PRESS
Chicago Weekly
Pure Hype! With the Soft Targets
Sean Redmond (April 13, 2006 in Music)
Break out your beat up leather jackets, folks we're going for a ride. A ride through rock'n'roll history, back to an era when a rock band was more than just a few guys with guitars, an era when music was the revolution and rock stars were the leather-clad guerrillas taking over our airwaves and our ideologies. The late 70s. The Clash. Punk. The movement, like all era-defining movements in history, has since been swept to the wayside (although I'm sure there are a bunch of diehard 16-year-olds who will insist to the contrary; in fact, I think I can hear them blaring Green Day off in the distance. . .no wait, that's just VH1); but while the era of punk may be gone, it's most definitely not forgotten Johnny Rotten and Co. left their mark not only on the fellow bands of the moment, but also helped pave the way for the post-punk, new wave, and indie rock scenes of the 80s, and these bands and their music continue to inspire legions of followers today.
Enter the Soft Targets Chris Auman (guitar, vocals), Reg Shrader (guitar), Tim Davison (bass), and Perry Finch (drums). They're by no means a punk rock band, but their angular guitar crunch is more than a little indebted to the Clash, Wire, and the rest of those no-good punks. The band also draws on the post-punk edginess of the Fall, the unabashed pop sensibilities of XTC and the Soft Boys, and the left-of-center garage-pop aesthetics of more recent bands like Guided By Voices and early Flaming Lips to create a focused, tight-knit unit that revels in creating three minute bursts of snarky, high-octane guitar pop. Add in Auman's slight Midwestern drawl, and these Chi-town rockers have created a winning formula that combines the best elements of their sneering 70s forebears with the innovative developments of the 80s underground to create a natural evolution of a sound that came off as remarkably fresh from its conception and, thanks to the fine-tune tweaking of Auman and the rest of the Targets, still sounds fresh and vibrant today. But don't just take my word for it. Tune in Friday night at 9pm to WHPK, 88.5fm, and hear the Soft Targets in all their live glory for yourself, right in the comfort of your own home. Hey looks like you won't need that jacket after all.
Chicago Sun-Times
LAWYERS BY DAY ROCKERS BY NIGHT
January 1, 2007
BY ERIC HERMAN Staff Reporter
When he's not prosecuting murderers and drug dealers, John Kezdy stands on stage singing "Body Bag."
Mark Shlifka, also a prosecutor, sticks to more mainstream music, revving up bar crowds with favorites like Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion."
Lawyers have a reputation for being boring. Prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers, whose work deals with life-and-death events, can be wound extra tight. But a handful of Chicago criminal lawyers defy the stereotype, playing in clubs and recording studios across the city. And they see parallels, up to a point, between trial work and playing music.
"Playing live for people is like winning a jury trial. It's just the best feeling," said Dan Kiss, a Cook County assistant public defender and bass player for Soft Targets. "There's a lot less pressure, too. No one goes to prison if you play a bad show."
New record coming out
Kezdy runs the statewide grand jury bureau of the Illinois attorney general's office. But long before law school, he had found another consuming passion: punk rock.
The turning point, he said, was hearing the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols."
"That album changed my life," said Kezdy, 47. "It wasn't just the music. It was the whole attitude."
Kezdy formed the Effigies in 1980 after dropping out of the University of Wisconsin. They played Chicago clubs and toured the United States in a van. The Effigies recorded three albums of original songs, including "Body Bag."
The band split up after six years. Kezdy resumed his education and decided to become a prosecutor. Then, in 2003, two former bandmates approached him about reviving the Effigies. He agreed.
Their first record of new material in 20 years, "Reside," comes out this month.
Though punk rock had an anti-authority message at its core and many of its icons died from drug abuse, Kezdy sees no conflict between playing it and representing the state in criminal cases.
"I've never seen punk rock as being synonymous with breaking the law. To me, the basic things that I admire in punk rock, they end up being kind of old conservative values: independence, complete self-reliance," he said.
