As high, pure and sustained as that note is, the screams at the climax of "Live Again" seemed to force the air from the room and fill it with the reservoir in his lungs.

Blueberry Hill Duck Room, St. Louis
w/God or Julie & Plain Jane Automobile

Nearly a year ago I went to the Duck Room to see Ours, who prior to that hadn't come to St. Louis in about seven years. They fall into the category of bands that other musicians aspire toward, but don't have the mainstream following of the acts they've inspired. At least that's where it stands at this point. Now that they've taken to the road with a vengeance with major label support for their long-awaited release, Mercy, their profile may be on the rise.

Last year the show was opened by April Bauer, their road manager of sorts, playing stark piano and voice arrangements, heavy on tension and a sense of mournful embitterment, like a calm before the storm that would be Ours. This time out, that ambiance was provided via loops of similar sounding music over the PA. Those loops and recordings of an Allen Ginsburg public radio show filled the muggy basement before the first of the two bands supporting Gnecco and Co. took the stage. This seemed to have a disorienting affect on some of the audience, who by looks represented both the Abercrombie & Fitch and Hot Topic product lines quite well. Bizarrely, someone in management put in some thought and listening, and made sure the openers suited the audience of the headliners. That almost never happens in shows with three or more bands.

The Gremlins opened the night up by putting a little buzz in the stage left house speaker. The Gremlins, for those not up on the lore, are not a band; they are mythical progenitors of "Technical Problems" due to circumstances out of man's control. Superstitious figments or not, the Gremlins rocked the house on this particular Sunday. After they opened with "The PA Buzz," they waited till Plain Jane Automobile hit the stage, the real openers, to debut "The Feedback," a little tune they would reprise all through the night. Despite this persistent issue, these bands weren't going to let that get them down.

According to Duke Crider, lead singer and guitarist of Plain Jain Automobile, this is their first tour west of Chicago. It didn't seem to matter, because they ascribe to the equivalent of "rock unitarianism" that sounds familiar enough to be welcome anywhere. A bit of an indie vibe, the bombast of stadium rock, but none of the pomposity that alienates those of the world who have a bone to pick with Coldplay and U2. They hail from Orlando, which for me is striking; in the tensest moments, PJA channeled the spirit of fellow Floridians Denison Marrs, while at their most anthemic, they tapped into the spirit of Rick Rubin's protégés PaloAlto. As a fan of both, it was a pleasure to hear a group of young men pick up the torch and run with it, but there's more to PJA than complimentary comparisons to bands a few music diehards might recognize.

Crider's sinewy tenor resided comfortably in the mix amid the melodic interplay of their three guitars and bass. In particular, the bass lines were stellar and really drove the songs in a way you don't get as often in rock anymore. The fullness of those bass lines gave the guitarists room to play with the space in the arrangements. It would have been easy to overdrive the sound but they found the level of the room and saturated it, an aural aurora borealis. Thanks to the lively guitars and buoyant back beats and bass lines Plain Jane Automobile, make the kind of rock music that an audience can dance to without feeling like extras in Night at the Roxbury...unless, of course, that's your thing. In this town you have to top the Billboard top ten or be covering the Billboard top ten to have that effect on people, and they went for it on their first at bat and didn't whiff. On top of all the feedback, nothing could deter them from making it look like being on stage in a rock band was the greatest thrill a guy could hope for. As for those Gremlins, well, let's just say, they wouldn't be outdone...

When God or Julie took the stage, the thoroughly warmed up crowd had already begun the shuffle to the front for the headliners. Meanwhile, the Gremlins set their sights on frontman J. P. Johnson's guitar rig. Sans fanfare, they took the stage and showcased their strengths, the highlight being J. P.'s powerful and flexible voice, projected prominently over the instruments. Little did they know that, after one song, this would be the only sound he could produce. Gremlins 1, Cherry Sunburst Les Paul & accompanying pedal board and amp 0.

Needless to say, when J. P.'s guitar couldn't produce much above a muted crunch, the band's shock and confusion lead to sincere apologies and disorientation on their parts. After starting so strong and being unable to perform, it could only be described as a Premature Erockulation. After some scrambling by the sound techs and a few attempts, second guitarist Matt Hogan relinquished his SG, and J. P. started into Being Human acoustic; after a verse, the rhythm section of his brother Adam Johnson and Aaron Stern joined, making them a power trio for that moment in time as they delivered one of their catchiest numbers. In that time the crew were able to suss out the problem, bringing them back up to full strength. Undaunted, the Gremlins still played their feedback prank when the bands -- and fans -- least expected it.

Sans that second guitar, J.P. Johnson's voice stood out all the more. Another tenor in a night that featured three distinct high tenor voices of varying intensity levels, Johnson's was the middle ground between two extremes of Crider and Gnecco. Where Jimmy Gnecco possesses the gender-defying operatic flair of Farinelli (look it up folks; the film is Dangerous Liaisons for music lovers, trust me), J.P. Johnson is equally dramatic, but not quite as visceral in his approach This restraint is a strength given the clarity and power of his voice, which straddles adolescence and maturity with its pitch and timbre. The music of God or Julie, much like Johnson's voice, balances weight and uplift, sidestepping being oppressive or abusively heavy without sacrificing any of its intensity.

