“I’m trying to see some people I know … this is more awkward than I’d thought,” said Brilliant Pebbles lead singer Monika Bukowska as she threaded her way through the crowd of hipsters at the Wicker Park [1] Fest on a bright Sunday in late July. Ostensibly, she and keyboardist Samuel Ng were out promoting the show they would play a few hours later at Double Door.
“I thought I’d come out and hand out fliers, but I don’t have any!” she said with a laugh. Instead she and Ng weaved through the crowd, followed by curious stares at their attire, she in gold sequins and customary unicorn pony-tail and he sporting a six inch dangling hair earring and shiny gold fanny-pack, back to the Double Door for their sound check.
Brilliant Pebbles, which takes its name from a theoretical anti-ballistic missile system, is a genre-defying Chicago foursome. Variously labeled as prog, space-opera, math-rock and glam-rock, they have been playing gigs for 18 months. They appeared with Dengue Fever at the Empty Bottle in July, and at Double Door, they played with Scarring Party and Secret Chiefs 3.
Given the band members’ disparate backgrounds, it’s no wonder their musical style is hard to nail down. In 1989 Bukowska, now 26, moved from Poland to the U.S., a time and place, she said “where you couldn’t have bananas.” Ng, 28, emigrated seven years ago from Hong Kong where he began studying classical piano at age eight, and taught piano as a high schooler. In Chicago, he studied film and video production at Columbia College. Drummer Philip Montoro, 36, has played for a variety of bands including Lozenge and is an associate editor at the Chicago Reader. James Kennedy, 35, is the bassist, though when he joined the Brilliant Pebbles last year, he hadn’t played the instrument for about 11 years.
All four juggle band business around their 9-to-5 lives, including practice twice a week. Bukowska says she “hangs clothes on hangers,” Kennedy is a software engineer and novelist, Ng has a data entry job in the suburbs and Montoro is busy editing.
Grabbing a bite at the Earwax Café across the street from Double Door before the show, Montoro talked about the band’s creative process.
“There was a great hue and cry, mostly from Sam and Monika, that ‘We want to have pop songs,’” he said, “But none of us really know how to write pop songs.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, what they play does not resemble pop. Far too complex and terrifying to be pop, it is something far more interesting.
Their music dances on the edge of insanity. Between Ng’s buttery, electronic melodies and Bukowska’s vocals - whispered, shouted and quavered -- they seem to reach out and touch madness, but when Kennedy’s bass kicks in, along with Montoro’s drums, the song finds an anchor before it truly slips away.
The conversation at Earwax strays into subjects including gravy ice cream, the Oort cloud and the medical applications of acupuncture, leeches, electric shock and maggots, which, Kennedy pointed out, New York City garbage-men call “Disco Rice.”
The dynamic among four markedly different personalities is clear.
“James and Philip are one person, and me and Sam are another,” Bukowska said, “And sometimes we switch.”
Kennedy and Montoro are more reserved in terms of dress, each wearing simple t-shirts and loose linen pants or shorts respectively, and employ more sarcasm and dry humor than Bukowska and Ng, who delight in the innocently bizarre. During the Double Door set, Bukowska announced that she’d found a great deal on toothbrushes and then threw some into the crowd.
Montoro, whom Bukowska called the band’s accountant, said they had “been in the black a couple of times, but not enough to finance a record,” though that’s their plan. Once they have a recording, Bukowska planned to shop it around to every label she can, to get the best deal.
“I’ll go to whatever label Philip sends me,” Bukowska proclaimed, “If I have to, I’ll walk in barefoot.”
“Why would it help if you were barefoot?” Kennedy asked.
Brilliant Pebbles’ next show is a book release party on August 18 at the Hideout, in honor of a novel by Kennedy. The book is his first, a fantasy tale for young adults called "The Order of Odd-Fish."