Chicago’s beloved band of in-demand music biz ringers — Kelly Hogan and Nora O’Connor (Neko Case, The Decemberists), Scott Ligon and Casey McDonough (NRBQ) and Alex Hall (J.D. McPherson) — are releasing their second album of twisted sunshine vocal-pop. Another World is being issued by Pravda Records/Augiedisc Records on CD, 12” vinyl LP, digital download and via streaming platforms. All the new album’s songs were written by Scott Ligon’s older brother, the impossible-to-pigeonhole mad musical genius Chris Ligonm whose songs have been featured on the hit Showtime series Weeds and The Dr. Demento Show. This follows the precedent of the group’s acclaimed 2016 debut, It’s A World Of Love & Hope, an album that scored big with critics and fans alike, including high-profile Flat Five aficionados like Nick Lowe and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

Scott Ligon was a wunderkind from Peoria who cut his teeth on blues and jazz and was hand-picked by Terry Adams to front the latest version of NRBQ. Kelly Hogan was a punk-rock torch singer with Atlanta’s The Jody Grind, who made a name for herself in Chicago as a solo performer and versatile session singer with bands such as The Mekons and Tortoise. Nora O’Connor was famous for her laser beam harmonies with Andrew Bird and Iron & Wine and her fearless ability to master any new instrument she’s handed. Casey McDonough was tapped to share lead vocal duties with The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson on the 2017 Pet Sounds tour — with no prior rehearsals, mind you. The final addition to The Flat Five was ace drummer Alex Hall, a fixture at Chicago’s fabled Green Mill jazz club with The Fat Babies, The Modern Sounds, and Hammond whiz Chris Foreman’s combo.

Darren Paltrowitz/TheHypeMagazine.com 11/18

 

As supergroups go, it’s hard to imagine one cooler or better suited for that title than the Chicago quintet known as The Flat Five. Consisting of longtime Evanston resident Nora O’Connor, along with Kelly Hogan, Scott Ligon, Alex Hall and Casey McDonough, The Flat Five effortlessly conjures a sense of nostalgia in the listener, even if you’re too young to remember.

That’s due to the band’s songwriter Chris Ligon, whose imaginative wordplay is the vehicle by which we are transported on the albums It’s A World Full of Love (2016) and the band’s new full-length record Another World (Pravda Records). Harmonizing throughout, O’Connor shares the lead vocals with Hogan on the irresistible opener “Drip-A-Drop,” as well as “Butterflies Don’t Bite,” and takes the lead on “This’ll Be the Day” and “House of Foam.” O’Connor spoke to us a few weeks ago in advance of Another World’s release this month.

In addition to you, the other members of The Flat Five have connections to Chicago’s legendary alternative country scene. Do you see it as a natural progression, the way that The Flat Five’s self-described “twisted sunshine vocal pop” grew out of alt-country?

I’m going to say yes. I also think just because we are more than country. We all have pop roots as well. Maybe Kelly and I were leaning into our country roots. For me, growing up with Irish immigrants, I have a lot of Irish Celtic music background and then started in the bluegrass scene in southern Illinois. So, Kelly and I were leaning into the country music, but we still had all this pop music living inside us. As the band was forming and as we started to pick our song set and find our sound, we leaned into the twisted sunshine pop. We’re made up of more than flavor.

[read the entire interview: https://jwcdaily.com/2020/11/26/postcard-from-another-world/]

Gregg Shapiro/Daily Northshore 11/26

 

The Flat Five are some of Chicago’s most in-demand utility musicians. They’re the folks that get called in to add that last bit of something to make a song great. They are on records with other people from the Mekons to Mavis Staple and Brian Wilson. They are all super fans of all kinds of harmony singing. Flat Five songs sound familiar because they are scholars of pop song craft. They can do anything street corner Do-Wop or Beach Boys perfect waves of sound.

The Flat Five are Kelly Hogan of Atlanta’s legendary Jody Grind. Kelly often teams up with Nora O’Connor as the vocal support for Neko Case and the Decemberists. Scott Ligon and Casey McDonough are in the current edition of NRBQ (and Casey shared leads with Brian Wilson on the 2017 Pet Sounds tour). Alex Hall plays drums in more Chicago jazz combos than I could ever list. All the songs on Another World were written Scott’s brother, Chris Ligon, who normally writes music for film and television.

