Service Group serves up a pop winner

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

The four-piece is comprised of Chapman, Jerry Schwarz on bass and vocals, Guy Christiano on lead guitar ("He's the guy who can really play. I'm just ham-fisted") and Danny Chidez Jr. on drums and vocals. At first, they sound like many other pop retro bands from the Smithereens to the Shins, but on successive listenings subtleties emerge -- an odd harmony here, a cut bar there, and Chapman's strong vocals running the range from a breathy dreaminess to an arresting urgency.

One thing that had everyone concerned was being pegged as a Los Angeles band, no less a Silver Lake band. (The band's MySpace page lists its origins as Coldwater Canyon). Says Chapman: "Sometimes there's a stigma with Los Angeles bands in other towns. I don't think L.A. bands give a bad taste. There's just so many of them."

||| See Service Group perform tonight at the Scene Bar and Wednesday at the Alterknit Lounge at the Knitting Factory.

||| Download: "You'd Rather Be"

Photo: Guy Christiano, left, Jerry Schwarz, Danny Chidez Jr. and Dylan Hay Chapman, by Sterling Andrews.