Full Contact Kitty litters performance with laughs

The charge gets levied often against indie rock bands that they’re too sullen. The band gets onstage and frowns through its set, and the audience stands with arms crossed. No dancing. No jokes. Nothing that could make you look uncool.

Not so with Full Contact Kitty, a Belfast trio (sometimes quartet) that plays noisy yet melodic indie rock. Go to one of its shows, such as the gig next Thursday at Belfast’s Summer Nights outdoor concert series, and you won’t see the band trying to look hip through its members’ carefully unwashed haircuts. In fact, the idea is to laugh. Laugh while you’re rocking. Wow, I think I’ve found a new life motto.

“We’re big movie buffs, and we’re big fans of comedy, so we wanted to bring that element in,” said drummer Jason Dean. “We like to do these little mini comedy skits in between songs. Our music is kind of strange, so we thought maybe we’d ease that tension with the audience and bring in some humor. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

Dean, along with singer and guitarist Diantha Bovey, bass player Clint Hartzell and sometimes trumpet player Mike Whitehead, formed Full Contact Kitty last spring, after Bovey and Dean spent months jamming together, hashing out a sound. Prior to her move to Maine and reincarnation as a rock star, Bovey worked as an actress and comedian in Chicago, performing and directing in regional theater and studying at Second City, the renowned comedy troupe and school.

“On top of being one of the most creative people I know, she’s one of the funniest,” said Dean. “She brings a lot of her comedy background to the music. We started incorporating some multimedia stuff in too, doing video work and collages that add to the show.”

The band came together over a shared loved of bands like Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth, as well as electronic acts like Massive Attack. Bovey’s and Dean’s musical backgrounds are totally different – Dean studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and plays pickup drumming gigs all over the Midcoast area, while Bovey had never seriously played in a band. Hartzell, an accomplished bass player, studied electronic music in college. And Whitehead is trained as a jazz trumpeter.

“We’ve been doing a lot of experimenting,” said Dean. “Diantha’s been experimenting with new effects pedals, and I’ve recently been playing a little Korg keyboard. We’re bringing new things into the mix.”

The basic core of sweet, fuzzy, lo-fi rock, however, remains. A demo EP was released last winter, the tracks from which are available on the band’s MySpace page, myspace.com/fullcontactkitty. This fall, the plan is to enter the studio with Belfast musician and producer Andrew Luckless and record a full-length.

But there’s one thing I haven’t gotten to yet: just what is a Full Contact Kitty?

“[Diantha’s] got an obsession with cats,” said Dean. “Thanks to her, I do too. She’s converted me to the feline way. And I really love martial arts. I’ve been doing it for a long time. So we wanted some way to combine our love of kitties and martial arts. So one day I said ‘What about Full Contact Kitty?’ And she said, ‘Oh that’s pretty funny.’ And there you go. Full Contact Kitty.”

Full Contact Kitty will play a free show with Straight Up Reggae from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 16, on Beaver Street in downtown Belfast. The band will also play Friday, Aug. 24, at Ofelia’s on Central Street in Bangor, and Friday, Aug. 31, at Waterfall Arts Center in Belfast. Emily Burnham can be reached at eburnham@bangordailynews.net.