Friday, October 17, 2003

By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic

The edgy post-punk angularity and thinking-person's lyrical approach of Life in Bed's "Two Point Perspective" should play well to fans of Burning Airlines. And the rhythmic shifts are just tricky enough to bring on flashbacks to the golden age of math-rock.

	LIFE IN BED WITH: Arrivals & Departures, the Wynkataug Monks WHERE: Modern Formations Gallery, Garfield. WHEN: 8 tonight CALL: 412-362-0274.

But to Bill Merante's ears, the songs he writes and sings for Life in Bed are best described as pop.

"The lyrics aren't catch phrases or cliches," he says. "But the music itself is easily digestible. There's not a lot of massive time changes or parts that are not very easy to follow. I don't know, I guess I'm used to listening to a lot more blown-out stuff. So I wouldn't want to call it jagged just because of the music I'm used to hearing, listening to Polvo and Archers of Loaf and bands like that that are just all over the place."

So what he's saying, then, is Life in Bed is pop compared to Polvo?

"Yeah," he responds with a laugh. "Pretty much."

Among the several differences between his band and Polvo, there are songs here -- maybe half -- that, to Merante's ears, could slip into rotation at commercial radio without disrupting anybody's day.

"It would fit," he says. "You wouldn't hear it and be like 'Oh my God, I've never heard anything like that in my life.' "

Of course, given the state of the industry Merante derides in the album-opening "Weight of an Atom," the chances of that airplay coming through are slim on good days, none on bad days.

The song is "about the industry having a grip on music that becomes popular and having the ultimate say in everything," Merante says. "There's really no artistic integrity in it anymore. It's just like one band, and if that band becomes successful, you find 10 other singers who sound just like him and try to manufacture 10 more pop stars. ... One minute, they'll tell you, you need to work hard and do this and that, and the next minute, they're picking up high school girls with decent voices and turning them into divas. How hard did they work? They just look good and the labels taught them how to sing."

Rather than spend a whole song kicking major labels while they're down, he also takes aim at the "local music industry," inspiring the rare use of "yinz" on a record.

"Weight of an Atom" is one of several highlights here, another being "Gun," a song inspired by an anti-marijuana ad -- "the one where there are two boys in the room," Merante says, "and they're talking and then they smoke one and the one kid pulls a gun out of the drawer and shoots his friend. I'm not sure I've ever met anybody who's had that kind of experience."

The song that tends to get the most response, though, is "The Ground Below," an atmospheric change of pace suggestive of what might have happened if the guys in Pink Floyd had grown up on Radiohead instead of the other way around.

"That's definitely an anomaly," Merante says. "But when we play shows, that's the one that people remember. 'That one song with all the spacey stuff is great.' It didn't take us very long to write, let's put it that way. But it seems to appeal to everybody, so we keep it in the set."

Merante, formerly of Irwin (the group, not the town) hooked up with guitarist Craig Svitek and drummer Sean Finn in the final days of Manifold Splendour.

Life in Bed began after Manifold vocalist Emily Borne decided she would rather leave the band than stick around and let the new guy sing more lead.

Merante has nothing but praise for an unreleased four-song EP they cut with Borne on vocals, but the sound of Life in Bed is a complete departure from Manifold Splendour's official releases.

"That's why they wanted me to play in the first place," says Merante, "because they wanted a little bit of an edge. So I brought that. We even played a couple of old Irwin songs. They fit into the set because the new sound was probably more like what I was doing than what they were doing. And then I think those guys got excited about playing that kind of music and hearing that kind of music, and that's why they didn't have a problem retooling and changing the name and pretty much starting over from scratch."

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