Memphis music fans looking for the short, sharp, shocking angles of ’80s post-punk have long known of Model Zero, who began circulating cassettes as early as January 2018. Since then, they’ve been regular players around town — but that’s all in a day’s work for these yeoman troubadours, who’ve played musical chairs through various overlapping bands together for years. Many know Frank McLallen, Keith Cooper, and Jesse James Davis as the Tennessee Screamers, and McLallen and Cooper are with the Sheiks, but their roles are scrambled here, with Cooper playing only bass, McLallen on guitar, and Davis on drums, not to mention Linton Holliday’s guitar thrown in for good measure.
Today, it’s clear that all those nights in hot, sweaty nightclubs tweaked these players’ brains: Their latest slice of wax clearly comes from a land where dancing rules. “Little Crystal” b/w “Leather Trap” arrives this week, courtesy Nashville’s Sweet Time Records (complete with a vivid music video directed by Laura Jean Hocking), and everyone is bound to find their ideal groove on one side or the other. True, “Little Crystal” is the A-side, but the drums and groove on the flip are just as infectious.
That’s no coincidence, as Cooper confesses that the entire band is committed to a life of servitude, not just to the rhythm, but to the Rhythm Master. “It’s funny,” he reflects, “this whole band is obeying the drum machine. It’s a brown box. A Rhythm Master, model RM-10, made in Whippany, New Jersey, in the late ’60s or early ’70s. It’s the most valuable member of the band, for sure.”
Devoted to their vintage overlord, the band works tirelessly to ensure its comfort and safety. “When we play outside in the sun, it heats up,” Cooper says. “If it even thinks about the sun, the tempo starts to really slow down. So with outdoor shows, I have to bump it up a little bit. But come nighttime in the cool, dark club, it’s fine.”
Ah yes, nighttime in the cool, dark club. That environment may be Model Zero’s other overlord, or guiding star. As Cooper says, “The whole concept of Model Zero was this forging of two worlds. We wanted a club dance sound, but also to rock. That’s where the drum machine pulse idea came in.”
McLallen concurs: “Everything’s written with the drum machine in mind. It’s groove-based. That’s been our philosophy from the beginning. It’s our synth groove band — a departure from what we’re doing with the Sheiks, which is more just guitar-driven garage rock.”
To be sure, there’s still plenty of garage in this machine. That dirty, distorted edge, combined with pounding beats reminiscent of Gang of Four and a very Memphis punk energy, heavily colored the band’s eponymously titled 2019 album. But then, Cooper says, as the band opened their minds and hearts more and more to the Rhythm Master, they began to mutate and change. “The old stuff was much edgier and a little bit darker,” he says. “We got that out of our system, and then it was time to party!”
As his zeal becomes more fervent, Cooper edges closer to the Rhythm Master, a gleam in his eye. “We’ve been discovering more beats on the drum machine, you know. Like ‘Little Crystal’ is mambo and Rock 2 combined. You can’t not dance to it.” Then he nudges the pulsing brown box closer to the air conditioning.
Yet it must be stressed that the Rhythm Master’s power is amplified by the considerable talents of minion Jesse James Davis, whose feel for New Wave tribal grooves organically augments his analog overlord to perfection. And he in turn serves other task masters, such as an Arturia MicroBrute synthesizer. “Jesse is able to sync up with the drum machine on his synth,” says Cooper. “You hear it in the background on ‘Leather Trap.’ He’s tapping the tempo and it’s this constant flourish of ethereal ambient noise. Nightclub-type stuff.”
For Cooper, the synth flourishes, the drum machine, and the grooves are all means to reach the end of a nightclub state of mind. “I’m just trying to summon this Happy Mondays vibe in this band,” he says. “That’s always been my mental approach to bass in Model Zero. It’s more like a mindset than an actual, direct reference. It’s just trying to tap into that world of the late nightclub.”
Model Zero performs this Friday, July 1st, at the Nashville East Room, and Sunday, July 3rd, at B-Side Memphis.
