Conway band’s Crowded Car

The adventurous, mischievous new EP from Don’t Stop Please.

Don't Stop Please of Conway
Don't Stop Please of Conway

“Crowded Car,” the title track from Conway’s Don’t Stop Please’s newest EP, kicks off with a jazzy, late-night sway. The choppy rhythm of guitar. The mournful exhale of saxophone. And the request, “Throw back your golden hair and show me your smile.”

The nearly eight-minute long tune then slowly unfurls. Grunts of horn. A white-hot guitar lead that fizzles. The steady tick-tick-tick of drumstick on cymbal.

One imagines this music as a film scene. We see this character at the back of a jazz lounge. The air is smoke-filled and the hazy scene red-lit by a neon sign. The character says, “I prayed for storms to come and/Then you were called/When I came you weren’t scared at all,” as he slowly swirls his middle finger around the edge of his glass.

By its four-minute mark, “Crowded Car” is thundering along — a bold blast of male-female vocals, and cascading saxophone and guitar shepherded by bass and rolling drums. The ruckus fades, returns and then fades again. The song ends with the warning: “And don’t you get into that crowded car/Stay here with me right where you are.” The last stanza of the tune is broken, with each word separated from the word before and after it with a pause. Then the boozy, post-midnight atmospheric track ends.

This is the music of Don’t Stop Please, a Conway outfit known for layering their rock ‘n’ folk with heavy sweeps of jazz, lounge and space-y cosmic sounds.

Don’t Stop Please first formed in 2009, and has released a few songs before finalizing their current lineup — Nick Caffrey, Robert Gaiser, Anna Horton, Will King, William Krzeszinski and Joel Ludford — in 2011 and releasing the three-track Brandy Swandlamp. The six-track Crowded Car, recorded off and on between touring stints, picks up where that EP left off and then adds a lot more to the band’s sound.

What the music of Don’t Stop Please is, is not boring. The group shares the adventurous spirit of “pop” acts such as Talking Heads, and listeners hear snippets of Paul Simon’s Graceland in Crowded Car.

Although it’s only six tracks, the EP runs for more than 36 minutes — four of the tracks run for more than six minutes — but the tunes don’t feel long because the music frequently swerves into new directions. Structures of tunes appear and then drop off. The songs of Crowded Car overstep their boundaries, treating listeners to new musical adventures, and the band explores sounds beyond the restraints of modern pop music.

And though the tunes jump from sound to sound, they are often rooted in some version of a late-night, dazing jazz ‘n’ roll and folk rhythm. Heavy on the trombone, trumpet and saxophone. Heavy on the keyboards and bluesy guitar. Full of textures and musical weaves.

The beauty of Crowded Car is its musical scope. Each band member is a multi-instrumentalist. There’s Gaiser playing guitar, bass and keyboards. Horton sings on four of the six songs, and also offers saxophone and even ukulele. King is the drummer on four tracks and also provides guitar and vocals. Krzeszinski sings on the first four tunes of Crowded Car, and adds keyboards, bass, guitar and even banjo. Ludford is a vocalist on every tune save one, and also plays guitar, keyboards, drums and trumpet. Crowded Car is quite the witches brew of sounds, but somehow, it all comes together.

“Window Song,” with its a cappella opening, probably comes closest to Graceland, and with Horton on the lead vocal, the track throws in trombone, shaker and ukulele in creating free-form rock. “Jimmy Wright,” with wah-wah psychedelic guitar and electric piano, is a dirty blast of righteous funk blues gospel.

“Dropping Coins” is a jazz rock monster that morphs into supercharged rock before investigating an extraterrestrial, avant-garde sound, and “Tired & Lonely” is not interested in a four-minute, verse-chorus-verse-chorus destination. It starts as gospel lounge rock before locking into an electric guitar death march, and then returns to its beginnings.

And the last track of the EP? Well, it’s titled “My Booty Is So Luxurious.” It’s a horn-and-funk groove tune but with synthesizers generating a computerized rhythm. And then there are the lyrics. Horton tells you: “I don’t got aspirations, but I sure got ass.” It’s a song showing Don’t Stop Please’s mischievous side.

Back in May, Paste, the digital magazine, arrived at a list of the “12 Arkansas Bands You Should Listen to Now.” For good reason, the list included Don’t Stop Please. The band constructs walls and breaks them with their music, creating something that is challenging, gorgeous, strange and tuneful. It’s a fractured, exciting take on music.

HEAR THE MUSIC
Don’t Stop Please is holding an EP release party for Crowded Car at Stickyz on Friday with the music starting at 9 p.m. There’s a $6 cover for the 18-and-up show. Opening the show will be The 1 oz. Jig with their Fayetteville-based soul-infused funk music.

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