Melodically, God or Julie's arrangements might remind some of the more focused My Chemical Romance of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, or the less synth-heavy Muse of Absolution. The common thread again is the theatrical power of the music; it feels at times like the score to a sweeping set piece set in any period Eastern European city of your choice, the twist being the film in question have would to have the resonance and impact of The Pianist. For the music to have this level of character and personality is the kind of intangible strength that turns fans into fanatics. It's a sound that can foster a sense of identity, whereas music with no real sense of place or time becomes faceless and without substance. The point of making music is so people will remember it; God or Julie are well on their way to ensuring that they are.

It was just a week shy of a year since I went to the Duck Room on a Friday and saw Ours live for the first time. About 40 or more people made their way out; many others would have attended were it not for the Tool concert on that same evening. As Jimmy Gnecco, lead singer and guitarist of Ours, recalled, "We got really drunk" and delivered a loose-limbed, no holds barred performance that left every fan confident that they made the right choice to be there and nowhere else. This Sunday's show would be no different, sans firewater, and with a shorter set but no less powerful. Fittingly enough, I'd left a singing service and headed for the Loop, and got to hear one of the few voices that is so otherworldly it inspires belief in the supernatural upon exposure. I don't say this because I am a fan; I say this because Gnecco's voice, coupled with the cinematic and evocative compositions it heralds, has propelled myself, and thousands more, to become and remain fans.

Strangely enough, after six years between shows, Ours played on the Delmar Loop three times in less than a year. If you failed to make it to either of their headlining shows at the Duck Room or the Marilyn Manson opening gig at the Pageant, then there are a few things you might not know. For instance, you wouldn't know they come out to a loop of Jimmy singing a melody reminiscent of the theme of Batman the animated series before roaring into "Willing" off their new LP. You wouldn't know that they don't play any songs off Precious, though Jimmy graciously honored a fan request and played as much of Places as he could remember. There were a handful of tunes from Distorted Lullabies: "Drowning," "Here Is the Light," and "Bleed" this go around. You wouldn't know Jimmy came in not long before the start of the show and posed for pictures with fans. You also wouldn't know that there is no smoking during an Ours show and the air is turned off, which saves a singer's voice, and for those who would be put off by that, that might ruin your vice-filled, temperature-controlled idea of an evening out on the town, that all changed the moment you heard Jimmy sing with an unencumbered voice. It will make you want to chain smoke to settle your nerves, or quit cold turkey and map a road trip that takes you to every stop on this tour.

To sing the way he has on the three Ours CDs, one would expect the live performance to fall just a little short, but that's just not the way it is. No auto tune, no maxing out the preamps; that voice is real and borders on unfathomably powerful and ranging. It goes beyond a thing of beauty and is simply awe inspiring. If you can find any of the bootlegs of "Ave Maria," you will struggle to not hold your breath in amazement for the last eight measures. As high, pure and sustained as that note is, the screams at the climax of "Live Again" seemed to force the air from the room and fill it with the reservoir in his lungs.

Pair that with instrumentation that does justice to the ridiculously gifted talent that it's built around and it's easy to see why so many musicians are inspired by this band. At times, the music from Mercy, as well as revisionist expansions on the earlier numbers, is as serene as Sade's Love Deluxe, and at other times as cathartic as the latter half of U2's Achtung Baby. The passion and fury the band channels comes directly from the state of the world, and this was especially evident when Jimmy took a moment to "Rock the Vote" in effort to clear up any offense taken at his quips about the source of his inspiration for some of these songs that make up the LP Mercy, originally titled (and now subtitled) Dancing for the Death of an Imaginary Enemy.

After playing "Black" (not the Pearl Jam/Staind-covered tune, but an original bearing the same title), preambling their rousing rallying cry "I Ran Away to Tell the World," Jimmy let the crowd know it wouldn't be worth their time or the money to do shows if they had nothing to say and no chance of moving people. It's time for hope, and there is hope to be had if we embrace it. Most don't take politics with music well, but the best music in and preceding my lifetime was propelled by the context of its genesis. Ours let it be known that they were driven to write the inspiring tunes that are the bedrock of Mercy, and they are only encouraged that change could be on the horizon, or at least the hope of relief from the status quo.

Gnecco's readiness for a change manifest it self in the closing number, "Get Up," which evolves into a trance-rave number with loop over loop of ethereal guitar (culminating with the tech taking the stage to play Jimmy's guitar as he drummed away at a tom). This nebula of sound swelled and swayed to great heights and lengths, and seemed to go on without end, such that there was no cry for an encore because the music never stopped as each member exited the stage. Before we knew it, the lights came up. Everyone knows shows end at 11:30 p.m. on Sundays on the Loop, but no one was looking at his watch. Instead we listened, waited for the rave to fade into the ether, and it never did. Jimmy came back out and thanked us again as the lights came up, and turned some of those unyielding pedals off that looped the his voice and distorted it to sound like a preadolescent choir.

I thought to myself, "Why try and top that?" Seriously, an encore was unnecessary; this was a command performance from the onset. The Gremlins could only muster one wickedly loud burst of feedback, only to be dispersed by the sound of a band that gave of themselves because they consider themselves vessels for something that doesn't belong to them, hence the name. I guess folks get an inferiority complex when they hear music so intensely powerful and equally beautiful in its fragility. If that's you, if St. Louis is fortunate enough to play host to Ours, either of the opening of bands that graced the stage in the house that Chuck built, get over your apprehensions and check them out. And oh yeah, rock the vote. | Willie E. Smith

Photos courtesy of Ben Mudd

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