Weirdos From the South: Challenger by Vincent Chung

To unfairly generalize, Chicago indie rock in the 90s became pigeonholed as a city where shaggy haired dudes in snap-up western shirts play rock-lite instrumentals that noodle through "cerebral" rhythms and "angular" melodies. The desire for high brow sophistication detached itself from punk fundamentals. Angst became less of an outward provocation to introspective moping. Somewhere, someone at the Rainbo probably said, "Laptops? Woah, that's soooo post-Albini..." and the rest is history.

When Milemarker transplanted their North Carolinian home to Chicago, they welcomed the embrace. Free to roam in indie rock's avant garde side, the band's collective energy spawned even more grandiose ideas, ones that had once alienated Chapel Hill crowds. Their songs got longer, instrumentally diverse, and conceptually driven. The performances became more theatrical, monumentally epic, and pretentious as hell. A city that celebrates a band that sounds like it's absentmindedly plucking at a guitar with sheer determination isn't going to be shocked by a band that prefaces their set with a puppet show on gentrification.

Fickle trends in today's fickle indie rock world quickly become parody. Before falling victim to the butt of all Chunklet jokes, Milemarker frontman Dave Laney shifts his momentum towards another project.

"Challenger kind of surfaced as a retaliation against some of my friends' bands. A bunch of people that I know who used to play in punk bands that I loved stopped playing punk to be in indie bands. They got really good at writing really sad songs."

"I was super depressed. So I listened to all the stuff that got me psyched. Stuff that I listened to as a kid. Agent Orange, Suicidal Tendencies, Minutemen, whatever. It's the timeless music that I always go back to no matter how old I am because it will always make me psyched."

Laney started writing some songs outside of Milemarker. He passed a tape along to longtime friend (and Milemarker bassist), Al Burian. Laney asked Burian to add some guitar tracks to it, something Burian had longed for in Milemarker. When the tape made its way back, the results were startlingly good. Good enough that Jade Tree immediately snapped it up and put out the band's full-length, Give People What They Want in Lethal Doses.

In a "back to basics" sort of move, the songs take on a more direct approach than Milemarker. The songs are leaner in instrumentation, louder in sound, and doesn't take its foot off the gas—except in between songs. While Milemarker flirted heavily with synth trickery, Challenger is a full-on dual guitar assault.

"I thought it was a loud punk record until my roommate Andy listened to it and said, 'This isn't a punk record. This is a quirky indie record!' [laughs] And then one of my indie friends listened to it and said, 'Boy, it looks like you've written a punk record.' Whatever, I don't know what it is and I'm not really concerned with it. It's not a punk record like The Buzzcocks. But then it doesn't sound like Interpol, either. [laughs]"

When asked whether or not the hometown sound played into Challenger's retaliation, Laney is quick to discredit claims about his Chicago background. The city serves as a nest and nothing more. On an early version of the press sheet Jade Tree distributed for the band's debut, Give People What They Want in Lethal Doses, a writer quips about Challenger's "Chicago roots."
"I'm not from Chicago. I'm not a Midwesterner. I live in the Midwest like the way that you would serve time in San Quentin. But doesn't make me from Texas. I'm from the East Coast and that's where my roots are. Chicago is just a town I live in."

In diplomatic fairness, Laney quickly contradicts, "It's a hard flip coin because to the people that don't live here, I tell them, 'Yeah, I live in Chicago.' And I kind of feel like a Chicagoan. Not on a roots level, but more on how it's affected me artistically. On the East Coast, I can relate to people better—and faster—there. While I find Midwesterners generally pretty weird."
Yeah, tell that to the postrock pretty boys.