Guitarist and vocalist Fletcher Neeley, of Denver punk band The Unindicted Co-Conspirators, has a longstanding fascination with the femme fatale of film noir and the pulp fiction from such authors as James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett that inspired the character archetype. An actor like Barbara Stanwyck, the blond bombshell who drives Fred MacMurray to kill for her in 1944’s Double Indemnity, comes to mind when femme fatale is mentioned.
That’s who Neeley was thinking of when he wrote the lyrics to “Lotharia,” a recent single by the Unindicted Co-Conspirators, who are playing the Lion’s Lair on Friday, December 16, with Kenny’s Login and In My Waters.
“I forget her character’s name, but she’s pretty evil,” Neeley says. “It’s just kind of a composite of femme fatales and other evil women. I tried to write the lyrics in the cadence and style of a pulp fiction novel.”
(For the record, the name of Stanwyck’s character is Phyllis Dietrichson.)
The Unindicted Co-Conspirators — the lineup comprises Neeley, guitarist and vocalist Ken Bos, percussionist Brian Barrows and bassist Chris Rybitski — have released one EP, Colfax Confidential, and “Lotharia,” with plans for more music in the near future.
The band plays punk music, but takes a more expansive approach to the genre, folding in sounds from plenty of non-punk groups. The bandmates see some of their new music skewing more toward the style of early Queen of the Stone Age, and find inspiration in the alternative rock band Verbana, as well as influential noise-rock outfit Jesus Lizard. “Being older musicians, I think we have a lot more to draw from for influences,” Barrows says.
Rybitski adds that the band harnesses the energy of punk rock without leaving structure behind, noting that Unindicted Co-Conspirators songs usually have a hook, intentional or not, and are well composed. “Some of the cuts remind me of if Elvis Costello had an edge,” Rybitski says. “And I do hear the Replacements in some of the songs.”
The band also has a metal side, notes Neeley: “‘D-Days in the Pacific,’ off of Colfax Confidential, is definitely metal. ‘Someday,’ this new one, is definitely metal.”
Bos penned the lyrics for the alternative-metal single “Someday” — due out on Thursday, December 15. It’s Bos’s first song with the band, and he jokes that it’s possibly his last. “It’s about a fight I got into about a year ago,” he says. “I’m not proud of it. It was, not on my side, a road-rage incident with another guy. He told me to pull over on the side of the road, and I hit him after he pushed me a few times, and that’s it.”
Asked if he won, he answers that he did, which sets off a cascade of conflicting comments from the rest of the band, ranging from outright denial that Bos won this particular physical dispute to the claim that he has a black belt in tae kwon do, to another that he in fact killed the other man and slunk away into the darkness. At least one person says that this is the first he’s heard of any fight.
Bos adds that the song, though it took a creative spark from the incident, isn’t actually about the fight. With the line “I’m a coward,” Bos refers to how he normally would have just walked away and stewed about all the things he should have said or done to the road-rage jerk. But things turned out differently, at least this time. “That day, man, I would have fought anyone,” he says. “I got out of the car ready to go, and I gained a bit of confidence from that situation, even though I’m not really happy about it.”
And, Neeley points out, “We got a great song out of it.”
The Unindicted Co-Conspirators, Friday, December 16, 9 p.m. Lion’s Lair, 2022 East Colfax Avenue, Tickets are $10, and the show benefits Demi’s Animal Rescue.
