Vacationland's Urbane Effrontery

In Portland, ME, where I live, it's possible to walk up and down the length of Congress St. and in one 20-minute interval run into all the luminaries of the local music scene. Things are that local, that centralized, that incestuous. The nexus of this "scene" is the Skinny, which was named in a recent Maxim one of the "50 coolest bars in America." A former porn theater, it's dark and cavernous and your elbows really do stick to the tables. And then there are the bands that play there?all of whom one runs into just walking down the street as they hurriedly scurry back and forth during their lunch breaks from their little Kinko's jobs to do band-related business, like put up fliers or whatever.

At night it's different?one has to remember Portland is primarily a fishing town outside of this new hipster enclave, and folks here have an almost ritualistic attachment to the 5 p.m. beer hour, be they seaside trawlers or hipster yobbos. The truly beautiful thing is, there isn't that much difference between the two?the constant nonstop drinking unites the hicks with the more contemporary elements. Not that many typical down-East old salts come wandering into the Skinny, but there is a kind of existential parity, because, like the proverbial siesta, at a certain time every day virtually everyone in town is doing the same thing: drinking! There are more barrooms per block in Portland than probably any town on the East Coast.

Into this milieu comes Vacationland, an outfit who're so emblematic of this syndrome you practically need a bib to greet them. Even the name is a blatant reference to the Pinhead State's longstanding nickname. Maine prides itself on its somewhat isolated ambience, as epitomized by the slogan printed on the highway sign stationed near the Maine/New Hampshire border: "The Way Life Should Be." Considering that a recent census poll showed it to be the whitest of all states, at 96.9 percent, perhaps that's just another way of saying it's a bastion of Northern crackerdom.

But you wouldn't know that listening to Vacationland, who sound nothing like a country-ass hoedown and everything like a revved-up cabal of urbanized effrontery who could've just as easily hailed from Terre Haute, or New York City. Perhaps the secret behind this urbane sensibility comes from the input of guitarist/vocalist Jim Wallerstein, a former New Yorker who skipped town to hole up in Hickory Notch. Now he rooms with Bebe Buell and gets to kick the dust asunder with local boys Shawn Saindon (guitar/vocals), Andrew Gilbert (bass) and Tim Morin (drums).

Saindon had an LP of his own a few years ago, in more of a singer/songwriter vein. He plays McCartney to Wallerstein's Lennon, or Grant Hart to his Bob Mould (none of the band members is fat). Evoking a somewhat ginchy U2/Queen quality in several songs, Shawn proves he ain't no punk but a musician with good commercial instincts. His composition "Cry Baby Killer" is pure Aerosmith (he denies this). The rhythm section of Gilbert and Morin, meanwhile, is like the classic doinks every band needs to pound out the beat behind the preening frontman types. Vacationland's got two of those in Saindon and Wallerstein.

Wallerstein played formerly with at least two legendary New York bands, Das Damen and D Generation, but he claims Vacationland is "the band I've been waiting for my whole life." With his New York contacts he got producer Warren Bruleigh (Lou Reed, PJ Harvey, Violent Femmes) to do the band's four-song demo. My favorite song on the EP is Saindon's "Fighter," which, despite its title, isn't about Mike Tyson. It's the closest they do to the kind of headlong super-rock practiced by Hüsker Dü and Bad Religion, with exotica added by Morin, who taps on a few coconut shells in the infectious bridge. Wallerstein's "When It Rains" is another doozy. Rain songs are always hip, and this one joins the ranks of the Angry Samoans' "It's Raining Today," Zep's "The Rain Song" and 10,000 Maniacs' "Like the Weather."

How will they fare when they venture out of state to play CBGB this weekend? Don't ask me?I'll be in the bar.

Vacationland plays Friday, March 22, at CBGB, 315 Bowery (Bleecker St.), 982-4052.