Tom Lynch

On the rare and awkward occasion when a side project surpasses a musician's full-time band in execution and conviction, you can't help but wonder when the original group will flatline, or, at least, become an afterthought. There are the monumentally successful side projects like Gorillaz and the moderately successful Fort Minor, plus Broken Social Scene--which is basically a side project for everyone involved--PROBOT (Dave Grohl's metal excursion), Angels & Airwaves and, of course, The Postal Service, which, I'm sure, some think is better and, oddly, more accessible than Death Cab for Cutie.

Alkaline Trio's guitarist and vocalist Matt Skiba--who's also the only remaining original member of the band, which launched a decade ago--has a new project on the horizon, called Heavens, a two-man collaboration between Skiba and musician Josiah Steinbeck of F-Minus. The debut record, "Patent Pending," was released in September on Epitaph Records and features mostly Steinbeck's electronic beats--plus guitars, bass and keyboards, with Skiba's voice, crooning in the lowest register, sounding decidedly unlike his vocal work with his other band. ("I've wanted to do that for a long time," Skiba says.) The record has received some rather dumb comparisons to The Postal Service's "Give Up"--the only true similarity is the ironic similarities of the lineups. While that record has a sweet candy coating that smothers every sound in earshot, "Patent Pending" is devilishly darker, full of death, blood and suicidal decay. The album's best song, a Stephin Merritt-like ode called "Dead End Girl," seems inspired directly from multiple listens to any "Best of the 80s" compilations--the easy, catchy and glum "My oh my dead end girl" chorus, sung so low it's nearly a drawl, is, in essence, so very complete, so perfect for the song. Some Sisters of Mercy stuff comes to mind--Skiba's a big fan--as does the inevitable Interpol and Joy Division, but what stands out most is the difference between and degree of separation from Alkaline Trio. While that band's trend-setting brand of emo-punk--which has, to the band's credit, collected a loyal following--seems to crawl on and on, Heavens is calmer, more reserved, slightly less melody-driven, and, in effect, more convincing. You can see some of these songs on Alkaline Trio records, but in the end, you're glad they're not--they belong right here.

"It just sort of fell in my lap," Skiba says of how Heavens was started. "I was living with Jo [in Los Angeles, where Skiba moved when he left Chicago], and he played me some demos of ideas he had that he tucked away for a while. I thought they were really great. I was kind of blown away."

The two friends originally met here in Chicago. "We met at the Fireside Bowl," Skiba says. "Jo was recording with F-Minus with Steve Albini, mutual friends introduced us, and we started talking about Albini bands and the great records he did. We immediately felt we had something in common."

He says he enjoyed not writing the music himself, as he does in the Alkaline Trio, but rather adding to an already shaped foundation. "We collaborated a lot, and that was kind of a challenge, but a lot of fun," he says. "To me, songwriting is putting a puzzle together, and writing with somebody else's music, there seems to be a lot more pieces." He also embraced the lack of any preconceived notions of the band. "I can't stand self-indulgent music," he says. "We want to write songs that people want to hear. We always want to be Alkaline Trio--we don't want [to put out an atypical record] and have people be like, `Why didn't you call it something else?' But we want to progress, though. We are what we are. But with Heavens, we didn't have that. It was a new baby."

Skiba acknowledges that he's developed a reputation for being a dark and dismal lyricist, his songs crammed with a death obsession--he's also, reportedly, a member of the Church of Satan--but he says that's not all to his personality. "It's part of my personality that I get to express here," he says. "I might be a little weird, but I'm usually making fun of everything. I have a dark sense of humor compared to most people. I see humor and beauty in everything. I'm a pretty happy guy, a silly person. I feel like the lyrics only portray a side of me, and I exercise [that side] thoroughly in music rather than on fellow man."

With his wife, he lives in Los Angeles now, a far cry for a Chicago kid. "In every way, it's nothing like Chicago," he says of his new town. "When people ask me where I'm from I say Chicago. It's where Alkaline Trio rehearses, my family's still there. L.A. is an interesting place, as a Chicago kid I feel like I'm on the outside looking in. It's constant entertainment. I have friends down here--contrary to popular belief, not everyone is a phony asshole. But when you live in L.A., you get cold when it's forty degrees. I'm a wimp now."

Heavens plays November 17 at Metro, 3730 North Clark, (773)549-0203, at 6pm. $14-$16.

(2006-11-14)

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