The Inwood Radio CD Release at Kitty Cat Klub on 3/7/09

By: David de Young

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The Inwood Radio - Photo by David de Young

I love discovering new bands. The Inwood Radio isn’t actually new, but they are new to me. And somehow they remained new to me until this past week despite HowWasTheShow featuring a review of their EP Release Party for Once We Were Millionaires back in February of 2007. (Division of labor at HWTS was apparently such in 2007 that we published that review by Bob Longmore without me ever even hearing the disc.) 

My 2009 “rediscovery” of The Inwood Radio came a few weeks ago when their new CD Sickle Cell Bohemia came in the mail. I featured “Look Up Into The Stars” on the HowWasTheShow podcast the following week, and then headed out to see their CD Release at the Kitty Cat Klub on Saturday, March 7th. The bill was opened by Hojas Rojas with the Glad Version in the middle slot.

Inwood Radio is Ben Rajkowski, lead guitars and vocals; Ted Held, guitar, Amy Bukstein, bass; and Will Rajkowski, drums. (Buckstein and Held were members of the now inactive Big Ditch Road, and Big Ditch members Brian O’Neil and Darin Wald were on hand to support their old friends.) Robert McCreedy had also previously been a member of Inwood Radio, and was in fact playing trumpet with them at the show Bob Longmore reviewed in 2007. Sickle Cell Bohemia was released on the Magnolia Recording Company label founded by Tom Feldmann (leader of another one of my new favorite bands, The Get-Rites).

Seeing The Inwood Radio for the first time on Friday, I was happy to find they are as enjoyable live as they are on disc. They’re not necessarily what you’d call a dynamic live band, but they are definitely comfortable with performing and confident in presenting their songs; they have the stage presence of a band that plays a lot more than they do. The band also does a great job reproducing their quality pop live. To me their sound lies somewhere between the bouncy pop of seminal Scottish neo-Pop band Orange Juice (I understand I’m not the only one who has made this comparison) and Big Ditch Road from that band’s alt country middle period. There’s also a certain element of Morrissey’s “sincerer than thou” wail present here, but again it comes through in the best possible way. The band themselves cite The Lemonheads and Dinosaur Jr. as influences, and whomever comes to mind when you hear them, it is a distinctly pleasurable and listenable sound.

The Glad Version

Sickle Cell Bohemia is in contention as one of the better local albums I’ve heard so far in 2009. The songs stick with you after a listen or two. It opens with the track “Autumn,” (which made for a perfect close to their set Friday night.) The band is not afraid to change up the time signature and have fun with the songs, and they do it without being cheesy in the slightest. Perhaps it’s the genuineness Ben Rajkowski’s croon that gives them the extra leeway to take these sorts of liberties.

Their set Saturday seemed to include only a handful of songs from the new disc and many I had not heard (possibly from the original EP.) But I suspect from the set list that many of the new songs that were played that have not yet even been recorded. The song pair from the new album, “Love Over Empire” and “Love Over Sarcasm” made it into the set, as did “Look Up Into The Stars,” but another of my favorites, “Cellular Contact” did not. Here’s hoping for more live shows from a band I wholeheartedly recommend.

1. Golden Age
2. Quarantine
3. Hardest Day
4. Love Over Empire
5. Love Over Sarcasm
6. Hemorrhaging
7. Look Up Into The Stars
8. Shaking Off the Sum
9. Take it on Faith
10. Jesus It Don’t Hurt
11. The Autumn

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Location Info: Kitty Cat Klub
Artist Info: The Inwood Radio

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