Twice the fun

Music Row
By Brian Rademaekers

When I last spoke with Andrew Chalfen, lead guitarist and co-vocalist for the local power-pop quartet Trolleyvox, he was taking it easy.
Chalfen, along with vocalist Beth Filla, bassist Owen Biddle and drummer Ken Buono, had just put out The Trolleyvox Present Karaoke Meltdown, the group’s third album in seven years. It was a scorching, bright collection of songs full of tenacious pop hooks, clever word play and bilious political undertones. It was a work that had the feel of a few superb musicians having fun while making a great album.
That was in December, and Chalfen was working at his day job in the suburbs and awaiting a spring tour of seven cities, mainly in the Southeast. Making music, he said then, was something he did when he got home from work to keep from being unhappy — a kind of natural therapy for him.
Eight months later, I was holding in my hands a new double album from Trolleyvox — yes, the same mellow group that had taken seven years to put out three albums. This time when I called Chalfen, he was near-manic with energy and enthusiasm.
Besides dealing with the swirl of excitement around the new release, Chalfen was coping with the loss of his father, his recent marriage, and the fact that Philly-based mega-group Roots had just asked bassist Biddle to join them on their tour.
"It’s been so crazy the last few months, it’s almost hard to believe," said Chalfen, surprisingly upbeat for all he has on his plate.
Yet, after talking to him for nearly half an hour, I still was not entirely certain how he and his cohorts managed to pull off the double album.
My disbelief is rooted not only in the sheer volume of the work but also in its mind-bending quality.
Spanning 22 tracks, the album is split into the 10-song electric pop-rocker Your Secret Safe, and Luzerne, a delicate mix of acoustic ballads and instrumentals. In a clever marketing ploy, fans who buy the actual hard copy (it went on sale this week) will get both for the price of one, while downloaders will have to pay full price for both.
Chalfen said the release, a slick and shiny cardboard case that opens like a centerfold and features a local trolley motif, is a salute to all those who savor holding an album in their hands.
"You have all these people walking around with thirty-thousand songs on their iPods, and that’s OK, but to me it’s just not the same experience as holding something and just putting on a single album to listen to all the way through," said Chalfen.
And when you get a copy of these two discs, that’s exactly what you should do. Pop one in your CD player and just sit back. Or go for a drive. But listen to each disc in total. You’ll probably have to give it a few spins to really let all the levels sink in, with more layers of thought and shades of emotion being revealed with each play.
On both Your Secret Safe and Luzerne, Filla’s voice superbly picks out the idiosyncrasies and twists of thought in Chalfen’s songwriting. The electric Your Secret Safe shows a side of Filla where her vocals take on a sugary sweetness, but are loaded with darker meaning that belies their delivery. Luzerne, though, is more earnest, with a somber and direct tone well paired with the soft string-plucking of Chalfen’s guitar.
As a whole, the release stands apart from Trolleyvox’s earlier works.
"This time around, the songs are much more loose," explained Chalfen.
That quality, he says, can be attributed to the story of their creation. The two discs started as an EP that the band was recording at Brian McTear’s studio in Fishtown, a result of their work with him on their last album.
"We stayed and did an extra six songs, and we were thinking that we would do an EP, but then we couldn’t really figure out how to market a double EP or a full record released along with an EP," explained Chalfen.
So they got the idea to just keep writing and recording songs until they had enough for two albums. But the move had some potentially disastrous consequences.
The double release could have ended up as an overextended mess, with the weaker throw-on tracks dragging the originals down.
Or the musicians could have ended up burned out and stuck with two half-finished albums.
But, perhaps miraculously, those scenarios didn’t play out. Both albums are stellar collections of everything that has made Trolleyvox such a fantastic band to this point.
As a testament to that excellence, local radio stations have been spinning the CD, and the band is set to do a national tour that will at times see Chalfen and Filla split off to do their own acoustic set.
That leaves Chalfen trying to work things out with his boss and his new bride over the next couple of months.
Speaking for Philly music fans, here’s a bit of advice for Chalfen and Filla: Quit your day jobs. And put out more albums like these. ••

Check it out . . .

Who: The Trolleyvox
What: One of Philly’s most promising popsters celebrating the release of a stellar double album.
When: Free CD-release party this Saturday at 4:30 p.m. at Mars Red Music, Haddonfield, N.J., and on Oct. 19 at 9 p.m. at the Khyber, Second and Chestnut streets.