Tim Radl
Pat Connaughty (left) and Jeff Jagielo blend elements from folk to grunge.
Like a fine wine or a distracted undergraduate, the members of the Madison’s Squarewave took their time with their latest album, A Tighter Knot. It’s a project that’s been a whopping seven years in the making.
“We have hundreds of ideas,” says guitarist Jeff Jagielo, who shares a musical collaboration with fellow guitarist Pat Connaughty that stretches back to their days with Ivory Library, a mainstay of the local scene in the 1980s. “The ones that work come to the surface and you eventually get ’em down. We were never trying to force the songs — the ones that end up being the best are the ones you don’t struggle with.”
They’re also, apparently, the ones that come from a ridiculously wide range of musical genres. Jagielo and Connaughty weave and blend elements from folk to prog-rock to pop and grunge over the course of the album’s 14 songs. A Tighter Knot all but bleeds standout tracks, including “Smoke for Air,” a shimmering pop song with a soaring chorus that belies a bummer lyrical bent. Another cut from the album, “Can You Tell Me,” is so sonically ornate the band won’t play it live.
“The basic structure is pop melodicism,” says Jagielo of Squarewave’s deeply layered walls of sound. “I’m a fan of melody. That’s one of the things I’m attracted to. The darker things — that’s just what comes out.”
Both Jagielo and Connaughty share with Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) a love of retreating from the world to create music — hence the protracted creative process, completed in Jagielo’s Wautoma garage. Being musical veterans has also been liberating, says Jagielo.
“At this point, we don’t have any wild expectations of where the music is going to take us,” he says. “In the past we would have to self-promote ourselves. Now we just create music.” The album is being released on Artisanal Records, founded recently by Phil Davis, a guitarist who once played with Butch Vig and Duke Erikson in the pre-Garbage band Firetown.
The band’s album release party Jan. 21 at the Harmony Bar and Grill will double as a gathering of old friends. The Dash Hounds, who contributed to A Tighter Knot, will serve as Squarewave’s rhythm section, bridging a musical generation gap in the process. Dash Hounds will open the show, followed by Stone Prairie.
A Tighter Knot may have taken seven years to get here, but it’s worth the wait.
