For the old souls in Dial-Up, a still-young band who play an eclectic brand of indie rock, music is a means of conjuring something deep and meaningful — to put down roots. Ironically, their seeds of inspiration weren't sown in their native south Minneapolis, but in the streets of Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen, and the hallways of European art squats — vacant buildings that get taken over by dozens, sometimes hundreds, of artists, all living and working together. The band's vision has taken shape in the form of Forever House, the house where singer and chief songwriter Andrew Jansen (A Paper Cup Band) lives with his bandmates, Aila O'Loughlin (who's also his fiancée) and Elliott Snyder.
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Jansen and O'Loughlin bought Forever House last fall. Yet if putting down roots has been the primary theme in Dial-Up's story, then the music itself provides a noticeable contrast: shiftless, if not exactly restless, in its mashing together of genres and ideas. That experimental streak, not surprisingly, is primarily down to Jansen, who started the group as a one-man project. "It was this squelchy noise music with a beat," he recalls of those early songs. "There was so much delay, and there was distortion on everything." Dial-Up began taking on a more definitive shape when Snyder, who met Jansen through a mutual friend, came in on drums. Soon, O'Loughlin was added on keys, and Jesse Schuster took up part-time bass duties. "When [Andrew] first came to me, he was like, 'No computers, just boxes of knobs,'" Snyder recalls. "I was definitely into that." Appropriately enough, Jansen welcomed Snyder on board without ever hearing him play.
The songs on Landline, Dial-Up's first full-length recording (they released an EP last winter), carry on that same playful, easy-going spirit. The 12 tracks vary widely in style from one to the next, making for a sort of Beck-like sound collage that's anchored by glitchy, but dancy, rhythms — what Jansen refers to as his "dub-booty beats" — and rich, vintage-sounding tones. Still, Dial-Up isn't just held hostage to Jansen's whims; it has evolved into a true group effort, one where Snyder says there's plenty of room for everyone to make their own contributions. "Energy and collaboration sound good," O'Loughlin says. "You can always hear it in a song." Without realizing it, she sums up everything that's brought Dial-Up to this point: the friendships, the house, even the baby that was conceived ("poetically," she says) on the last day of recording Landline. "One person making music is cool," she continues, "but when three people create something, it's just really unique, and dynamic. And the listeners pick up on it, too — even if you can't describe it." [Jeff Gage, City Pages]
