Honest Engines are full steam ahead

According to Honest Engines' official creed (i.e. their online band bio); Marcus Maloney is the group's "final and youngest addition," the guitarist who capped off the outfit's still-blooming quintet with jazz-aficionado style. Over the phone, Maloney laughs about the reference in agreement. "And the most attractive," he jokes, letting himself step away only momentarily from the quiet demeanor he's let on so far during our conversation.

It's immediately clear that Maloney fits in perfectly with Honest Engines, whose whispery indie strains most often receive comparisons to Wilco and The Shins. For one, he's a musical romantic. Maloney followed his craft all the way to Florida's DIY-rock wasteland to study jazz guitar at the University of Miami. When he developed tendinitis there and permanently returned to Chicago and his River Forest hometown last year, he jumped on Craigslist right away in search of musicians looking for guitarists. He discovered Honest Engines within a month and joined the band in November.

"It was very rehearsed, really 'together,'" Maloney says of his first impressions of the articulate sound, no doubt crafted by jazz fiends like himself (the band's two founding members both went to school for jazz composition at Columbia College, where they met). As quickly as he found his place in this group of music lovers, the rest of the band just clicked, melding concepts and filling out Honest Engines' skeletal beginnings to release the project's full-band EP, "Don't Talk of California."

"It's cool because we all add to it with our own distinct parts," Maloney says.

At some point during our phone call, Maloney tells me that I don't have to include the bit about him being the band's "most attractive" member, though, he says, it is indisputably known among Honest Engines insiders that co-founder/bassist Ben Sutter is "the tallest." And keyboardist Evan Demma is the poet of the group and drummer Matt Hennessey, "is a funny guy. He's got a lot of good stories."

Which, of course, brings us to Steve Mulcahy, the front-line singer and guitarist who started the band with Sutter a couple of years ago and who understandably ends up likened to Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard more often than not. "Steve is very prolific with the song writing," Maloney says. Indeed, Mulcahy's Gibbard-esque style doesn't end at vocal similarities. Honest Engines prides itself in lyrical juxtaposition and poetic imagery that likely looks as beautiful on drafts of scrap paper as it sounds when sung in each other's company. Mulcahy writes a lot - and it shows.

In fact, even though Honest Engines' 9-month-old, live-show repertoire stakes claim to about 25 songs, Mulcahy usually shows up to practice with a new tune every week, Maloney says. Here's how the progression goes from there: Mulcahy's melody and choruses go to Sutter for bass lines and then Demma and Hennessey for backbone keys and drums. That's when Maloney comes in with what he lovingly refers to as "landscape weirdness." For Maloney's part, he's trying to stray away from his jazzier roots for now, concentrating instead on distortion pedals and electric guitars.

"I think it's filled out a lot more," he says of Honest Engines' most recent sound, which has grown quite a bit since Mulcahy and Sutter partnered up. Back then, the two began jamming without vocals.

"They found out Steve actually writes songs and they're really good," Maloney says of band lore. From there, the band only grew, and though only a few recordings exist of Honest Engines' earlier work, it opened up the floodgates for bigger things. Bigger rock things, according to Maloney, though, he says, "Maybe that's what we sound like in our heads."

Only about a month has passed since the official release of "Don't Talk of California," and the guys are already "getting antsy" about arranging their first full-length offering. Maloney predicts they'll be ready for studio time later this year.

Until then, Honest Engines are full steam ahead with promoting the EP, playing Chicago and focusing on festival bookings for the fall. Oh, and hosting Thax Douglas poems before a show or two.

"He came to a couple of our shows, and I guess he just kind of found us," Maloney says of the indie-scene watcher who writes poems about local bands he likes and reads them like song lyrics before those bands' performances. It's safe to say that Honest Engines is a signature pick for Douglas, who tends to latch onto the most prolific of rising Chicago stars.

Still transitioning from jazz structures to rock chords, Maloney says, the quintet aims for an even fuller sound than displayed in "Don't Talk of California." Some things won't change, though. At the helm of it all, Mulcahy's careful voice and literary word twists will still lead the throng of swelling keys and drums, comprising not only the tallest member in the band but perhaps also the most attractive.