http://www.f5wichita.com/index.php?pubdate=2004-03-04&story=1381
F5 Magazine
March 4, 2004
Jedd Beaudoin

Squint set to paint the town tinsel

Squint frontman Dane Adrian may be one of the most driven indie rockers in the country. Not content to merely write, record and release albums — then tour behind them — Adrian also understands that the music business is a combination of both art and commerce. And he's smart, too.

While Squint's songs may be brief bursts of aural pleasure, they're hardly the mindless entities that give pop music a bad name. Take "Anthem for Closure," from the band's latest effort, Tinsel Life. At first, you might take it as deeply personal Bob Mould-inflected breakup tune. But, Adrian pointed out, it's a little more complex than that.

"It's an open apology to words," he said. "The point of the song is that we use words without any concern for how words feel. You might turn to someone and say, 'I love you.' But 'you' doesn't know what's going on. It just knows that it was used."

He also said that Tinsel Life marked a change for him as a lyricist. In the past, he noted, he recorded bursts of ideas all the time. "When you do that, return to little blips of things that you've written," he said, "you end up with [something] that is not a cohesive thought. You might not end up with a solid idea. You might end up with three or four ideas within a song. I purposefully stopped writing songs that way."

Another way in which Tinsel Life differs from their previous outings, Adrian said, is the production. Although the band was pleased with the attention that their previous outing, Beeker, had received, they didn't feel that they had, by then, managed to fully capture their sound. They knew that if they wanted to expand on their achievements they'd have to find someone to help them capture the right studio sound.

Each member surveyed his record collection for especially high-impact records. All four came up with a disc by the Athens, Georgia-based outfit Five Eight that had been produced by someone named Ed Stasium. "We thought he was a studio rat," Adrian said.

That studio rat turned out to be a studio rat with management. The same management as the Barenaked Ladies. And if Adrian wasn't wise about Stasium's track record, his brother was.

"He said, 'Who'd you get?' I said, 'Some guy named Ed Stasium.' And my brother said, 'The Ed Stasium?' I said, 'He has a the in front of his name?' Then my brother rattled off a list of names that included Mick Jagger, the Ramones, Soul Asylum, Living Colour, Talking Heads."

Adrian and the others went back to scouring their record collections. Then, because some time had passed, Adrian decided to check back with Stasium's management. The response? "They said, 'Yeah. Loves the record. Wants to do it.'"

The rest is on the record.

"When we got done, we had what every indie band would love to have," Adrian said. "A record that we own, done by a big-name producer. Unless you're in the music business, you might not realize that a lot of bands don't own their work when they're on a label. We do."

At the moment the band is turning its attention to writing another record, although, Adrian said, Tinsel Life still has legs. In the meantime, fans can look forward to a DVD and more shows, including the band's annual benefit for persons with Parkinson's disease.

As for life on the road? The only downside Adrian noted was the smell of the band's van: "It's pretty smelly. It's pretty cool but kind of gross. I don't recommend sticking your head in there."

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