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SURROGATE - "Popular Mechanics" - Biography 2009

With Popular Mechanics, the second full-length from Chico, CA-based rock outfit Surrogate, the band has successfully honed their subtle blend of indie pop songcraft and lyrical witticism down to a science (pun intended). In the two years since the release of their critically acclaimed 2007 debut, Love is For the Rich – which NPR described as "deliciously low-key" and which elsewhere garnered comparisons to everyone from The Shins and Death Cab to shoegaze icons Starflyer 59 and Pedro the Lion – the band has toured the country with labelmates Emery and Ruth, played shows from Fargo to Florida, and diligently labored on perfecting the 11 songs that would eventually comprise Popular Mechanics.

Though Popular Mechanics was once again recorded by Surrogate frontman and multi-instrumentalist Chris Keene himself, the process, and results of the recorded process were markedly different this time around. Whereas Love is For the Rich was recorded on an aging laptop in Keene’s bedroom, Popular Mechanics found Keene, now a producer and engineer by trade, tracking in his new digs in Chico’s Heirloom Studios. "First and foremost, with Popular Mechanics, the finished product is much more what we had in mind not just ’whatever happens happens’" says Keene about the recording process on the new record. "Heirloom is a room that I had become intimately familiar with as far as the acoustics go, since I work there, and with the resources at my disposal this time around as far as mics and recording gear, it just lent itself to a better recording." And Popular Mechanics bears out this notion of sonic fidelity. From the violins and syncopated drums of album opener "Surprise" to the sequenced beats and guitar-rock chorus of "Exercise Machines" to the elegant acoustic strains of album closer "The Devil Gets What He Wants (Sometimes)" Popular Mechanics, which was mixed by Keene as well, is a sonic masterpiece.

Popular Mechanics also serves to showcase the band’s newly refined song writing style, with Keene and drummer Jordan Mallory – joined by touring members Daniel Martin on keyboards and Daniel Taylor on bass – having had ample time to refine, rework and retool this batch of songs into a unified batch. "The first record was something of a hodge podge of writing style and flavors," says Keene. "For this record there’s still a lot of variety, but our objective was to write a more cohesive and flowing record, a little more streamlined with less tangents and bunny trails." Lyrically and musically, Popular Mechanics plays out less like a collection of assembled songs and more like an album, with overarching themes forming a through-line from start to finish. One of the foremost of these themes, the idea of moderation, personally, politically and socially, appears multiple times on Popular Mechanics, most readily on the album’s title track. "’Popular Mechanics’ is a song about politics, sort of a tongue-in-cheek reference to both sides of the aisle. Political extremism or far left far right, tends to strike me as kind of silly, so I was making an effort to try to make fun of it." And with this kind of sardonic, somewhat darkly humorous take on a serious topic being the norm for Surrogate, "Popular Mechanics" stood out to Keene as being the prime candidate to represent the album as a whole. "Lyrically, ’Popular Mechanics’ seemed like a good flagship song to represent the themes of the whole record, in that all the songs are very tongue-in-cheek and the record itself deals a lot with moderation."

With Popular Mechanics, Surrogate has not only avoided the dreaded sophomore curse, but has instead succeeded in once again fulfilling their personal credo: "Intelligent pop songs for people of moderate to great intelligence."