Editor's Note - Chris DeVille, a member of this week's Band of the Week, Fine Dining, is a Post Contributing Editor. While we understand the potential conflict of interest in covering someone who also works for us, we think that, regardless of Chris' status with us, the Fine Dining release show is newsworthy, especially because The Post covers local music on a regular basis.
Weekly road trips from Columbus to Athens, phone calls to work toward compromises and a missing-in-action drummer have paid off with the release of Fine Dining's first full-length album Debutantes and Dilettantes.
The indie hipsters started their quest in February to release an album when they headed into 3 Elliot St. Studios to record the test track Amory and Irony. I wanted to try and make an album that I would want to listen to and people like me would like to listen to with really catchy songs that will be stuck in people's heads that also have a lot of complexity to them
said singer and guitarist David Holmes.
The band uses wooing and upbeat, toe-tapping ditties familiar with a British pop invasion, multi-tracking guitars and keyboards with layered vocals. The album is a mix of dark and bass-driven anthems like Stranded and The Ocean Froze catchy bubblegum tunes like High Speed Chase and Santiago's Revenge and band favorites Afternoon Tea and Rattlin' the Bricks.
During recording, two major concerns of Fine Dining were the Athens-Columbus split as Holmes and bassist Doug Patterson live in Columbus, and Jerry Green and singer and guitarist Chris DeVille live in Athens, and Green's decision to study abroad in Germany Spring Quarter, they said.
Before leaving, Green recorded his drum parts and left the rest up to the band.
We didn't get to practice or anything
so it just meant lots of song writing while he was gone. It gave us more time to speak about things
Patterson said.
Although the guitarists write most songs, the band flushes out the sound, said DeVille. For instance, the track Rattlin' the Bricks originally was written by DeVille, but once it was presented to the band, Green added an unexpected drum part and Patterson twisted a straight-forward bass part.
I always get a sort of session musician feel to (our writing style)
because we practice not that often
so we've never just sat down and written a song together
Green said.
Holmes, DeVille and Patterson met in high school, but DeVille and Holmes were a duo of coffeehouse entertainers beginning in the winter of 2004. Green came into the mix through a mutual friend.
The band took a short hiatus while DeVille studied abroad in Spain, but reunited in fall 2004 shortly after adding Patterson to thicken their sound with more vocals and some keyboard parts.
They finished recording Debutantes and Dilettantes in September, but the mastering of the album took longer than expected because the band changed their track list - a no-no in recording, DeVille said.
Holmes and DeVille said the next year will determine the band's future because all of them will graduate in the spring (Patterson and Holmes are English majors at Ohio State, DeVille is a journalism major and Green is a philosophy major at Ohio University).
As long as we're having a good time and as long as we're not starving to death
I'm sure the band will keep going
Holmes said.
Fine Dining will have two release parties this weekend, one in Athens on Friday and one in Columbus on Saturday.
I expect five years from now either for us to be a nationally touring band or not a band at all
DeVille said.
