At a recent family birthday party Frankie O’Malley, one third of Chicago’s the Safes, recorded 9 of his nieces and nephews performing a Disney song. For the O’Malley’s music is lifeblood, so it should come as no surprise that all three of the Safes—Frankie, Patrick and Michael—are brothers. They’ve released three albums in as many years, to increasing critical acclaim, most recently Well, Well, Well (O’brothers) an album full of incessantly catchy power-pop.
“It’s funny how it worked out,” says Frankie, “I wrote most of the first one [the aptly named Family Jewels (O’brothers)], the second [Boogie Woogie Rumble (Pro-vel)] was mostly Michael, Patrick wrote most of this latest one. But it’s always been collaborative; we’d show up with our songs and work on them together.”
Well, Well, Well shows the band shifting from the rough edges of their early garage rock, opting for the polished harmonies of early Kinks. O’Malley claims this doesn’t necessarily represent a dramatic shift in the band’s sensibilities.
“A lot of these songs were written over the years. We try to group albums together to make them cohesive. We have 3-4 albums worth of material already demoed. We have an album of country material ready to go.”
If the Safes are defiantly resistant to genre categorization, it is the songwriting that defines the band’s sound, says O’Malley.
“The songwriting will always be good,” he says, “It’ll always be catchy and the lyrics will be smart. Diversity is something I look for in bands.”
Given their family history, it’s no wonder the Safes have confidence in their songwriting ability. Their father was a saxophonist of some local acclaim.
“My dad quit playing when I was 6 or 7,” Frankie says. “My parents had 11 kids. They were busy. But he’d still sit at the kitchen table playing accordion, and he’d give us advice, like, ‘listen to Merle Travis…or learn to play the guitar well before you start adding lots of effects.’ And I had two older cousins, he’d shown them stuff. They taught me to play Johnny B. Goode. They showed me stuff like r.e.m. and Husker Du.”
The band’s young niece, Siobhan Lau, and nephew, Michael Lau contributed strings to Well, Well, Well, so while theirs no word about the release of the O’Malley Disney cover, it’s certain the family will continue contributing quality music to the Chicago scene for years to come.
