Veelee

It’s an old story: Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy. They start two-piece pop band together so they can showcase their spiraling melodic charm. OK, so maybe it’s not your typical tale of love and music, but for Carrboro’s Matthew Park and Ginger Wagg, it’s the only one that matters. As Veelee, the pair crafts off-kilter pop filled with chiming guitars, subdued rhythms, and coed vocal phrasing as casual in its delivery as it is cohesive in its interplay.

For the all sophistication Wagg and Park are able to harness musically, the story of their genesis is wonderfully accidental.  Park, a longtime musician, initially moved to Carrboro from Richmond, Va., for his former band Opening Flower Happy Bird.  After minor success for a time with that project, his band mate moved to California. “That was that,” he says.  Meanwhile, Wagg, a visual and performance-based artist, was playing cello and singing and writing songs on a borrowed guitar with no particular intention.  The motivation to play together was circumstantial. “[I] don’t remember exactly how it happened but I know I wanted to start a new band, and I have a bunch of gear from playing in other bands. Ginger and I just started playing that stuff,” Park explains. “We decided she’d mostly play the drums and I’d mostly make the other sounds. I knew we’d both be multitasking, and both singing.”  

The guitar-drum-template also offered a way for the young couple “to create something together” and to use their art backgrounds.  As Park explains, “We’re both artists (with art degrees, and student loan payments and all), and we see what we do in this band as an expression/ extension of that.” Given the complex and compact nature of the two’s songs on their debut EP 2009’s Three Sides, it’s easy to appreciate their artistry. With an upcoming full length due for release on Chapel Hill’s Grip Tapes this summer, it’s time to recognize their potential. —Ashley Melzer