Butane Variations

“I can already tell it’s been a great night. This first song is about intercourse.” Succinctly Phil Weinrobe began Butane Variations’ November 16 show at Boulder Coffee Shop in Rochester, NY with the unreleased “Jackie.” Maybe it was – about intercourse – but I couldn’t tell. The Variations’ easy-going but intense songwriting was much more evident live than on their debut self-titled LP released earlier in the year and I wasn’t concerned so much with what the songs were about as I was that they keep playing them, doing my best to create a hearty applause after each number. Touring in support of their new EP, Love Five Songs, the Boulder show was a sort of eye-opener for me as to how interesting and just plain good this band is.

“Air Force One” – from the LP – twanged and harmonized its way through lines like “I’m gonna drag your name through the mud/ I’m gonna dance a silly dance on your grave” and relented to a song that appeared to be about an electric guitar but probably could just as easily have been about intercourse. It was excellent and sweetly melodic, whatever else it was.

While everyone in the band got into the vocals, lead duties were shared between the pained but humorous Weinrobe and cooing, mostly-lead guitarist John Paul Norpoth, lending the band a quality of camaraderie, as though everyone in the audience could sing lead too if they wanted. Norpoth plays the sort of electric guitar that drives a stunted picker like myself into fits: where I would hammer and scratch and break strings and bloody knuckles he barely appears to touch the strings and yet his amp bristles and soothes, alternately, with a country-western/classic rock tone and melodic attitude that, live, is ceaselessly engaging.

Sometime during an unnamed and surprisingly violent number – Weinrobe’s power chords jagged and drummer Michael Penque beating the kit for all he’s worth – the last of the middle-aged crowd seated in front of me exits. Turning back around – he’d been facing his amp for the last half of the song – Weinrobe smiles in recognition, saying, “They didn’t like that one.” I laughed if no one behind me did, my ears still ringing.

“I’ve Been To Heaven (In My Mind),” already a simultaneous show-stopper and daydream on the LP, was more jagged and joyous than I thought it capable of. “Rawkus” came to mind. “Good were the words coming down/ I’ve been to Detroit in my sleep.” The lyrics seem to ache for spirituality while laughing at it – one of my favorite motifs! – while the form of the song flip-flops for four minutes, too busy to get bored. It’s a stomper/soft-hearted harmonizer that showcases the band’s genuine togetherness – their bandness. “Hopped up on hymnals/ Our missions combined.”

During the gorgeous “Goldie Hawn,” Norpoth replaces a broken string on his electric guitar while singing harmony. If Boulder were larger – or more packed – it might not have worked out, but the intimacy of the place allowed him to sing from his knees, several feet below his microphone. “George Washington/ You better wash your hands/ They’re stained/ And can you taste your wooden teeth?” I never know how goofy and how serious this band is. Probably both all the time. “You have a head/ But I can bounce it like a ball.”

There is an urgency wrapped in comfortable easiness that the Variations have mastered, or maybe invented. It is their sound, however much it wants to remind you of its influences – and I won’t trouble to name the ones I hear here. If the Variations come to your city tell your friends not to go and keep them all to yourself. But buy them some drinks, too. I didn’t, regretfully. Their final two numbers were worth a round in themselves, the band breaking down into Weinrobe singing with his unplugged acoustic guitar and stepping down from the stage to stand in front of us on the stone floor; Penque walking offstage to retrieve a wood block he keeps time on, joining Weinrobe. Norpoth sets aside his electric and walks across stage to retrieve his acoustic – while singing along – to make a trio before us while bassist Michael Refici turns around – now bass-less – and plays along on Boulder’s piano which sits against the far wall and is really more a decoration. It is one of my finest and most invigorating concert experiences. They did not want to stop playing. Perhaps if I’d bought them that beer they wouldn’t have.

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