Collaboration is growing in power within our society. Our world is getting smaller, and we’re better off for it. We come together to provide aid to a country in desparate need, or come together to deliver or receive musical presents, which is at the heart of our humanity.
It’s been less than one year since Snake Rattle Rattle Snake played their first show, but what they’ve delivered in quality a short amount of time is most likely to sell-out the Snake Rattle Rattle Snake 5-song EP release at Hi-Dive (Friday, January 22) with an easy flick of the tongue.
The members of Snake Rattle Rattle Snake are proof positive of the collective nature of Denver’s musical community. Hayley Helmericks, lead singer and keyboardist, and guitarist Doug Spencer came from Monofog, bassist James Yardley from Hawks of Paradise, on dual percussion there’s Kit Pletzel of Mr. Pacman and Space Team Electra plus Andrew Warner from Red Cloud and Bad Luck City, along with Wilson Helmericks, Haley’s brother.
Some of those bands were still in existence last summer at Denver Post’s UMS, so these musicians werete bouncing around venues like cats on a hot tin roof.
Despite the myriad of musical influences from all their band backgrounds, the sheer ingenuity in sound Snake Rattle delivers is what has people within Denver and beyond clamoring to see them every time they play.
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For starters, Helmericks maneuvers her vocals in a rare way that I can’t say I’ve heard in a long time, if ever. She’s able to make one shiver and sweat in one sitting. It’s as if she’s persuading the words themselves to dance with her, like the seductress in a Bond movie. Except SHE’S the one with the gun and the secret identity, having her martini shaken and sprayed all over the crowd. And they lap it up, intently following every move, every note, every chord.
While Helmericks commands the helm at center stage, this is a unified and choreographed orchestration by all members. Yardley’s bass weaves in and out of the highly palpable guitar sparks from Spencer and Wilson H., echoing at times with the eerie nature of a David Lynch film. The intensity gets to a breaking point and swoop, the precise cacophony of instrumentation and dual percussion from Warner and Pletzel slides down to a pin drop level, but muscles are still tense and isometric.
There’s definitely an opportunity to dance to Snake Rattle, but this about as rock as it gets. This dance requires complete surrender with eyes closed, letting the rhythms direct the head and body (and no, not fucking noodle dancing to fucking jam band crap), along with the willingness to be vibrated down to your spleen.
So if you’re more the quiet type, I would suggest standing closer to the bar at Hi-Dive, because I expect things pretty nuts when Snake Rattle Rattle Snake headlines this Friday, playing with Treeverb and Cannons. If you don’t have tickets already, get on it.
