Treadmill Belongs to Us, Now: Sure, we can call this one a comeback. Indeed, before beginning to analyze Treadmill Trackstar’s newest and most unlikely long-player, the fan-funded I Belong to Me, a little context is necessary.

Long heralded as the Capital City’s premier shoulda-been band, Treadmill Trackstar has oft been unfairly tied and compared to Hootie and the Blowfish, if only because the latter toured with the former and signed the band to Breaking Records, its Atlantic Records imprint. Indeed, signing to Breaking, on which it released Only This in 1997, was the band’s big break, but it was also ultimately its death knell.
 

Treadmill Trackstar

“We went about [recording Only This] wrong,” writes Treadmill frontman Angelo Gianni in the extensive notes accompanying I Belong To Me on the band’s web site. “We were so worried about it being successful, that we may have made some musical choices that were less [than] true to ourselves. I don’t blame us. Everything was riding on that record. Our entire futures. After a year of typical music industry soul-crushing, we got dropped. We soon realized that the music industry wasn’t the place for us to flourish and that we should be grateful to have escaped without any major addictions. So we said, screw it, and went our separate ways in 1998.”

Gianni says he wouldn’t play a single note for two years, and the band lay dormant until 2007, when the band made a surprise return for the Rockafellas Reunion series of shows. Spurred by the positive reaction, Gianni and crew — cellist Heidi Carey, drummer Tony Lee and new bass player Mike Mills — set out to make a new record, one funded almost entirely by fan contributions.

“We couldn’t have done it without our awesomely generous and outrageously cool contributors,” Gianni writes. “And we’d like for people to hear it. Because we’re musicians. And as musicians, we don’t really exist unless someone listens to our music.”

“The goal of this project was to walk away from it at its conclusion without a single regret,” Gianni writes. “Good or bad, it’s exactly what we wanted it to be.”

And therein lies an important distinction. Judged on its own merits, I Belong To Me is a fine record. Indeed, it sounds very much like a Treadmill Trackstar record. Though the acoustic guitars, a hallmark of the band’s sound, are for the most part nowhere to be found, I Belong To Me still shows off Treadmill’s greatest strengths: clever, left-of-center pop songwriting; deft musicianship, particularly from Carey, who shines brightly on the record’s more sedate tracks (“Bus Went By,” “Greener Grass,” “Back Ashore”); and meticulous production. Recorded at Gianni’s home in Asheville and Kenny McWilliams’ Archer Avenue Studios in Columbia, I Belong To Me certainly sounds good, its production crystalline and each instrument clearly defined. And while it might not garner the type of regional airplay Treadmill got back in the mid ‘90s, songs such as the Beatles-via-Smashing Pumpkins “Euphoric” and the driving title track are right in WXRY’s adult-alternative wheelhouse.
Judged by the band’s merits, though, how can I Belong To Me be considered anything but a resounding success? And if the fans — especially those who contributed to the recording — are satisfied, isn’t that what matters?

At the end of the day, I Belong To Me sounds less like a follow-up to Only This than the result of an almost entirely revitalized band. Treadmill Trackstar, mark two, sounds like a band unfettered by pressures and expectations; it sounds like a band, more than a decade past what was supposed to be its prime, finally comfortable in its own skin. It might ultimately be nothing more than a vanity project — Gianni says the band has no plans to perform any time soon — but it’s a pretty good one, and a solid effort, nonetheless. 


The Playlist is a discussion of life, the universe and everything — but mostly music. Let us know what you think: Email music@free-times.com.