In a city like Madison, where it's winter about six months out of the year, sitting on your couch, wrapped in an afghan, making music on your computer isn't lazy. It's downright sensible.
In fact, for every local band playing out at the bars, there are probably two more squirreled away in their bedrooms and basements. One such band, Love Rhombus, makes quirky electro out of an attic hideaway on the isthmus.
In fact, it was living in close quarters that made the band come about.
"The band lives together, like the Beatles in Help!," says Rhobbie Rhombus, a.k.a. Robbie Guerin, one-third of the geometry-loving trio. "Madeleine (Fairbairn) Rhombus and Jason (Nolen) Rhombus, the other two members of the band, were making bawdy jokes at a party one night when they realized they'd stumbled across the perfect band name, Love Rhombus. I took the joke a little too seriously and began producing songs for the project."
Since then, the rhomboids have been fusing a Kraftwerk-esque obsession with technology with a Belle & Sebastian-like reclusiveness to create danceable pop for both cool kids and shut-ins.
"Jason and Madeleine's Ph.D. studies in sociology helped shape the lyrical content of the songs, along with such classic subjects as love, dancing and sex," says Rhobbie.
Meanwhile, an unexpected gift of a Baldwin organ, coupled with the sound of Sarah Palin's yammering on the campaign trail, inspired the band to add a bit of Camera Obscura-style twee-rock to its song "Water Walk."
"We were inspired by Sarah Palin's historical misconceptions regarding evolution, so we went for a song about faith, divine intervention and the difficulties an atheist boy faces when courting a devout girl," Rhobbie says. "And dancing."
An MP3 of "Water Walk" is available in the related downloads section at right. More songs by Love Rhombus can be found on its MySpace page.
MadTracks highlights and provides MP3s of songs performed by local musicians. All tracks here are provided with permission of the artist. If you are a musician based in the Madison metro area and are interested in sharing your work as a MadTrack, please send a message.