First impressions are deceiving. The Flat Five are master of their craft and like to wrap themselves in familiar sonic consume. At first blush, the songs can sound a little too sweet, a little too sentimental and a little too bound to the Tin Pan Alley school of pop craft. “Look At The Birdy” his me like a giant puff pastry of a song. I actually found it annoying. I kind of relate to it now. The song is the lament of a photographer trying to shoot baby portraits at a department store studio.

It pays to give the tunes repeated listening. Let the harmonies seduce you, then be rewarded with their deadpan humor and jabs at your social consciousness. Take the opening track, “Drip A Drop.” It’s a fun little tune about feeling good and watching your boyfriend dance. American Bandstand gives it an 8, it’s got a good beat and you dance to it. Tucked in with the hully gully is are the lines, “America, we’re giving you a warning. We’re making love not no stinking civil war.” Take that Internet trolls.

The biggest emotional gotcha on Another World comes on a bittersweet campfire song. It’s a simple melody with the singer saying, “Had my last cup of coffee, my last piece of pie” with the repeated line “but it kills me to know I won’t see you again.” The first time I heard it, I was thinking it was a sentimental break up song like “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” When we reach the end of the song, it’s a gut punch. “Say goodbye to my children, goodbye to my mom. Say goodbye to my daddy if he comes around. Say goodbye to my buddies and to my dear wife. Because the great state of Texas is taking my life.”

Enjoy the Flat Five for what they are, five friends getting together to have fun singing and playing together. If you just want to dig the great singing, that’s fine. If you catch the more pointed comments, all the better.

Bob Pomeroy/Ink19.com 11/25

 

A wonderfully eclectic Chicago band featuring players who have all been in the scene forever and they seem to have a passionate following in the Windy City. I really enjoyed their 2016 debut (It’s A World of Love and Hope which was distributed through Bloodshot) and Another World finds them on a different label (long running Chicago indie Pravda) and still offering plenty of charm, chops and great songs. To be clear their music’s kinda all over the place touching upon pop standards as well as jazz, r & b and hell, I even hear some approximation of Christmas music (that piano gets me every time). Vocalist/guitarist/pianist Scott Ligon (all of the songs were written by his brother Chris) leads the charge while legends Kelly Hogan and Nora O’Connor add lovely backing vocals (O’Connor adds guitar and banjo, too) and the snappy rhythm section of bassist Casey McDonough and drummer Alex Hall keep it all moving rather swiftly. And the songs, how about the jazzy, airy “Look at the Birdy” and the “Great State of Texas” (opening lyrics, ‘Had my last cup of coffee, my last piece of pie, had my last piece of freedom beneath God’s blue sky….”) and “That’ll Be the Day” chugs along with a slight “Bang a Gong” riff . Later, “Girl of Virginia” is a lovely piano ballad while “Butterflies Don’t Bite” is like the Free Design filtered through the Vince Guaraldi Trio. The Flat Five have made their 2^nd record that’s more than worth your time so put away whatever it is you’re listening to and give Another World a spin or three. It’s all about your strengths and this band plenty of ‘em.

Tim Hinely/Daggerzine.tumblr.com 11/25

 

Five strong, they possess the tools of their miraculous, imaginative trade; when they slap, strum, pick and make thwoopping sounds in concert with their able-bodied voices, they distinguish themselves from nearly all other like-minded musicians who ply their trade in the recording studio and on stage. Lately, they have had to limit their collective ply to the recording studio; in the age of COVID-19, venturing out to play is unthinkable, considering the global state of play.

“If only we could play a f****n’ show,” the Flat Five’s Nora O’Connor says genuinely and honestly after a quick sigh, for it is on the stage that Nora and Kelly Hogan and Alex Hall and Casey McDonough and Scott Ligon, whose brother Chris, who isn’t in the band, writes the songs that the Flat Five warble brilliantly, gather to relate Chris’s clever and wildly imaginative lyrical wordplay and musical playlets with creative precision.

For now, the Flat Five from Chicago, from the Windy City and not from anywhere else, mind you, enjoin themselves within Alex’s popular Reliable Recorders. In there, they plug in and turn on and subsequently bring Chris Ligon’s beautifully and cleverly written tales of people who wind up here, there and possibly everywhere to life with harmony singing par excellence. The Flat Five’s joyous new album, Another World, their second long player that is even better than their first, a delectable spinner entitled It’s a World of Love and Hope that came out in 2016, is proof of everything.

