the
CADETS

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Officially, the Cadets are an alternate-universe WWII-era space military. But according to some device called a "one sheet," the story is different. Pending a full investigation, the details of this "one sheet" have been declassified:

The first thing you should know about the Cadets is that frontman and lyricist Chuck Smyth sings like a throttled cat. Cadets songs, all penned by Smyth with the help of drummer Cash Carter and a rotating cast of their friends and cohorts, draw comparison to the more cheerful, lyrical Polvo compositions, or to the frenzied later work of Man...Or Astroman?, or to a lobotomized, tone-deaf Neil Young on amphetamines, or to a collaboration between Fred Rogers, the Minutemen, and bathing African elephants.

Chuck's lyrics channel Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, and the accidental genius behind PBS kids' shows and nature documentaries. In another slightly-different universe, Chuck is a prime contender for Poet Laureate of the Shopping Center South; the subjects of his verse-form contortions masquerading as songs range from morose, creepily Christian-tinged dirges about children dying in boating accidents ("Corpus Christi") to yelping anthems of friendship and determination ("Threat of Winds", "Pax Cadetia.")

The band began in name in 1995. In college, the band grew into its current line-up by drafting longtime friends Isaac Bear and Chad Matheny to play various stringed instruments. The group then attempted several furtive tour marches across the East Coast in an abused 1980 Chevrolet van previously owned by a local country radio station, the exterior of which was adorned by a six foot tall airbrushed painting of the station mascot: a slender denim-clad rooster in a cowboy hat and sunglasses. Tiring of typical men-in-van tours, the band arranged a two week whirlwind raid of Japan, carrying instruments and merch on their backs and arriving at concerts via shinkansen and subways in venues across metro Tokyo, the Kansai, and southern Honshu.

The band self-released one 7" and two full-length albums before teaming with San Francisco-based Snowglobe Records to release 2002's Finding the Straight and Level E.P. to limited but universally positive critical acclaim.

After a three-year hiatus, the band reunited in late 2005 and has now completed On the Death of Science as a Major World Religion, an album left absurdly unfinished after the Snowglobe release, crammed full of sad yowls and beamed scowls and sci-fi musings and angular guitars and stabbed drumsticks and even more inspired, incomprehensible lyrics. The album was made available in November 2007 on Discos Mariscos. Additionally, Conditions on Alpha Atoll, the band's long out-of-print 2001 release, has been re-pressed on the label.