By Craig Schmidt

Let’s be frank: When you take a band from a mid-sized town and plop them on stage in the big city, most of the time said band sounds patently mid-sized. At least for the first couple times out.

Kalamazoo, Mich. – from whence Knee Deep Shag came – is the textbook definition of mid-sized. And there was a time, frankly, when they would have sounded positively undersized in the relatively hallowed, spacious Double Door setting. No more.

After six years of concocting their odd mix of pop, prog and funk, Knee Deep Shag are good enough to rock any casbah in any city.

The key to the band’s evolution is simple: The songs are better. While there is a certain charm to cuts from their older records, this evening was sustained by numbers from their latest release, "Good Disguise."

Fueled by the supple punch of rhythm section Mike Ferust (tastefully judicious on the five-string bass) and drummer Jeff Moehle, singer Matt Gross breathed Beck-esque life into "3 p.m." As in all their best material, the changes came fast and furious, never seeming gratuitous. Gross’ clear, quirky vocal style seemed to cut against the grain of the rather gritty tune, but a lot of Knee Deep Shag’s success can be attributed to such symbiotic relationships.

In concert, the band are remarkably faithful to their recorded canon; most notable are the harmonies, which are damn near as tight live as on disc. Moreover, the longer leash afforded keyboardist Rob Cookman lends a more flexible feel the band’s recorded material occasionally lacks.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what Knee Deep Shag sound like; the description that comes immediately to mind is to imagine if the Ben Folds Five had been weaned on Bootsy’s Rubber Band. Knowing that, it might be surprising to think the ballads carried the night. But that’s exactly what happened, especially the wonderfully deliberate "By a Thread." Grandiose by design, Phil Barry managed to keep it real with his alternately earthy and ethereal guitar. The highlight, though, was the vocal counterpoint that brings the song to a close. Reminiscent of the penultimate moments of Radiohead’s "Paranoid Android," it’s impressive they even tried this bit live, never mind the fact they pulled it off.

Which is not to say everything went perfect. When pitted against the best from "Good Disguise," Knee Deep Shag’s older material was exposed as well-intentioned, but meandering nonetheless. In particular "Intuition," the title track from their last LP, suffered from the lack of focus to which funk is sometimes susceptible.

But such hiccups did not so much underline Knee Deep Shag’s shortcomings as accentuate the progress they have made in recent years. Speculating about the future is beyond the scope of this writer, always bear this in mind: Groovy balladeering will never go out of style.

Knee Deep Shag Web Site

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