Walter Meego

It’s 3 AM and you’re giggling with inebriation. You’re wearing painfully tight jeans. You just made out with a complete stranger on the dancefloor, and you haven’t sat down in over eight hours. Where are you? You are smack in the middle of Walter Meego’s world, and you have a knowing, gleeful smirk on your face.

Walter Meego is not a dude, but a duo. Justin Sconza and Colin Yarck, the heart and soul (respectively) of Walter Meego, are two rare suburban white boys who intuitively understand the subliminal power of synthy, salacious bass. Effervescent pop is Walter Meego’s specialty, and it flies out of speakers like a Pegasus riding a cheetah.

Google Walter Meego. Go on, Google them. You’ll find page after page of glowing promise, blog after blog of hyperbole. It’s because Walter Meego pull from a rainbow of inspiration, attractive to anyone who has affixed a critic’s cap. Their live show (featuring a third member, Andrew Bernhardt) is an electric revival meeting, and the band has completed a few hotly attended full-US tours (most notably with The Presets and VHS or Beta). For Walter Meego’s audience, the delicious body-jacking beats are just the beginning.

Vocalist Justin Sconza has a voice that floats in and out of sounding like a mixture between Riff Raff from Rocky Horror Picture Show and a helium-sucking John Lennon. His voice is ear-pricking and ultimately exhilarating. Band backbone Colin Yarck is a knob-manipulating marvel.

Justin and Colin met at the University of Illiniois at Urbana-Champaign. For the boys, it was a local college, not too far from the suburbs that reared them. The two commiserated over a “dainty” Roland Groovebox, and the rest is history. “It’s an all-in-one sequencer that can generate effects. It’s super portable. We still pull sounds out of it,” says Colin fondly.

Chicago is a dichotomous city. It’s freezing cold yet friendly, mid-western yet cosmopolitan. It’s the birthplace of booming house (Google Frankie Knuckles immediately), and today’s unofficial leader in the production of poignant, well-crafted indie pop. But that’s not where Justin and Colin live. They are actually sitting pretty by a pool in Los Angeles right now. “It’s inspiring to be somewhere new,” says Justin. That’s right, the band abandoned the Windy City for palm trees and fake boobs. Can you blame them?

Despite being Chi-town ex-pats, Voyager is definitely a Chicago-based endeavor that ended in the UK. The record was produced and recorded by Justin and Colin, and mixed by Eliot James (a protégé of Paul Epworth’s) and Sam Bell (who recently finished mixing R.E.M.’s new album). The album was given a glistening post-coital sheen by Nils Patel, the Brit who mastered all of the Daft Punk records.

Speaking of Daft Punk, what’s with the French these days? According to Colin, “Daft Punk, Justice, etc – once you break down their electronics, there’s truly beautiful music under that. What’s interesting is the way in which those guys take a lot from Chicago house-heads. It all comes back to Chicago. Everything’s kind of twisted back and turned.”

Truth is, it’s a happy coincidence that Walter Meego’s sound comes out of these two guys from Chicago. More than anything they’re worshippers of the “alternative pop years” between 1988 and 1994. They’re counter-culture fanatics, creative renegades, and generally geeky in a sexy kind of way. For an act that’s been putting out EPs and singles in true dance music form, their first full-length album was a matter of necessity. “We’re pro-album,” admits Justin. “On Voyager, everything fits together. It’s from a particular period in time so it can’t help but go together.”

Indeed it does. The entire album is imbued with a cohesive appeal that belies most of the quirky, blippy, themey beat-driven albums of today. Album opener “Forever” channels The Cars and Nu Shooz (what??); “Wanna Be a Star” gives Underworld a wedgie; “Through a Keyhole” exhorts voyeurism, noir piano sounds, and paranoia; “Lost” punches fellow Chicagoan Green Velvet in the face.

And the whole thing, like any good piece of art, begs to be remixed, cut up, and spit back out. “Cornelius, Alan Braxe, Luke Vibert…I wish those guys would remix us,” they say.

Aw, Walter Meego. You just might get your wish.