Orange County's Limbeck is not your typical "O.C." band. Yeah, the four-piece started playing taut punk rock when they were teens in the late 1990s, but the snotty vocals and sparse power chord presentation soon gave way to a richer, more textured, lush and, well, twangy sound.
The transformation started prior to the release of Limbeck's 2003 debut CD Hi, Everything's Great, and has become fully realized on their third, self-titled album that came out earlier this month. Limbeck combines elements of sunny '60s pop, modern power pop and Americana, resulting in a damn near flawless record that should delight fans of bands like the Old 97's or anyone who digs the Beach Boys and Buck Owens.
"We started 10 years ago as a punk band," says Limbeck frontman Robb MacDonald. "We were — are — really big fans of the Bay area punk scene: Green Day, Operation Ivy — I still like a lot of that music.
"But when we started hearing good classic rock — the kind we didn't realize we liked in high school — we started to also realize how many bands in classic rock had country influences," he continues. "The band Superdrag had those tendencies as well, and we took some influence from that."
Limbeck's latest LP is flush with fuzz-tone guitar, strings, horns, tambourines, ukulele, bar chimes, vocoder and the occasional weeping, lap steel guitar. The band, which also includes lead guitarist Patrick Carrie, bassist Justin Entsminger and drummer Jon Phillip, took their time making the new record. There's rarely a false or superfluous note to be heard, despite the incorporation of a rather wide range of disciplines. It's an oddity of an album that could appeal to the Warped Tour crowd and the No Depression set.
"On the new record we definitely embraced more country on some songs and then abandoned it on other songs, making it a more well-rounded record," McDonald says. "Hot Rod Circuit's Casey (Prestwood) is a really awesome steel guitar player, and he's been joining us on some songs."
Prestwood and his fellow Hot Rod Circuit band members can be heard in the background during my phoner with MacDonald, who is riding in the Hot Rod Circuit van while en route to a joint gig in San Francisco. The tour brings the two bands plus Illinois rock quartet The Forecast (as well as local acts The Hero The Villain and Mike Dunn) to Orpheum in Ybor City on Sunday. "This has been a really good tour for hanging out," MacDonald says. "Caravanning with all three bands — you'd think it would happen all the time, but it doesn't."
Limbeck's been on the road nearly nonstop since its Doghouse Records debut disc came out in '03. Let Me Come Home followed in '05. When the Limbeck guys aren't performing, killing time playing poker and alternating between Corona and Miller High Life, they like to step out into the sun and engage in America's other national pastime, wiffle ball.
"We always have a bat and ball in the van," MacDonald says. "The game we like is [called] "Over the Line." One person pitches, one person hits, and we make lines in the field where the ball has to pass [in order to win]."
Is MacDonald the band's most dangerous wiffler?
"Not me," he admits. "I think probably Justin; he's pretty good at sports. I'm kinda new to it all."
Although MacDonald comes across as affable on the phone and his band sounds quite cheery on record, there are dark themes coursing through the music. Take for instance the deceptively jangly jaunt "Trouble" that opens Limbeck. "Doesn't matter what you say when you say it in distortion," MacDonald's sings breezily. "Like telling the crowd I'm gonna try you out — I don't like it/ And I don't even know if you and I get each other." The singer agrees that he's addressing both the crowds he performs for and a lover, telling them that they're not really hearing what he has to say.
Cynical, perhaps, but true, which makes it the ideal opening salvo for a disc that, on the surface, is sunshine and blue sky — but greater examination reveals storm clouds looming on the horizon. "Yeah, it's cool when people say, 'Wow, you made such a super-happy album,'" MacDonald says. "But it's like, 'How'd you miss all that other stuff?'"
Thanks to television programs like Fox's The O.C. and the bands that contribute to the show's soundtrack, people have a set image of sand, surf and petty melodrama when it comes to rock music from Southern California. That's not Limbeck. They're more like a bar band from the Rust Belt — especially in terms of lyrical content, which typically revolves around girl problems, boredom blues and a desire to return to a simpler time and place. "I think that's true," MacDonald says. "We're definitely not a typical sound that comes from California. A lot of times people think we come from the Midwest, and I take that as a compliment."
To see where MacDonald is coming from, one only needs to look at his preference in albums by The Beach Boys. Whereas Pet Sounds is the universally hailed masterpiece, he prefers early '70s outings Holland and Carl and the Passions — So Tough, back-to-back releases that are much bleaker and country-ish than anything else the Beach Boys had done to that point.
"I definitely heard of [The Beach Boys] growing up but didn't really get to hear anything of theirs made after the mid-'60s, just the early stuff," MacDonald says. "I liked it and everything, but it was when I heard Holland and Carl and the Passions that I really turned around on how I felt about the idea of The Beach Boys."
MacDonald's myriad influences come together beautifully on the new disc's "Bird Problems." The song is a surreal travelogue delivered across an acoustic-guitar-based melody accented with steel. The chorus speeds up into a reggae-tinged keyboard chomp with an electric guitar explosion. "I went three years where I didn't remember any dreams," MacDonald says. "And then I had this really great dream that I remembered, and I wrote it all down, and then a day or two later recorded the song. Sometimes you just get lucky."
This article appears in Apr 25 – May 1, 2007.