Tight pop songwriting with a sense of humor
Stephen Carradini
June 1st, 2011

The cumbersomely named “The Trip Side 1: Illusion & Truth” by Dr. Pants suffers no such songwriting problems in its six tracks.

The Oklahoma City-based quartet plays straightforward pop songs here, relying on vocals and lyrics to carry the release instead of the ear-crushing, distorted guitars of Weezer, to which the group is often compared.

This is made clear from the onset, as “Move So Slow” is played primarily on an acoustic guitar and hangs on a lyrical device instead of a musical one. The clever song uses the ubiquity of driving and playing in a band as a metaphor for losing sight of loved ones in the tedium of life. There is a rock-out section, but the focus is thoughtful as opposed to “bashing it out in a garage.” (Be not afraid: There’s still plenty of rock to go around, as “Instant Insanity” proves.)

But even thoughtful people can be hilarious, and the best humor is clever. “Bowling with a Genius” is a smile-inducing bit of absurdity that masks deep questions, while “Hipster Kid/Sexy Beards” is an ironic joy, poking fun at a subgenre that Broyles and the rest of Dr. Pants fall near, if not exactly in (there are Weezer glasses and an excellent beard on display in their lineup). It’s witty fun — I dare you to not hum along with the phrase “Sexy beards” and its corresponding “ah-oo-ah-ah-oos.”

The tight pop songwriting of “The Trip” contains excellent lyrics and a firm grasp on the line between irony and parody. If you’re not listening to Dr. Pants yet, you should be. —Stephen Carradini

Can you ‘Trip’ like Dr. Pants does? For the Oklahoma City nerd-rock outfit, that means splitting its new release into four.
Joshua Boydston, Oklahoma Gazette
June 1st, 2011

Having too much good material isn’t the worst problem to have, but it does present a few challenges. Oklahoma City nerd rockers Dr. Pants didn’t know what to do with the 20-plus quality songs they had amassed for a new album. Their first thought was to pile them together, but a double-disc release seemed too big.
“A full double album can be a little overwhelming to take in at once,” bandleader and vocalist David Broyles said. “For the moment, it seems like music is moving toward being digested in smaller chunks.”

But a full-length followed by another one seemed too dismissive of the tracks that didn’t make the first cut. So they settled on splitting the album, titled “The Trip,” via four EPs over the course of a year, the first of which, “Side 1: Illusion & Truth,” will be released digitally on Tuesday, after a release show on Saturday.

“This arrangement was the only thing that gave all the songs equal treatment without overwhelming everybody,” Broyles said. “They get to be on equal footing with each other this way. We didn’t want people to think the other release was leftovers.”

By the end, “The Trip” will have assembled itself into a standard double album, although Broyles very much enjoys the band’s clever and deliberate release method.

“I liked the idea that the small chunk emphasizes you were listening to one side of the album, almost like a double-sided vinyl record,” he said. “There’s a little regard for the now and what happened in the past.”

For him and the rest of Dr. Pants — guitarist Kenneth Murray, bassist Aaron Vasquez and drummer Dustin Ragland — this huge undertaking has been fun and rewarding on every level. The songs and the EPs operate less as an overarching story and more as a summation of what the band does.

“Each of the four EPs is like a little Dr. Pants mixtape in a way,” Broyles said. “Even before they were finished, we had rough demos of each one, and it was fun moving them around, playing around and finding the perfect order. I think there will be continuity between all four, but that they will all still have their little, personal vibe.”

The act is confident that the fun, loose bunch of songs, which immediately recall Weezer and further beg comparisons to They Might Be Giants and R.E.M., are some of its best. Considering tracks from the last album, “Gardening in a Tornado,” landed on television programs as huge as “Jersey Shore,” that’s promising.

The whole release is still taking shape; the second side is currently being worked on in the studio and has grown into something different than Pants first might have imagined. It looks to be a continually evolving project, although the destination remains predetermined.

“The whole project being called ‘The Trip,’ the further we got along into it, the more appropriate it seems,” Broyles said. “There’s a journey aspect to all four, and the last one will definitely feel like an ending place.”

“Dr. Pants gained my love by introducing their drummer as Disco Pony. Their power-pop did even more to gain my love once they started singing about young men who love John Cusack (guilty), bearded hipsters (guilty), Firefly references (guilty), donuts (guilty) and ironic rapping (guilty). This band seems as if it were scientifically engineered for me to like it. Their power-pop tunes split the difference between Fountains of Wayne and Weezer, albeit with ironic rapping every now and then.” –Stephen Carradini, OKGazette.com, 05/05/2011

“Dr. Pants are like bacon. Not turkey bacon. Awesome bacon.” –Jenny Lawson, TheBloggess.com