A tale of two letters
D.C.'s Q and Not U deliver propulsive punk with progressive edges.

By Vivian Host

THE PUNK I remember from my youth in Los Angeles was a grimy, angry thing. Raised lower middle class on a diet of ramen and Pabst Blue Ribbon, it was a derivative cocktail of the Descendents' devil-may-care surf style, the Minutemen's shipyard slash chords, and Social Distortion's eternal ball 'n' chain. In short, it was little like the punk that Washington, D.C.'s Q and Not U purvey.

Q and Not U grew up in the suburbs of Maryland, in close proximity to the D.C. punk scene, listening to explicitly political bands like Fugazi and Bikini Kill. They favor jam sessions and Scrabble. They absorb avant music in their tour van, an assortment that ranges from Afrobeat sounds to German minimal techno. (Even '70s soft rock, a current obsession of drummer John Davis, is tolerated in the name of artistic expression.) They are known to speak French on record – real French, not "Pardon my French."

Dancey not derivative

In other words, the members of Q and Not U are educated, even erudite, punks, but they're not short on puissance. What they lack in sheer ballistic force they make up for in succulent rhythm and mysterious timbre. On 2000's No Kill No Beep Beep and 2002's Different Damage (both on Dischord), the trio propel themselves through a shifting landscape of riotous drums, jangling, shifting guitars, and rollicking bass notes. This loose-limbed indie macramé gets strung together with singing by Christopher Richards, who sounds a lot like a younger, if more lyrically elliptical, Ian MacKaye. Though the end result has been sometimes called "dance punk," Q and Not U's music is neither derivative of the scene's benchmarks (ESG, Liquid Liquid) nor fond of fast fashions.

"I feel like a few years ago, we were living in this irony-saturated world," Richards notes, on the phone during a sound check in Nebraska. "Now I think that bands feel safe being a little more confessional and honest in a way that isn't a put-on. I feel like when we started to play, we were coming out of this post-emocore ghetto or something where everything was just really unimaginative and bland. Now I think bands are really taking chances and getting into different kinds of music and forming things in a really interesting way. There's not any weird referencing going on – it just feels totally natural."

The band don't seem to have struggled with the issue of artifice versus authenticity that most L.A. and New York acts seem to have. If they want to play an improvisational jam session on stage, they'll just do it. At the end of every set, Richards has been performing minisongs about the day's political events to inform the crowd. He's even tried to get the band members to all give each other a hug after every show, an idea rejected by Davis and guitarist-bassist Harris Klahr as "too hokey."

Freedom from

Richards credits coming of age in the D.C. punk scene with the freedom that Q and Not U feel. "It was a pretty diverse climate in the '90s," he explains. "We had bands like the Makeup and Jawbox and Slant 6 and Fugazi, who were all doing different things under the same umbrella. I think that sense of freedom pretty much still lingers in town now. I don't think anybody feels limited. We feel really lucky to be from Washington, where people stay in town and people stay involved. It doesn't feel like any passing fad or any teenage infatuation – it feels like a community."

Community support led Q and Not U to be snapped up by MacKaye for Dischord, and the Fugazi frontperson is responsible for the direct production values on Different Damage. "Ian's really good to record with because he is into just raw recordings," Richards says of his former idol. "He wants the performance to speak for itself rather than getting involved in studio gimmickry. He makes sure that everybody gets in there and really plays the songs. I feel like the recordings have a greater sense of energy than they would if we were going into the laboratory and dissecting them ourselves."

Richards reckons the group may shoot for further sonic frontiers on their next record, though if their recent single, "X-Polination"/"Book of Flags," on Dischord is any indication, they'll continue to keep it driving – and funky. "When we play live, we've been doing a lot of jamming between the songs; the way we've been keeping those jams afloat is through the propulsiveness of the rhythms," he says. "I think that will inform the next record. We also try to make sure we're consciously feeding ourselves a diet of music that interests us. We all have pretty insatiable appetites, and as long as you're feeding yourself something good, I feel like you're making something good."

Q and Not U play Sun/28, 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $7. (415) 621-4455.