Two weeks ago when I went to see Chevelle at Rams Head Live in Baltimore on March 5th, I was not necessarily expecting to see an amazing rock show, I just wanted to take my wife to see a band she really liked that she'd kind of gotten me into over the last few years. But I did hope that the Chicago trio, who’ve sold three million albums over the past decade as one of the most consistently successful bands on hard rock radio today, would at least do justice to their dozen or so hit singles. But I got a sinking feeling the moment Chevelle began their set, as it became almost immediately clear that drummer Sam Loeffler’s chops left something to be desired, and he struggled to stay on beat from the opening bars of the first song. But something else proved to be an even bigger issue a few seconds later: his younger brother, Pete Loeffler, appeared to be lip syncing along to a pre-recorded vocal track. His vocals were just a little too perfect, a little too close to the familiar album recordings, and stayed at the same volume even if he pulled his face further away from the microphone, or was late in moving toward it at the beginning of a verse. There were even times when I wasn’t too sure there wasn’t a pre-recorded guitar or bass track playing from the soundboard, too, but it wasn’t clear enough that I may chalk that up to pure paranoia.

In Pete Loeffler’s defense, his microphone was definitely on, and he was really singing (and speaking between songs) throughout the night. And if he needed a little help capturing the band’s sound live, fair enough: he has one of the best and most distinctive voices on rock radio today. Early on, I regarded Chevelle as kind of a watered-down pop version of more respectable alt-metal bands like Tool and the Deftones, taking the surface aesthetic of those bands and sanding off the edges, getting rid of anything to proggy or abrasive or weird. But over the last few years, I’ve come to regard Chevelle as a frighteningly consistent singles act, largely because of Pete Loeffler’s voice, which switches effortlessly from a tuneful croon to a blood-curdling scream, and the band’s ability to synthesize its influences into incredibly catchy 4-minute radio songs like “I Get It” and “Jars.” But perhaps what Loeffler had worked hard to perfect in the studio wasn’t so effortless onstage, and he or the band’s handlers felt that he needed a little help to pull off the sound fans of the band’s recordings expected.

Of course, Chevelle aren’t the first touring act, or even the first rock band, to perform with the help of some canned recordings. Milli Vanilli helped make lip syncing one of the most embarrassing crimes any musician can be caught doing in the minds of many music fans, but their actual sin was that the guys onstage didn’t even have anything to do with the vocal tracks they were performing to. And the outrage over Ashlee Simpson being caught lip syncing on Saturday Night Live a few years ago had more to do with ridiculing someone whose studio vocal performances weren’t exactly revered to begin with. While people may dismiss Britney Spears, who has lip synced pretty much every live performance in her whole career, it hasn’t really hurt her career or her reputation, because she does it without shame, and hasn’t messed up or missed a cue yet. It’s only when an act seems to be trying to get away with something without anyone noticing it, like Chevelle, that it’s tempting to call them out and question their artistic integrity, as much of an antiquated notion as that may seem.

Increasingly, as more and more bands incorporate loops, synths and drum machines into their albums, many have used pre-recorded tracks onstage to help get that sound across in live performances. But Chevelle are an old-fashioned power trio, its members playing guitar, bass and drums,with little or nothing else in the mix, which makes their use of taped vocals a little more incongruous and surprising. They’ve been a major label band for most of their career, but their independently released debut, 1999’s Point #1, was engineered by underground rock vet Steve Albini. The band is also a well-oiled machine, and it’s hard to tell how much irony is intended when they call their official website “Chevelle Inc.” A few years ago, Pete and Sam Loeffler infamously fired their own brother, Joe Loeffler, who was at the time the band’s bassist, which perhaps cements my impression of the band as coldly corporate on some deeper level.

Chevelle’s show at Rams Head Live wasn’t a completely choreographed run through their studio material. One of the band’s biggest and best hits, “Send The Pain Below,” was played slightly lower than on record, and several deep cuts from their albums were played alongside the singles. But there was still something flat and inert about the performance, even when Sam Loeffler was getting past his initial awkwardness and playing his drums well, and it wasn’t too distractingly obvious that his brother was getting a lot of help with his vocals. Even when they were breaking a sweat and performing some very loud, aggressive rock songs, all three members of the band wore earpieces and had to painstakingly stay in time with the recording they were playing along with. When the band returned to the stage for an encore of their 2002 breakthrough hit, “The Red,” and the moshpit-worthy current hit “Face To The Floor,” the energy level of the audience ramped up considerably, but the band still seemed to be on a short leash.

The sad thing is that Chevelle weren’t always this way. In 2003, they released a live album, Live From The Road, in which Pete Loeffler is clearly singing live, imperfectly but well, and the band sounds much livelier than they did at Rams Head on Monday. At some point, they introduced backing tapes, but one hopes that they’ll drop the habit someday and be a full-on live band again. They’d probably have more fun.

Last month, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl faced a major internet backlash for his acceptance speech at the Grammys, in which he declared, “The human element of music is what's important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do. It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer.” Many took his speech as a rockist denouncement of genres like dance music and hip-hop that rely more on drum machines and AutoTune than live instruments. But it seems more likely to me that Grohl was commenting on how Foo Fighters are increasingly rare among major label rock bands who don’t rely on the kinds of crutches that Chevelle uses when playing live, and recorded their last album on analog with little studio trickery to . When I saw the Foo Fighters at the Verizon Center in November, it was a much more impressive show, and not just because the band has chops, but because they were willing to play without a net, and make mistakes here and there, and keep an air of spontaneity even in a well-rehearsed setlist. Chevelle could stand to take that kind of risk again.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19, 2012 at 8:21 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.