Low Tones

Every so often, one impromptu scenario neatly summarizes a complex situation — in this case, that of an unorthodox and dynamic band. Picture a small clapboard house just on the Kansas side of State Line Road. It's a typical, State Line-ish kind of house with beige carpet, low ceilings and a supersized cat named Doug sprawled on the floor. Now picture a stranger speaking Italian on a cell phone in the living room and offering a friendly, thickly accented "Hello!" as you walk into the house. Look beyond that, and you'll see two people laying down music tracks in an officelike, enclosed back porch. One person, the guy, is speaking good old American Inglese, and the other, a woman, is speaking heavily accented English intermingled with Italian. Together, they are making sweet music together using Pro Tools.

The Italians are members of Dada Swing, a band straight out of Rome that is embarking on its second American tour. The guy speaking English is Kansas City native Christopher Tolle. He met Swing in Italy a few years back, and the Italian art-punk band has made the trek to record three songs in one day — collaborative numbers that will appear on a future Dada Swing album — at Tolle's little clapboard house. In Kansas. Just down the street from the neighborhood QuikTrip. Welcome to the wide world of the Belles.

The Belles are a Kansas City act that, as its name indicates, makes ridiculously pretty music. The Belles' songs could be a dessert recipe: smooth, creamy harmonies topped off with languid, delicate melodies, similar to the soft, near-lazy approach audible in songs by Arab Strap or Elliott Smith. At the same time, the songs possess enough indie-pop pickup that you're not in danger of being lulled to sleep or annoyed by long, overdramatic overtures and drawn-out choruses.

But describing the band's sound is the only easy part of defining the Belles. Things get more complicated when you try to pin down who exactly is in the band.

The Belles are a two-piece act. Sort of. There are two static members: singer-songwriter Tolle and drummer Jake Cardwell. Beyond that, the band is a continually morphing cast of local and international musicians who come and go with some regularity. Or not. So, in the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, let's start with their chronology.

Amid the massive hodgepodge of musical equipment in Tolle's basement studio, Tolle and Cardwell sit down with the Pitchand begin the complex task of explaining just what in tarnation has been going with the Belles since the band spawned in Lawrence, sometime in 2002.

"It was a real organic get-together kind of thing on Tuesdays," Tolle says. "Basically, I had a bunch of songs I'd written and catalogued. I try to record what I can [guitar, bass and keyboards], but I can't play a lick of drums. I'd met Jake in KC before, and I needed a drummer who would play the parts without trying to change and fill everything. I'm kind of a control freak when it comes to the writing of my songs, and Jake is the perfect fit for a songwriter — he's a good enough drummer that he doesn't need to show off."

Six months after meeting, Tolle and Cardwell had a nearly completed demo on their hands.

"We were signed and our record was coming out before we ever played a show," Cardwell explains. "We'd been playing for a bit, and just because Jake and I had been in other bands [Cardwell in Reflector and Tolle in the Creature Comforts] and had toured, we knew other bands all over," Tolle adds. "So we recorded and said, 'Here's the new thing we're doing,' to the same friends we always give demos to, and really shortly after that, we got contacted. And it was like, OK, well, now we're a band."

That first album, Omertá, was released on California's Lakeshore Records in 2002. While on tour in America with bassist Brian Everard and guitarist Andrew Ashby in support of Omertá and its breakout single, "Never Said Anything," the Belles were picked up internationally.

"An English label rep was in New York for the CMJ Festival and saw a review of Omertá in Time Out. He bought it, liked it, got ahold of the California label and licensed it in Great Britain through Eat Sleep Records, a London-based label for European distribution. That's where the overseas stuff started," Tolle says.

"And they [Eat Sleep] were too cheap to send over four or even three of us, so it was just me and Chris that went to Europe," Cardwell adds.

The tour went well. The two spent time playing several European countries, including England, Scotland and Italy. "We spent a lot of time in England, doing a shitload of radio promos and stuff — a real whirlwind of press," Tolle says. "And basically, it was struggling through hangover after hangover every morning.

"There were these surreal moments where I'm literally shaking because I haven't slept," Tolle continues, "and I'm like, oh, wait a minute! I'm on live radio with BBC 6! And the guy asking me a question has a big mic in front of him, and I can't really hear what he just said, and I can't look at his lips — which is what deaf people and band people do, is look at the lips — and I have no idea what he is saying, and it's going out on the radio and I'm like, huh? Well, all right, I'm just going to start playing."