Craft says. "A lot of people think 'Brains' is about having sex. You listen to the lyrics about feeding off of each other ... "

" ... but you don't enjoy the taste," chimes in McKay.

"Exactly," continues Craft. "If the song wasn't called 'Brains,' people might think it was about something else."

Retaining some degree of ambiguity (however minimal) lets Conversations with Enemies stretch its zombie act into the off-season. "When we first started, we were like, we're a zombie band, we're dressing up for all our shows," McKay says. "And then a couple people said to us, you're not a gimmick, you guys are good enough that you don't need to be doing this."

So the costumes gave way to casual clothes and the stage antics became less skit-based. But restraint naturally goes out the window when Halloween rolls around. For this weekend's shows, the band is asking folks who picked up their album to bring along its companion comic book. They'll be able to follow along with the stylized illustrations by local artists Kit Layfield, Kristyn Fayewicz, Jessica Lowe and Eric Remer. Meanwhile the six people on stage will be belting the story out in full spectacle mode.

"I guess it doesn't bother me being known as a zombie band," McKay shrugs. "But we want to be taken seriously also."

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)

Fri., Oct. 29, 9 p.m., $8, with Eat Your Birthday Cake and The Josh and Pete Band, Millcreek Tavern, 4200 Chester Ave., 215-222-9194; Murder Show festival, Sun. Oct. 31, 2 p.m., $10-$15, with TJ Kong and the Atomic Bomb, The Ukie Club, 847 N. Franklin St., 215-627-8790, tjkonghalloween.eventbrite.com.

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