Remember that Brady Bunch episode where Bobby fell in love for the first time and saw fireworks explode in the sky when he kissed the girl of his dreams? Creeper Lagoon's songs are a lot like that. There's something about the way the dovetailing guitars and singer Ian Sefchick's adolescent ache of a voice come together to remind you of that girl (or boy) who first flustered your insides so badly that it was all you could do to remember your name. Which is why Creeper Lagoon's Saturday night performance -- a special "listener appreciation" show broadcast live by Boston alternative rock radio giant WBCN -- made it seem as if Valentine's Day had come twenty-four hours ahead of schedule.

The San Francisco foursome made the most of an abbreviated ten-song, fifty-minute set (tailored, presumably, for radio broadcast), diving headlong into the cream of their debut, I Become Small and Go (NickelBag), and also taking the opportunity to air a few new numbers and thank an audience that had helped to make one track in particular, "Dreaming Again," the featured "indie song" of the week. It was encouraging that an outfit like Creeper Lagoon, a band that tends to fly under the radar of the commercial alt-rock mainstream, would find itself headlining a packed, cheering house of so-called modern rock listeners. Encouraging, indeed, because, as Creeper demonstrated during its short set, the band just happens to be one of the best indie-pop outfits around -- and unfortunately, it's also precisely the kind of indie band that's routinely ignored by frat boys and their dates eagerly awaiting the next Matchbox 20 single.

Launching into the humming, deep-shag groove of "Dear Deadly," the band (which also includes guitarist Sharky Laguana, bassist Geoffrey Chisholm and drummer David Kostiner) split the difference between the tousled mood-ring pop of the Lemonheads and the love-drunk lurch of Pavement. "Dreaming Again" was a whirling, lightheaded rush of breaks and bridges, a lovely collision of spiraling guitars cascading into the recurring image of "a beautiful girl with black hair and curls, brandy and pearls" awakening the song's hero from his lonely dreams. When he introduced the tune afterwards as "the song that I guess got us this gig" with a mixture of guileless wonder and sincere appreciation, Sefchick came across like Jonathan Richman's charmingly geeky nephew -- smart and sure on the inside, scratching his head and just happy to be here on the outside. It was as if Sefchick and the rest of the band knew that their music was good, but were slightly surprised that so many others thought so too.

The set-closing "Wonderful Love" was a rhapsody in miniature, somehow orchestral with just the four of them on the narrow stage (though there may have been a few loops lurking somewhere in there), Sefchick's and Laguana's guitars weaving a warm web of sound around Chisholm's and Kostiner's radiant, rhythmic pulse. With the singer's ardent suggestion to "wake up and turn up your favorite song" floating above a luminous, arcing melody, it wasn't terribly difficult to imagine a few listeners jacking the volume knob to the right the next time they hear that tune piping from their car radios. Not that Creeper Lagoon needed the extra decibels to get their message across. On their own, the songs sounded like a roomful of heartbeats pounding at once -- or, daresay, fireworks exploding in the sky.

JONATHAN PERRY
(February 16, 1999)