Made In America - CONNECTIONS, "Body Language" (2013)

Being prolific in the music business is no easy task, well, it's no easy task for most. Look at Frank Zappa's sixty plus albums during his career, and I've still only listened to Freak Out! and maybe one of the fifteen albums he released posthumously. So I should really change my opening to something along the lines of being a music factory is one thing, turning out quality product worth a listen is the difficult part.

Columbus, Ohio's Connections are off to a pretty good start. Seven months detached from their debut album Private Airplane, Connections are back with their second effort Body Language, out on Anyway Records. They are also rumored to be studio bound to begin work on a third album to be released some time in the new year. That's a lot of music in such a short time but Connections seem to be on top of their quality control department.

Well entrenched in the Columbus music scene, singer Kevin Elliot and guitarist Andy Hampei were high school bandmates, drummer Adam Elliot, Kevin's brother, was the drummer for noisy-as-hell indie rockers Times New Viking and guitarist Dave Capaldi gigged around with El Jesus de Magico before joining up and making the...wait for it...connection. See what I did there?

It's nearly impossible to talk about any new indie/punk/lo-fi band coming out of Ohio without first comparing them to Guided By Voices (GBV). And rightly so, every rock band within a seventy mile radius (112 km for my friends in Spain) of Dayton, Ohio has Robert Pollard and GBV to thank for it's existence. While the influence is definitely noticeable, Connections separate themselves with a lean towards poppier melodic songs with more emphasis on the songwriting itself. Admittedly I was a latecomer to Connections having missed Private Airplane on it's release earlier this year but I've been making up for it by devouring Body Language and cannot wait for their next issue.