Womanly Charms

Woman embark on their first tour and release an EP before a projected year-long hiatus

The members of Woman are engaged in a photo shoot on the sloping roof of the Fourth and Gill house in which singer Chris Lowe rents an apartment (the setting was Lowe’s idea). The four guys are joking, mugging for the camera and participating in the kind of antics that seem an inevitable side-effect of groups of guys who spend way too much time together in dark, cramped spaces playing music.

“This is worse than a night in jail,” deadpans drummer Jason Stark.

“Have you ever spent a night in jail?” bassist Damion Huntoon asks.

“Yes, I have, actually,” Stark replies so flatly it’s hard to tell if he’s joking or not. 

One hopes for his sake he is kidding, because of the not-terribly-tough-looking and generally sweet-demeanored men of Woman, he seems the least likely to do well in stir.

The band is essentially a group of funny, goofy guys whose propensity for joking belies the intensity of their music. In live performances, the members can work themselves into a near-trance, with Lowe picking up the mic stand and turning his back to the audience, howling and chanting over Huntoon’s thundering bass and Stark’s frantic drumming, as guitarist Tyler Mucklow whips his entire body about, headbanging as he delivers sharp, metallic riffs.

After a run of almost two years, the band is about to take a year-long hiatus, with Mucklow departing for two semesters in Mexico and Lowe teaching English in South Korea. They’re leaving behind a souvenir of time well-spent, though, in the form of the four-song EP Mazes, the inaugural release on former Knoxvillian and current K Records intern Brian Formo’s fledgling Endless Latino label. The lead track’s title, “Not Quite Metal,” sums up an element of the EP’s sound quite well, flirting with the genre but still firmly rooted in post-punk. Huntoon and Stark pummel out a tightly wound rhythmic base, while Mucklow’s layered guitars swarm above it all and Lowe’s multi-tracked, megaphone-assisted vocals lay low in the mix. It all stops on a dime before immediately picking up with “No Mr. 31,” a track propelled by Stark’s near-mechanical drum tattoo and Mucklow’s churning guitars, which here sound like insects trying to chew through Huntoon’s solid bass lines. Side Two's "Sssubtle Lady" and "Golden Milk" continue the assault.

Recorded in the attic practice/recording/performance space of Huntoon and Mucklow’s Fourth and Gill rented house, the EP highlights the band at its peak, offering a decent impression of the full fury of their live shows, but with enough studio mojo by Huntoon (who holds a degree in recording engineering from Western Michigan University) to expand on their sound. The record captures the band in an interesting stage of development, still anchored in the brash punk energy of its origin, but with a more refined and personal take on the various styles of rock ‘n’ roll its members love. Mazes, which is being distributed by K Records, already shows a more mature band than last year’s self-released “Open Letter”/”Black Black” 7-inch.

When I remark that the band has always seemed to progress at a rapid clip, to have a new song or an added sharpness to their sound from show to show, Huntoon states, “Part of that has to do with the fact that Tyler and I have known each other for almost 10 years, and have been in two bands together. At our first practice we wrote ‘Black Black.’ We got together in August of 2006, had our first house show in October, then our first show out was in December.”

The band members represent a cross-section of recent Knoxville music history — Mucklow in outfits such as Maxi and the Pads and Divorce, veteran scene drummer Stark of Ibrahim and Double Muslims, Lowe who fronted Selten Übel and Fangs and Huntoon who has recorded various local bands.

Their engaging live act and frequent performances built a dependable local following (thanks in part to natural-born hype-man Lowe’s tireless promotional skills), and the band embarked on the occasional weekend mini-tour to cities such as Atlanta, Brooklyn and Chicago.