With each run-through of Second Breakfast's self-titled debut album, I'm more and more convinced that this isn't just a cut from your typical pipe-dreaming college garage band.
The four-man, one-woman ensemble of undergraduate musicians hailing from Bowdoin, Wesleyan, and Columbia humbly states that their music is "best described as an eclectic mix of pop, rock, funk, R&B, folk, jazz, and even classical." While their music is all that, it is also two heaping servings of smooth listenability, followed by the delicious dashes of lyrical irony and wit.
Second Breakfast fuses sophisticated orchestral sensibilities with breezy pop strains to produce an album that is refreshingly original. Few contemporary groups are able to deftly capture the poignancy of 21st century young adult life without lapsing into lyrical or musical clichés, but these guys net that precious vulnerability with seeming effortlessness.
It all began two years ago, when singer/songwriter/guitarist Eric Davich '06 met drummer Dan Wilson '06 as the two were playing in The Jim Weeks Philharmonic, a campus cover band. The collective desire to start a band that played original music led Davich and Wilson to search out former high school musicians and friends for their venture. Davich contacted Austin "Buzzy" Cohen, a former bandmate and current student at Columbia, to play the keyboard and saxophone, as well as Wesleyanites David "Quizno" Cordes for bass guitar and Liz Dee on vocals. Originally named "Connecticut Breakdown" (all of the band members call either New Jersey or Connecticut "home"), the group began performing live in 2003 at Bowdoin and Wesleyan and produced their first demo, amazingly, after only one rehearsal. 2004 brought a change in moniker (namely, "Connecticut Breakdown" to "Second Breakfast"), more live performances on the aforementioned campuses, as well as several at Middlebury, and notably, their first original album.
Quite a first album it is! The first track, entitled "Daydream," begins with a rousing bass line, followed by the swanky, textured interplay of the sax, guitar, and drums, with Davich and Dee compellingly, harmoniously inviting their daydreamed paramours to "come over here/You seem like someone I can talk to." It is followed up by the bluesy, loungey "Old Saybrook" and the folksy, catchy "Huck Finn," in which Davich subtly displaying his impressive vocal range. "I'm Afraid to Talk to You" is one of the album's gems, although it can't be said that any track is less than glimmering. "I'm Afraid" finds Davich and Dee in a Grease-like call-and-response, chronicling the experience of two coeds meeting at a party. Backed by playful keyboard arpeggios and snappy drumwork, Davich and Dee winningly croon, with no small dose of irony, "I think you'd be/Perfect with me/I think I could get laid/But I'm afraid to talk to you". Other particular favorites of mine include "Should I Buy You a Birthday Present?" which, despite its humorously inane title, presents reflective lyrics and finds the band at its most haunting. With distanced, smokey sax work and chordal guitar work interspersed with gentle, lulling picking, and the plaintive "Leslie" proves that Second Breakfast masters the ballad just as well as they do the radio-ready pop tunes.
So, call me gluttonous and perhaps nutritionally ignorant, but I'm more than ready for my third breakfast to be served up by this versatile, talented quintet.