Natural Selections: Jukebox the Ghost

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JUKEBOX THE GHOST is a cosmic wow of a band whose members started making music together in a George Washington University dorm during the fall of 2003.

After a few years honing their skills, touring abroad and changing their name, the trio has made its way back to D.C. to celebrate their inaugural album, "Let Live and Let Ghosts," at the Black Cat this Friday.

"We were originally called the Sunday Mail and played a lot of shows on campus at house parties and fundraisers," said guitarist Tommy Siegel.

Still, they treated every venue like it was the 9:30 Club.

A veritable big bang of ideas is unleashed during a Jukebox the Ghost concert. Blissed-out references, from a godlike observation that the world's a giant ant farm waiting to be blitzed to the knottiness of relationships, form a jauntily delirious stream of consciousness.

"A lot of [our] songs are highly literature-inspired," Siegel said. "The last three tracks of the CD are part of a larger apocalyptic song sequence. It's not as gloomy as it sounds, though. Our creative process mostly involves doing Mad Libs while sitting in a circle with a lot of scented candles."

Siegel described recording "Let Live and Let Ghosts" as "a total whirlwind. We tracked the whole thing in eight days, so we didn't have many opportunities to experiment, but I think it came out great in the end. I'm excited for people to hear the end of the record; there's five tracks that flow in and out of each other," he beamed.

Ben Thornewill is a classically trained pianist whose keyboards and warbly tenor provide complicated chord formations and trilling flourishes. Siegel's guitar licks and marble-smooth voice fill the space with Beatles-like clarity. And when he isn't serving as an anchor, Jesse Kristin percolates the festivities with sometimes clattering, sometimes splashy drum solos.

But Kristin said there were occupational hazards to making the CD. "I had really awful tendinitis. It was killing me because I was playing drums eight hours a day, so that's always the first thing that comes to mind when I think about the recording. I thought I was going to have to get my arm amputated or something."

Between recording sessions, the band shied away from anything overtly musical, even in game form. Temporary respite did not include a round of "Guitar Hero," but rather, the brothers Mario and lots of rock'em, sock'em.

"During mixing, we pretty much just played 'Mario Kart' the whole time," said Kristin. "While we were recording, too. Actually, we didn't do much recording at all — we just played a lot of 'Mario Kart.'"

But despite the intense and distracting gaming sessions, Jukebox the Ghost is finding an ever-growing audience. Not that their blooming fan base — abetted by the band's MySpace profile — has turned them into primadonnas.

"None of us have gone crazy yet," said Kristin. "We don't have a proper touring van. The gas gauge is broken, so we have to rely on a sometimes-inaccurate 'fuel used' meter. Tommy got a speeding ticket when we were having a debate about what speed you have to be going in order to get a speeding ticket.

"We'll continue driving 500 miles every weekend, playing for 20 people in a state we've never been to, and loving it."

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; with Pash and Bellman Barker, Sat., 9 p.m., $10; 800-551-7328. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Christopher Correa