After a year and a few months at it, nine-piece local band Antenna Inn’s sleek, smart and superbly constructed suites of jazzy prog rock are starting to draw a large crowd. They’ve been headlining shows more frequently and are about to release their solid new album, Do/Work, with a party at Tipitina’s. Their’s is the sound of a band working through ideas together for the first time, as they realize their talent and range. As good as Do/Work is, you get the feeling that their next album is going be the one—it’s going to be crazy. For now, though, Do/Work and its highlights: the angelic and Beach Boys-ish back-up vocals and the jazz dirge breakdown at the end of “Ernest Borgnine,” the high frequency bass and bright keyboard on “Ink,” the disorienting horns on “Stockholm Syndrome,” and the swingin’ verses in “Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition.” Though the choruses are pretty catchy, there’s something sublime about each song’s instrumental stretches. The lyrics are dark, anxious, and purging, sometimes malevolent and sometimes self-help-like: “If you’re looking for love, stop, because you will never be happy, even when you are. You will always be lonely…c’mon, people, fall back out of love. Call your mother. Mothers, call your sons.” There’s also a rolling confidence throughout the band—one that could easily be perceived as arrogant, except that confidence is tempered with a clear love of not only New Orleans and its rock scene but the city’s traditional music, as well as a want, almost a need, to create a unifying force that makes it all more successful.

ANTIGRAVITY recently sat down with drummer Eric Rogers and talked about Do/Work, the band’s fan base, and his good, old-fashioned sibling interaction with brother Ryan. (more…)