Prairie Cartel
Where Did All My People Go
(Self-Released)
The Prairie Cartel’s debut album, Where Did All My People Go, is not your typical electronic-rock album. The band members Blake Smith and Mike Willison (both of Caviar and Fig Dish) as well as Scott Lucas (Local H) have for the most part stayed strictly in the rock genre. After Fig Dish, Caviar started to incorporate samples but still remained grounded in pop rock. The Prairie Cartel is a whole new beast in itself.
A friend asked me to describe The Prairie Cartel’s sound to him, and the first thing to come to mind was “electronic rock you could dance to while punching someone in the face.” Is the band’s music angry? Not necessarily, but it sure is menacing. The growl of the guitars on “Keep Everybody Warm” or the sexy bass-line on “Cobraskin Briefcase” is the kind of stuff you’re not going to find on just any electronic rock album. Sure, the band knows how to form a song around a repeated phrase (“Keep Everybody Warm,” “Fuck Yeah That Wide,” or “Narcotic Insidious”) but these Chicago rock alums know how to keep things fresh.
With 15 tracks, one would think Where Did All My People Go would drag or lose its grip on the listener, but this simply is not so. The album takes many different forms, from a dreamy electronic fuzz that echoes in and out only to culminate in pounding drums that you can shake your head to on “Lost All Track of Time” to the split-vocal shouting on “Burning Down the Other Side.”
Some of the album’s strongest tracks are those of which could have easily fit on a Caviar or Local H album. “Jump Like Chemicals” could have its electronic components stripped-down into a Local H tune. “Beautiful Shadow” may be as close as we’re going to come to a new Caviar track since the band went on “hiatus” years ago. Of course, anything a new group is going to do may sound like their previous bands, but The Prairie Cartel is still a welcome trajectory for these Chicagoans. In fact, “10 Feet of Snow” and “The Glow Is Gone” may be some of the best tracks they’ve produced in their criminally-underrated music catalog.