Jay Smiley
These days, Chan Poling’s totally cool with choosing melody over menace.
Poling, the lead singer and co-founder of the legendary Minneapolis punk/new wave group The Suburbs, is actually kinda philosophical about it.
“There’s something very true about the effect of menace and aggression in rock music,” says Poling, calling from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. “It’s usually made by young men — they’re posturing, their mindset is ‘this is my time, my territory, my sexuality.’ As you get older, you start to say, ‘Hey, man, let’s chill out.’ I was part of the whole punk rock thing, but I don’t feel that way anymore.”
Back in the ‘80s, Poling and Suburbs co-founder Beej Chaney, who left the band in 2014, sure did. Early-era aggressive rockers like “Cigarette in Backwards,” “Waiting” and “Tape Your Wife to the Ceiling,” helped power The Suburbs to the forefront of Minneapolis’ music scene. All three songs are frequently part of the band’s live sets — and will likely be part of their July 1 gig at the High Noon Saloon.
On The Suburbs’ latest release, Hey Muse!, the driving bassline and bold brass are still as prevalent as they were way back on In Combo, the band’s first release in 1980. But now they’re deployed in more melodically inclined tunes like “Butterfly.” That doesn’t mean Poling doesn’t let his Bryan-Ferry-esque vocals rip: Give the man credit for the sly line, “I love a girl in a uniform,” a nod to Gang of Four in the uber-catchy song “Unified Front.” (Poling calls the line “accidentally intentional.”) And if you’re so inclined, you can draw a bright line from ”Music For Boys,” one of the jazzily ominous tunes from the band’s second album, Credit in Heaven, to “When We Were Young,” the song that closes Hey Muse! (“When we were young/we loved the boys and the songs they sung…”)
“I was thinking about a record like the ones I liked growing up, rock records harking back to the ‘70s,” says Poling of the spirit that drives Hey Muse! “This record has a little of that classic feel to it.”
For most of the ‘90s and aughts, The Suburbs were content doing the thing many grizzled bands eventually do — hitting the state fair and summer festival circuit, rocking the reunion-tour vibe. But Poling’s outlook and musical direction shifted after two deaths: guitarist Bruce Allen, another original band member, in 2009, and Poling’s second wife, Eleanor Mondale (daughter of former vice president Walter) in 2011.
“I remember us thinking, we don’t want to do this anymore. We should write some new songs,” Poling says.
That desire led to 2013’s Si Sauvage, the first new music the band had recorded in almost two decades. The Kickstarter campaign that helped fund it — the biggest one in Minnesota music history — reminded Poling and his bandmates that they still had an expansive and devoted following, both in Minnesota and beyond. “That galvanized us,” he says. “Funraising,” as Poling prefers to call it, also powered the release of Hey Muse!
And it’ll probably fuel more. Buoyed by touring for Hey Muse! — they’re also rocking Summerfest on June 29 — Poling’s already slapped his composer’s fedora back on his head. Two songs so far and counting for the next album.
“I like making music,” he says. “It doesn’t make any sense to stop doing it.”
