Rock and rollercoaster

After failing to get any response from a label, Funland released the Misunderstanded cassette and sold it at shows, like any other young band. This summer, the band--this time with Tablet's Philip Irby as a temporary bass player, who'd later be replaced by three more fill-in musicians--signed a deal with Steve Records, an imprint of local studio-cum-distributor-cum-manufacturer Crystal Clear Sound that also released Sixty-Six's debut. Culled from the second set of Nashville recordings, which the band would remix with producer Keith Rust, and with some brand-new recordings, the resulting album was sent to stores at the beginning of this week.

A mere four and a half years after forming, Funland has finally released its first full-length album, its true debut. And though it's on a local label--albeit one that has its own very powerful distribution capabilities--Schmidt and Vogeler insist they're actually quite pleased it worked out this way.

"It took a little discipline for us, but I think it was the best thing for us to do right now," Vogeler says, "just coming down off high expectations for ourselves."

"The past couple of years have just been weird," Schmidt says. "But it's just all part of us defining what we wanted out of music, and to be able to get this music out on any level is important to us."

The Funland Band would be a remarkable album on a major label or a local indie: It's loud and funny, subtle and sweet, angry and desperate, knowing and resilient. It's a record that begins with a roar ("Shitty Weather") and concludes with a dramatic finale (the epic "Sparkloser," which whispers its way to a scream and back), filling in the gaps with 11 other songs that play themselves out in remarkable dramatic fashion--relationship songs all, each providing emotions that range from disbelief ("Feedback") to pragmatism ("Bleed Like Anyone") to resignation ("Head and Hands on Floor") to bitterness ("Garage Sale").

It asks the unanswerable questions ("Where's my reward?" Schmidt wonders on the subtly powerful and very poignant "Parallel Lines"), the metaphorical questions ("Have you seen my Impala?"), and the rhetorical ones ("Will the Rangers ever win past July?"), with the answers coming in Schmidt's yells or Vogeler's rock-anthem guitar playing or Johnson's monstrous percussion.

If it contains the echoes of '70s rock--whether it's the guitar theatrics of Thin Lizzy or the harmonies of ELO or the melodies of Cheap Trick--it also sounds, to anyone who has heard this band for four-plus years, very much like Funland. As Schmidt sings on the album's "hidden" track: "She knows it's only radio/She knows it'll never save her soul/But she loves to sing along/When they play her favorite song." This is a band that knows the power of a good pop song--old or new, loud or turned-down, silly or serious.

"All the songs are definitely a product of what we've been through as a band and in our personal lives," Schmidt says.

"Being in this band is who we are," Vogeler says. "It seems everything around me more and more somehow relates to how I'm in this band with Peter and Will. To give it up would be to take away something that's a part of me."

Funland will perform at a free show October 7 at Trees. Rubberbullet will open.