CMJ: A Promising Start

My CMJ 2012 started out local, arty, mathematical and promising: with Conveyor, a four-man Brooklyn band with two turquoise guitars and seven gigs during the festival.

Conveyor likes its vocal-harmony oohs and ahs, its staggered and coiling two-guitar patterns and its odd meters: 5/4, 7/4, 9/4, all played as if their little rhythmic hiccups were smooth and unremarkable. Talking Heads and Dirty Projectors are in the band's DNA, particularly when those guitars take on a quasi-African lilt that happens to be bent by the odd meters.

But Conveyor's lyrics are less cryptic, often pondering relationships with a streak of self-consciously nerdy confession: “I'm working on myself a lot I promise / I'll make it up to you with all the extra things I find.”

The oohs and ahs signal dreaminess while the complex patterns reflect musicianly labor, but in the end the songs stay light, floating elegantly above their anxiety - and reflecting, perhaps, Conveyor's tonsori al fixation: One song was “Mane,” another was “Short Hair.” Both just blow in the wind.