“The song is our higher power,” says Nora, a truth borne out by snappy songs like “Drip a Drop,” which toasts the elixir known as pure and giddy happiness with wordplay extraordinaire (“My baby shakes like Tina Turner’s daughter / He runs around the house in just a little top / On his behind you can set a glass of water / He Hully Gullys and don’t ever drip a drop”).

The deeply felt ballad, “The Great State of Texas,” sung empathically by Kelly, tells the sad tale of a prisoner behind bars in the aforementioned great state who experiences a series of last meet-and-greets with things both mundane and personal before stating that “the great state of Texas is taking my” (beat, beat, beat, beat, beat) “life.” It’s a heartbreaking ballad that cuts deep.

Of course, there is much more to savor on Another World, and if you think the proverbial coinkidink is in play when you note that the word “world” appears in the title of both of the Flat Five’s albums, know that although it seems that there is absolutely no coinkidink in play, there actually is. It’s just that the world being referred to could be on the moon, could be an escape from the craziness of our lives, as it is in Another World’s jaunty closer, “Over and Out” (“Over and out the page has turned / the train has left the station…”).

[view video interview: https://purepopradio.com/2020/11/17/pure-pop-radio-in-conversation-fall-2020-episode-one-the-flat-fives-kelly-hogan-and-nora-oconnor/]

Alan Haber/PurePopRadio.com 11/17

 

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Another World was produced by band member Scott Ligon and The Flat Five. It was recorded/engineered by Flat Five drummer Alex Hall at his popular Chicago studio, Reliable Recorders with some additional sessions done at Wilco's gearhead paradise, The Loft, engineered by Mark Greenberg.

 

The charms of this band are manifest. These guys are all hardcore vocal buzz junkies, and share a vast range of influences from The Free Design to The Three Degrees to Captain Beefheart and a restless desire to explore a song from the inside out: to see just how far out it'll go. This sophomore album showcases The Flat Five's trademark keen musicianship and their slightly subversive sense of humor. It's marked by the playful wide-eyed sweetness that colors all their music, tempered with their appreciation for how freaking good it feels to listen to a beautiful bummer on repeat sometimes. Like Charles Schultz said: "Happiness is a Sad Song."

 

All the new album's songs were written by Scott Ligon's older brother, the impossible-to-pigeonhole mad musical genius, Chris Ligon whose songs have been featured on the hit Showtime series Weeds and the Dr. Demento Show. This follows the precedent of their acclaimed 2016 debut, It's a World of Love and Hope, an album that scored big with critics and fans alike, including high-profile Flat Five aficionados like Nick Lowe and Jeff Tweedy.

 

Another World took over a year to complete from start to finish, as band members had to steal recording time from their respective busy schedules performing and touring with other projects. This is the way it's been since the group began as a "musical snowball" in the mid-aughts.

 

Scott Ligon was a wunderkind from Peoria who cut his teeth on blues and jazz and was hand-picked by Terry Adams to front the latest version of NRBQ. Kelly Hogan was a punk-rock torch singer with Atlanta's The Jody Grind, who made a name for herself in Chicago as a solo performer and versatile session singer with bands such as The Mekons and Tortoise. These two were thrown together for a last-minute gig and found that they had an immediate and effortless vocal blend. They began singing together regularly as a duo and soon added Southside Chicago pals.

 

Nora O'Connor was famous for her laser beam harmonies with Andrew Bird and Iron & Wine and her fearless ability to master any new instrument she's handed; Casey McDonough (the real "Swiss Army Knife" of the band and a true ninja to those in the know) was tapped to share lead vocal duties with Brian Wilson on the 2017 Pet Sounds tour...with no rehearsals - oy! The final addition was ace drummer Alex Hall, a fixture at Chicago's fabled Green Mill jazz club with The Fat Babies, The Modern Sounds, and Hammond whiz Chris Foreman's combo.

 

But as soon as The Flat Five was formed, they were kept apart by their ongoing recording and touring obligations with the acts listed above, and other heavy-hitters like Mavis Staples, Jakob Dylan, Robbie Fulks, Alejandro Escovedo, The New Pornographers, and Linda Gail Lewis. The Flat Five even became locally famous for playing only once a year! But some kind of musical magnet-pull kept bringing them together and finally Another World got made.

 

So here's some lift. Some buoyancy. A little bit of hope. Things we need now more than ever.

 

Come November, we're all gonna be ready for Another World.

 

http://www.theflatfivechicago.com/