SH! THE OCTOPUS, The Carrot Chase (Self-released, 2007)

Sh! The Octopus has that old school spirit. Not the “go team” spirit, or the drinkable kind of spirit, but the attempting valiantly to rock your socks off spirit. The Detroit quintet, named after the odd 1937 film starring lovable dimwit Hugh Herbert, features Midwestern rock-n-roll with folky touches — nothing necessarily new, but the kind of thing that could be a good backdrop for bar-brawling fun.

Originally the solo project of primary songwriter and frontman Randy Bishop, Carrot Chase benefits from the atmosphere of a full band. Dashes of harmonica, twittering keyboards, female backing vocals and a well-defined rhythm section help define the Octopus sound. And yet, on the mic, Bishop is a pop philosopher, a jaded rock warrior citing Wilco lyrics and his own punk rock roots as he describes the bar band’s struggle for something more. Despite its pop feel, the lyrics to “The Last Great Massacre” chronicle a man on the dark side of rock music failure, while on “LS” Bishop laments that “there’s a band playing in the other room/ but no one is paying any mind,” remembering when he was in the audience instead, but acknowledging that he feels it from both sides now. Octopus’s can-do spirit starts to get torn down and muddled by the clash between how things should be and how things are.

From the rambling noises of “Anybody See My Tuner?” onward through the The Carrot Chase’s finale, there’s little to distinguish Sh! The Octopus from their contemporaries, as hard as they try. They do lay down the rock ‘n’ roll and tell it like it is, but with repeat listens these songs lose some of their fire, since Bishop and Octopus aren’t the only musicians struggling with small audiences and smaller paychecks. Sh! The Octopus have the spirit in them to make a great rock-n-roll record. Maybe they need out of the bars for awhile — some time to consider songcraft instead of the griping of a bar band life might just make that happen.

– Natalie B. David