Features
Child Bite
By Jeff Milo
Dec 11, 2007, 11:37

Just Get Weird
Child Bite

“We really like it better wrong.”

Guitarist/keyboardist/singer Shawn Knight smiles through his fuzzy black beard as he recounts the story of Child Bite’s recording of their EP, Gold Thriller, when a staggeringly poignant soft section from saxophonist, Christian Doble, was accidentally fit in one measure early; the six words above was the band’s response when an engineer offered to fix it. But it so perfectly illustrates the distinctive, casual brilliance of this often shoot-from-the-hip collective; always mid-to-up-tempo, exploring weirdly bent tones and letting the loosely-leashed feedback roar under unmistakably pop-style song structures.

Seated in a semi-circle around me are drummer Daniel Sperry, Shawn Knight, bassist Sean Clancy (from defunct Rescue), guitarist Zach Norton (who, with Sperry makes up most of El Boxeo) and saxophonist/winds Doble (from Cloud Car and Kiddo). Each has played bass at some point in their lives, most tenured in punk bands in their youth — they all have facial hair.

Knight: I generally tell people, “Rock music, ya know? Rock ‘n’ roll? That’s what I tell my mom … we’re a rock band.”

Sperry: It’s deranged pop music. Even in the beginning, we were drawing from pop music, it wasn’t like some grind-core jam or free jazz.

It started as a trio (Knight, Sperry, Norton) experimenting with song creation, setting up a mic and his “lab top,” Knight recorded Danny and Zach making stuff up for a half-hour, then he’d sift through the recording of drum and bass, dig 30 seconds, cut it out, save it aside, repeat and make a rough composition of the collage, then add his keyboard and vocals.

Knight: We did that until we had 11 songs (debut: Wild Feast) then, “oh shit, now we have to learn these songs.” It was like learning cover songs.

Norton: There were parts that I made that were mistakes that [Knight] liked.     
Then Clancy, in the grab-bag for musicians in Rescue’s wake, started his contract work with CB, first just subbing, and then appearing in press photos. Doble had been casually, but closely affiliated with the Child Bite project early, providing various auxiliary winds whenever needed. He points to Gold Thriller’s lead off anthem, “I Like Friends,” as something the band doesn’t just sing about, but lives by, with collaboration invitee lists always growing and fluctuating; an “all are welcome” kinda vibe.  

The seeming discordance of their sound forms a confounding synchronicity, a eureka coherence: a guitar scrape over a steady beat, a fuzzy bass lick intruding upon howling/squeaky belts or maybe the whirled blips of a circuit-bent joystick; born from their, essentially, trial and error songwriting style.

In the spring, they’ll release Fantastic Gusts of Blood, “more towards what you might say is traditional,” says Sperry, “but still completely fucked up.”
Doble: I think the band’s gotten to a point where they’re reading each other a lot faster. Some songs sound like they’re gonna explode at any moment and then everybody calms down.

Clancy: I like music that has a unique attack, a unique explosion of energy and soul! It just seems like [CB] wouldn’t be doing anything else.  | RDW

Child Bite • 12/21 • Bohemian National Home  12/22 • Russell Industrial Center

© Copyright by RealDetroitWeekly.com