But while Kezdy delights in a "music of ideas," Johnny Justice and the Southside Railroad just want to entertain. The six-member group includes four Cook County assistant state's attorneys and a Chicago Police detective.
$500 to $1,200 a gig
Shlifka and fellow Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Eric Leafblad, both guitarists, met at the Criminal Courts Building and formed Johnny Justice in 1997. Since then, they have developed a following in bars from Orland Park to Evanston.
Johnny Justice prides itself on the diversity of its song list, which ranges from Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" to "All the Small Things" by Blink-182. Shlifka, 44, calls their repertoire "50 years of mainstream pop."
"No matter what age group we appear in front of, we seem to appeal to them," said Shlifka, who in recent murder trials won guilty verdicts against two Colombian drug dealers and their hired gunman.
The band also includes Cook County Assistant State's Attorneys Tom Darman on keyboards and Scott Clark on vocals and saxophone, police detective Jenny Christoforakis on drums and vocals, and Kevin Revak on bass. They typically play two club gigs a month, getting anywhere from $500 to $1,200 per show.
"Most trial lawyers tend to enjoy the spotlight a little bit," said Clark, 35. "I think you develop kind of a thick skin about putting it out there in front of strangers."
First CD on way
Kiss, who also works at the Criminal Courts Building, has played music since high school. Like Kezdy, he became smitten with punk at an early age. When not defending people accused of crimes, Kiss delights in Soft Targets' "rock with pop and punk undertones."
The band plays clubs about once a month and will release its first CD on Jan. 31. Kiss says some lawyers in his office consider playing in a band "immature."
"The people in my office who don't get it think the proper way to express yourself for a mass audience is to write a blog. And they don't understand why you'd want to be around smoke and alcohol," he said.
DEMO #6
From Columbia College's glossy alumni magazine:
COLUMBIA CONNECTION: Guitar player and label owner Chris Auman (BA '93) graduated from Columbia's fiction writing program.
THE SOUND: Post-punk/Indie
THE WORD: Despite numerous line-ups since the band's inception in the summer of 2004, Soft Targets released this cohesive album this fall. The sound is simple, straightforward pop rock (think the Toadies meet the Pixies). The band's previous release, "Whatever Happened to Soft Targets?", an EP, received positive reviews from local press. "This four piece just about nails an icy-cool, post-punk sound halfway through the Only Ones and Joy Division," wrote Miles Raymer in the Chicago Reader. And bassist Dan Kiss, whose chugging baselines sound dirtier than the dirtiest White Stripes song, works a day job that seems unlikely for an older indie rocker: he's a Cook County assistant public defender. --Brent Steven White
REVIEWS
(Let it) Ricochet/Straight Line 7"
Illinois Entertainer
Soft Targets' new 7-inch record finds former Reagan National Crash Diet guitarist Chris Auman hooking up with ex-Seam guitarist Reg Shrader. The pair bring a lot of energy to the melodic "Straight Line," while "(Let It) Ricochet" glides through some intriguing tempo changes. Soft Targets, which also include bassist Tim Davison of The Clerics, plan to have a full-length effort out in the near future.
Roctober
Guitarific!
Time-Out Chicago
Bare-bones rock in the tradition of Built to Spill and Flamin' Groovies.
Time-Out Chicago
Chicago's Soft Targets have always been known as a supergroupÑalthough the lineup has rotated so much that which groups make it ÒsuperÓ are constantly changing. Suffice to say, you've got alums from Seam, Lustre King and Reagan National Crash Diet here, and a sound that veers from punky pop to the more dramatic, minimalist leanings of early Raygun/Pegboy. Tonight the band celebrates the release of its latest full-length, We Hate You Soft Targets! (the band also plays a free show at Permanent Records at 2:30pm today). Philly's Clockcleaner (on Baltimore's Reptilian Records) plays music you could clean your clock toÑif you wanted to bust it into little pieces, rhythmically stomp on it and then kick it to all corners of the room.
