Antiques

By C.D. Di Guardia

Photo by Erin Yunes

"We wouldn't just want to do the normal thing," says Tim Griffiths of Antiques. And he isn't kidding. Griffiths and his musical cohort, Steve Vallarelli, look pretty normal right now, but that wasn't the case a few weeks ago when they accosted late-night club goers armed with gasmasks and bullhorns. "Anything can be a 'performance,'" says Griffiths, "which is good, because otherwise, we'd get bored."

For now, the two young men fit right into the scene, sitting at a table in the front of a crowded Cambridge bar. Vallarelli, when not wearing his gasmask, looks like what most would term a "normal" guy. His New England accent, cultured by his upbringing in Arlington, Massachusetts, remains strong and uncompromised. But his EveryGuy speaking voice is different from his singing voice, which is at times wistful, sometimes plaintive, yet always full of some sort of meaning. At times stoic, he listens intently to every word said by Griffiths or anyone else, nodding imperceptibly, processing each detail.

Co-founder Griffiths grew up in Michigan, thereby enabling him full scoffing rights at the cold permeating the front window of the club. Griffiths usually ends up behind the Antiques drum kit, although both members of the band share almost every duty.

The story of Antiques begins not with a high school anecdote or a moment of Craigslist serendipity, but an emphatic account of the Battle of Vicksburg - a turning point in the Civil War that occurred almost 150 years ago. Band co-founder/history buff Vallarelli is able to tell the story like he was there.

He was, only around 140 years later.

Vallarelli traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi in search of a sense of history, to quench an inner yen to visit the site of this historic battle. At some point in the visit, he developed another craving - this time for a piece of fried dough. It was here he met Timothy Griffiths, originally from Michigan. The two struck up an immediate conversation. "It's this thing you get," says an animated Vallarelli, "like, 'I am supposed to be friends with this person.'"

He shrugs. "I wish we had some better story, like we were in a record store and..." the two instantly act out the classic cinematic "meeting moment," simultaneously reaching for a napkin then sharing a look when they both pick it up.

The two continued the fateful trip, rapping about life, history and most importantly, music. "We realized that we liked a lot of the same bands and had a lot of similar ideas," explains Griffiths of the decision to continue the trip together and start the two-man group. "What happened," explains Vallarelli, "was that I convinced him to come back to Boston and start a band."

It is unclear whether this happened before or after the shipwreck, described in great detail in Antiques' literature as a starting point for the band. Most would assume this moment to be fanciful bunk, the kind of bizarre back-story that a band creates in an effort to sound more interesting. Antiques actually are this interesting, and did endure an actual shipwreck, although the vessel was a steam-powered paddleboat that Griffiths acknowledges "didn't look that reliable;" the boat's similarly unreliable captain somehow ran the boat aground. This gave the group both an amazingly fake-sounding story, as well as one of their first songs. "All Aboard Missouri" sounds like a lo-fi drinking song with a distorted acoustic guitar and drums that roll along like the river itself, lapping at the beached hull of the ill-fated vessel.

Antiques seem excessively skilled at the art of musical capture. Their first album, Forgotten People Tread Water, was recorded in an Arlington basement using two cheap microphones, improvised technology (such as the aforementioned distorted acoustic guitar) and odd instrumentation, including old, detuned pianos and an aged pump organ. While audio engineers the world 'round cringe at the idea of this haphazard setup, Forgotten People Tread Water is almost supernaturally good for all its sonic imperfections and hard-panned instruments.

Behind the crazy gas mask and the crazily produced record stand two seemingly normal young men who just had the good sense to meet and the will to find their sound in old battlefields, downed steamships and dusty basements - and then bring this sound back to the Boston scene in their own oddly endearing way.

www.myspace.com/forgottenpeopletreadwater