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WHO: Justin Chase (keys, guitar, lead vocals), Emma Browne (guitar, keys, background vocals), Joseph Berman (guitar), Chris Marshall (bass), and Alex Radakovich (drums).
SOUNDS LIKE: Piano synth-rock meets chamber pop.
FOR FANS OF: Typhoon, Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
Sitting on a plushy green couch in Townshend's Tea on Mississippi Avenue, Rare Diagram's Justin Chase and Emma Browne realize they first met only a few blocks away. Chase lived in a house on Stanton Street that regularly hosted shows.
"We called it Stantonova," Browne says with a laugh. (Browne occasionally takes photographs for WW.)
That was in early 2012, almost a full year and a half before they started playing music together. Chase's band, Tigerface, finally seemed to coalesce in the beginning of 2014, right around when its debut EP, On The Beach, dropped. But as the band's lineup continued to change—and a band from Phoenix also named Tigerface forced them to change their name—Chase took the opportunity to indulge in a new beginning.
"We reset and re-recorded those [Tigerface] songs and now they're here," says Chase, the primary songwriter. "It sort of feels like our first thing, even though me and Emma and our bass player were playing as a unit before that."
Now known as Rare Diagram—a nod to a line from Guided By Voices' "Kisses to the Crying Cooks"—the five-piece is set to release its proper debut LP, Secret Shot, on Nov. 6 via its own Smoking Surgeon Records. The record is full of brass and string arrangements performed by the band's friends and family, which flower particularly on tracks like the Ben Folds-esque "Scripture" and the aching ballad "Columbia."
Although Chase doesn't live at the show house anymore, he still describes Rare Diagram as "basically a home recording project." "The record was produced at home with super limited gear," he says, "and I think that contributes to the intimacy and also the stacked-to-the-brim tension of it."
But all the layered arrangements and instrumentals lend themselves to a range of unsuspecting comparisons.
"People will come up to us after shows and tell us that we sound like two completely different bands," Browne says, "like, 'You sound like Steely Dan and Elliott Smith!'"
"'It's like Pavement meets Queen, but at a carnival!'" Chase adds. He pauses. "A lot of the music is inspired by bands that have complicated harmonic stuff going on like Steely Dan, but also sad dudes with strings."
"So," Browne says, "it is like if Elliott Smith was the frontman for Steely Dan!"
SEE IT: Rare Diagram plays Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., with Fur Coats and Coronation, on Tuesday, Nov. 10. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
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