Kevin Bronson on July 28th, 2011

0

When they began, Michael Garner, Dan Chang and Matthew Frankel – the three college buddies who make up Lady Danville – pretty much couldn’t “play” anything. Except their weapons of choice, of course, their voices. And those are three pristine instruments that, wielded individually or as one, have quickly earned the Los Angeles trio comparisons to some of pop music’s great traditionalists.

||| Stream: “Better Side”

Now, some five years after Garner and Chang first met in UCLA’s Awaken A Cappella group, Lady Danville is a guitar-keyboards-percussion threesome, penning pop songs with rapturous harmonies that recall distinctive voices past (Simon and Garfunkel, America, Crosby Stills & Nash) and present (Fleet Foxes, Local Natives). Around tours with the likes of Ben Folds, Dashboard Confessional and most recently Jack’s Mannequin, they are slowly polishing songs for a full-length album they hope to have ready early next year. And, they’ve found, none of it comes easily.

“We don’t pump out songs like a factory,” Chang says. “Mostly we all sit in the same room and, in a very excruciating manner, hammer something out. The majority of the songs that we start we get 75% of the way through and throw out because they’re not that exciting.

“But the common denominator in what we’ve been able to do is that we were friends before we were bandmates. And friendship carries everything.”

You can only imagine the arm-wrestling over who gets to sing lead vocals if they weren’t. The trio lets the song decide for them. “It comes pretty naturally based on placement in the register,” Frankel says. “People don’t really know whose voice it is, and for us as we’re working on the song, it becomes an obvious answer. If it’s a high floating melody it’s Dan; if it’s staccato and lower, it’s Michael. And I guess I take what’s left over.”

Yet, Chang says, “Lately we’ve been doing a lot of songs in unison – finding a collective voice instead of a single voice.”

Fans have responded. Despite the trio’s dearth of actual releases, they’ve toured strongly, and earlier this year sold out a date at the Troubadour. How the crowd reacts to their material has played into their creative process. “Because we’ve been more of a live band, we’re constantly writing for live show,” Garner says. “On the support tours we’ve been doing, we’re aware that we have to capture the audience in 35 minutes. It’s keeps us honest, and it keeps us focused on making songs that are intriguing enough to get people interested.”

It’s a long way from that first song they first wrote for the UCLA Spring Sing talent competition. “That was more musical theater,” Garner says with a laugh.”We still have aspects of that, but the musicality is a little more calm. Now we just have a sweeter tone.”

||| Live: Lady Danville plays the final night of the Also I Like to Rock series tonight at the Hammer Museum, and the trio also performs Aug. 28 at Sunset Junction.