Volumen

Montana is a gun-rack, beef jerky and Schmidt's Ice state. It's a place that Mexican cigarettes and Bulgarian jeans are named for. If it's known at all in the U.S. it's typically for its sprawling miles of mountainous emptiness, unpopulated Great Plains and maybe its blue ribbon trout streams. That an independent new-wave band (Volumen) comes from Montana in 2006 runs against the prevailing wisdom that this kind of music only reaches the public via New York art schools and European nihilists. It begs the question, why? Perhaps it's the ICBMs buried under the wheat farms and the constant F-16 flyovers that came along with growing up in families with connections to the U.S. Air Force during the height of the Cold War. The 1980's were paranoid times to be a creative young person in the West.

Songwriters Shane Hickey and Doug Smith - Volumen1 and Volumen2 respectively - were childhood friends who spent their formative years on Montana's Malmstrom Air Force base, a bike ride away from tens of dozens of underground nuclear warheads.

Both of their fathers had those types of Air Force jobs the details for which all but the most general "national security" type details are withheld.

So, move back to Volumen, who are, if they are anything, a product of Missoula, and an outgrowth of Montana's make-your-own-fun culture.

Living in Montana, 500 miles from the nearest urban metropolis (Seattle), where rugged individualism, vast geography and low population density -Montana is home to fewer than a million people, but laid over the east coast would stretch from Maine to Washington D.C.- make for a different kind of existence than that of most urban indie rock bands. Volumen, like all bands, draw upon a vast set of influences as far ranging as K.K. Downing and Andy Partridge to Brit Daniel and Doug Martsch, and they routinely get asked to play the Chamber of commerce-sponsored summer lunchtime concert series and high- school lock-ins.

The music Volumen make has its own feel, characteristics, phrasing and sounds, and all those things somehow are all uniquely Montanan. What exactly is a Montana existence like these days? Well, it's similar probably to lots of places like Mongolia, North Dakota, Kirgizstan... and it does generally include more beef jerky and ice beer. It also requires an active mind and creativity to make it through long winters and Montanans have a long history of making their own entertainment. The astute listener can tell that Shane and Doug haves pent a lot of time together. Their songwriting styles are completely different, yet they compliment each other in a way that some of the great groups have historically.