The Flat Five is a Chicago-based pop vocal super-group \u2014 Kelly Hogan, Nora O\u2019Connor, Scott Ligon, Casey McDonough, Alex Hall \u2014 five in-demand musicians who individually spend much of their time touring and recording with bands like Neko Case, NRBQ, The Decemberists, Andrew Bird, Mavis Staples, Iron and Wine, Jakob Dylan, Robbie Fulks, Alejandro Escovedo, The New Pornographers, and many other heavy hitters. These five folks stay very, very busy. Yet for the past ten years, these shameless harmony junkies would come together, like a moth to a porchlight, to make music as The Flat Five. Purely for the love of singing together. For the mother-effing fun of it.<\/p>\n
At first The Flat Five existed only as a once-a-year sold out holiday show in Chicago. Then came quarterly SRO gigs, and then month-long jam-packed residencies, and then\u2026slowly\u2026the idea for a record grew out of the band\u2019s shared love of the repertoire of genius oddball songwriter and performer (and big brother to band member Scott Ligon) Chris Ligon. The Flat Five were already performing many of Chris\u2019s songs in their set, and thought that making an entire record of his compositions would be a good way to shoot up a flare and give more folks a chance to hear his amazing and unique music.<\/p>\n
Ligon hears something almost spiritual about the group\u2019s vocal interaction. \u201cWe have lost the importance of what singing harmony with other human beings means,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s something that is really important in society, a good example of people working together to create something beautiful. Now that I have this with these friends of mine, I can\u2019t live without it.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the laid-back simple to the oddly romantic to the slightly subversive, there is a heart of wide-eyed sweetness coloring Chris Ligon\u2019s songs. The smooth southern soul of \u201cBottom Buck\u201d will have you kicking off your fringed leather boots by the river to lay back and watch the dragonflies flit past. Beneath the gentle, Donovan psychedelia of \u201cI Could Fall In Love With You\u201d is a love song built on prom-night innocence that\u2019s both goofball and beguiling. \u201cIt\u2019s Been A Delight\u2019s\u201d suave Cole Porter-era charms will unbutton the tux and pop the champagne. And if you can keep a straight face and resist the urge to shimmy during the Mills Brothers-styled aphrodisiac romp \u201cBug Light\u201d well, friend \u2014 it might be time to visit the doc.<\/p>\n
The charms of the album are manifest. With in-the-pocket and over-the-moon harmonies, the genre-hopping It\u2019s a World of Love and Hope is loveably diverse and hits every stripe on the ROYGBIV spectrum. The many touchstones (a gamut stretching from The Beach Boys and The Boswell Sisters, to Trip Shakespeare and Dr. Dog) were gathered on the shores of late night AM radio and get tossed at the listener with a giddiness that jumps outta the grooves. This is a band that\u2019s made more than a few laps around the roller rink on Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Flat Five is a Chicago-based pop vocal super-group \u2014 Kelly Hogan, Nora O\u2019Connor, Scott Ligon, Casey McDonough, Alex Hall \u2014 five in-demand musicians who individually spend much of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-this-just-in","category-breaking-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}