"Whatever Happened to Soft Targets?" CD EP
New City
The post-punk Chicago unit--which borrows gracefully from indie-rock royalty like Dinosaur Jr. and Built to Spill--aim high with "Whatever Happened to Soft Targets?" the group's new EP. Opener "Returning" shoegazes its way through under-mixed vocals and a nice delayed guitar lead, all backed by a fuzzy, distorted guitar progression. "Clearing the Brush (on Brokeback Mountain)"--if you can get past the title--works as a countrified instrumental, jangly and moving-down-the-trail in an assured way. "Crushed" is pure pop, reggae-ish in its guitar parts, and a rock song that could actually benefit from a horn section, if the band had the resources. The next track, "Black Radiance," is bona fide early nineties rock, minor chords and distortion, world-crushing depression and angst. While the band mixes genres a bit and could probably use a different distortion pedal, there's something very endearing about the closer "I'm Sold," my favorite of the group, should be able to sell you with the lyric "Same shit, different day." -- Tom Lynch
Chicago Reader, Sharp Darts column
On the new EP Whatever Happened to Soft Targets?, this four-piece just about nails an icy-cool postpunk sound halfway between the Only Ones and Joy Division. The guitars jump from overdriven chugging to expansive, echoing chords, the drums are trebly and brittle with slapback reverb, and vocalist Chris Auman sings with world-weary aloofness -- when he hits the occasional wrong note, it just sounds like he can't see the point of trying any harder. But while icy-cool postpunk leans pretty hard on a specific production style, it also needs songs, and these guys don't have them. Whatever Happened starts promisingly with the shoegazery "Returning," which features some great drum bashing from Dave Potter and a simple, catchy vocal melody. After that, though, things go wrong and stay that way. It's bold to make an instrumental the second track on your CD, but the instrumental in question, "Clearing the Brush (on Brokeback Mountain)," is saddled not only with a terrible name but with a go-nowhere chord progression that sucks away any excitement still lingering in the air after "Returning." The faux-reggae "Crushed" doesn't do much to redeem the disc (or the idea of unfunky punks trying to get even a little bit irie), and the last two songs are a forgettable blur of awkward structures and half-assed melodies. The Soft Targets may be shooting for inspired ennui, but by the end it comes off more like plain old boredom.
Lumpen
Whataya doing Stimac? So you're a foot-pee-er aren't you? There's just so much shit to do. Are you friends with the press release? These are mandates. Ball-spot torpedo tycoon sixshits. Zack wants to know if I can stretch this shit out to 150 words, but goddamnit! I wanna go get a burger --Rotten Milk
(We're pretty sure this was meant to be a bad review, but we don't speak Hipster--S.T.)
Illinois Entertainer
Soft Targets' five-song Whatever Happened To Soft Targets? serves up a nice enough guitar-charged garage/grunge/pop with Bunnymen echoes to document the ever-in flux band's sound circa 2006. However, the sole instrumental ("Clearing The Bush") aside, the simplistic lyrics and weak, poorly enunciated vocals sound as if afterthought additions that otherwise undercut the other four songs. -- David C. Eldredge
"We Hate You Soft Targets?" CD
Roctober #44
As soft as steel and as convenient and economical as Targets this Chicago treasure better not keep getting buried by pirates . . . we need them. Albums include guitar playing, singing, bass thumping, and drumming; all of which are very good.
Illinois Entertainer
The members of Soft Targets arenÕt kids, and as a result the dozen songs on We Hate You Soft Targets reveal a maturity and gravity often missing from the repertoire of younger acts. Their post punk sound is wholly appealing, and tunes like ÒWalk AwayÓ and ÒSee You On The Way Back DownÓ exhibit a singular blend of energy and ennui. ItÕs grown-up music that happily retains a youthful oomph--Jeff Berkwits