Listening Party: Scholar and South 85

Scholar is probably writing better songs than you did in high school.

Here’s the gimmick: Each week, we’ll pick two local bands — an opening act and a headliner — link to a site where you can listen to their songs for free, then ask you to spend a few moments of your precious time to tell us what you think about them. Some may be great, others may be mediocre or awful — that’s for you to decide — all we ask is that you listen with an open mind.

Opening act: Scholar

It would be easy to dismiss a band like Scholar, simply because they are young and not taking themselves too seriously. The Inman-based “brother-and-sister combo of acoustic explosion” seem to be following along with today’s high-school music cliché — the acoustic pop-punk duo. Fittingly, one of the most immediately enjoyable songs on their MySpace page is a cover of that most poppy of pop-punk songs, No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.”

But, in listening to their original songs enough times to hear through the bad production quality of these home recordings, clever little details in the songwriting start to emerge. Chaz Gagne’s simple-but-effective guitar work on “What Went Right” actually allows his sister Ariel’s voice to play around with tone and dramatic intention. It’s nothing you haven’t heard a dozen times before from high-school bands, but there is potential here.

And the lyrics aren’t too bad, either. Take “Lost in Escape,” for instance, which starts with the somewhat poetic opening line “Smells like fall, looks like winter” and then goes into a metaphor about not wanting to lose someone in the fog. It’s not the deepest of songwriting, but it’s not bad for someone who probably won’t be able to write about the classic pop-music themes of sex, deep heartbreak, drugs and drinking for at least another few years.

South 85 headlines at Ground Zero? Maybe the turtle put in a good word for them.

Headliner: South 85

The first thing that struck me about South 85 wasn’t their music, but rather who they came recommended by. I was looking over the show list on Ground Zero’s MySpace, when I read the following “South 85. Spartanburg’s own soon to-be-famous country and folk-rock act!” Since Ground Zero isn’t really known as a country or folk venue, just the fact that the band was playing there at all was curious. But it was the resounding endorsement — very uncommon in the venue’s show listings — that really caught my eye.

So, I gave them a listen. My first conclusion, reached about six seconds into the song “Chains,” was that Ground Zero wasn’t wrong. There’s a lot to like here.

That said, while some of their songs are definitely in the country and/or folk genres, their sound is actually far more firmly rooted in the admittedly vague “alt-country” label. Sure, there’s a banjo into on the song “Hold Me,” but as soon as the song starts properly, the progression is pure alt-country — maybe even a little indie rock — but hardly mainstream country or folk by any means.

It’s more like they’ve added accents from these genres — a little mandolin here, a little waltz beat there, a Skynyrd-inspired Southern-rock breakdown in the corner — but the underlying influences are anything but Nashville formula hat-act material. Sure, frontwoman Tracy Wyatt tends to sing with a bit of twang, and, if you had to, you could make a casual comparison to someone like “neotraditional” country singer Lee Ann Womack. But Wyatt doesn’t seem to be relying on her twang — it’s there, certainly, but it’s not the centerpiece of the vocals.

That said, in listening to two of their most compelling songs, “El Camino” and “Kind of Man,” I could easily see why they’ve escaped the alt-country label. It had less to do with the music itself, and more to do with the lyrics, which explore classic country music themes — a post-break-up hook-up while “riding to Reno in a beat-up El Camino” and how “the only kind of man that drives me crazy is the kind of man who tells me he don’t want me,” respectively. That’s definitely CMT’s turf.

If you’re interested in checking out their Ground Zero show, it happens tonight. The unlikely showcase also features Ted Tourette and the Hushpuppies and The Piedmont Boys. Visit Ground Zero’s MySpace page for more details.