Chan Poling was the singer for the legendary Minneapolis punk/new wave band The Suburbs. Simultaneously snotty like Johnny Rotten and debonair like Bryan Ferry, Poling was the original post-punk love man, the rapacious, raspy-throated blueprint for later alt-rock stars like The Afghan Whigs/Twilight Singers’ Greg Dulli. They had rabid Midwest following, four albums and several EPs, arguably peaking with the lost classic 1981 double album Credit In Heaven that fused the sprawling experimentalism of Metal Box and Sandinista! with Talking Heads’ post-punk funk, and was an early influencer on jazzy sophisti-pop that blossomed in the next few years with The Blue Nile, The Style Council, China Crisis and even Sade. Even with the simple, catchy classic “Love Is The Law,” they seemed to skim just over the mainstream’s heads. One of many balls dropped in the MTV era. Other Minneapolis bands like The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum got the glory, leaving Poling to pick up from the disintegrated Suburbs and embark on an impressive career composing music for television and film. After winning an Emmy and composing Heaven, a musical with Kevin McCollum (Rent), Poling has revisited the pop world with a batch of dark, swoony songs, Calling All Stars. Not exactly returning to his new wave roots, the music has as much in common with cabaret as the euro-suave of Peter Murphy’s post-Bauhaus solo work. These are ambitious pop songs that should capture a wide-ranging appeal, from the theater-going crowd to precocious kids and their former indie-rocker parents who need some fresh mash tunes when the kids are away.
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