I like a good, creative concept as much as the next herbal jazz cigarette connoisseur. I like it when albums have themes, and I like it when bands take on creative visions larger than simple, three-minute songs. I like it when a story weaves its way through an entire record. At least I like these things in theory. After all, I did grow up on Tommy. While the results of such endeavors by bands big and small, musically speaking, don’t always please my ear — I always admire the effort.



Rarely, though, the situation reverses. Hypatia Lake, who will play Bob’s Java Jive this Friday, Aug. 15 with Waves and Radiation, Destruction Island and Sons of Ivan, provide a fine opportunity to talk about just such a situation.



While usually I like the concept driving a “concept album” or “concept band,” only sometimes to be let down by the music, Hypatia Lake is another story.



Hypatia Lake just may be the concept band to end all concept bands, and it’s going to take me a while to explain.



Let’s start with the music. Hypatia Lake — to the ear and weighing the band’s July release, Angels and Demons, Space and Time heavily in consideration — is a band of many strengths. This band can be huge, at times bringing to mind the distorted and trudging guitar crunch of garage rock grunge. When the band plays live, it’s best to have earplugs on hand.



At other times, Hypatia Lake can wander in haphazard experimentation, amazingly managing to do so in a way that doesn’t feel overly artsy, and doesn’t alienate those who’ve never studied at an arts school — which isn’t an easy task. Still, at other times, Hypatia Lake can stand toe to toe with any band of tight jeaned indie popsters out there, happily reveling in a psychedelic motif conceived well before their time.



At all these points Hypatia Lake is intriguing to the ear. The band’s sound is as varied as it is capturing. Rock. Pop. Psychedlia. Etc. There’s a lot to enjoy with Hypatia Lake.



It’s just the band’s “concept” I have trouble with.



To be brief, Hypatia Lake is less a band of musicians as it is a story about a small, fictional town with a candy shop and a lot of problems. This story has been told through three albums so far, and is the brainy work of Hypatia Lake frontman Lance Watkins.



Maybe it’s because I haven’t smoked quite a few herbal jazz cigarettes, or maybe it’s because I’ve already smoked way too many, but I just don’t get it. The concept behind Hypatia Lake manages to fly far, far above my head.



Perhaps it’s better if Watkins describes it:



“Hypatia Lake is a fictitious community, and the songs revolve around the lives of the characters in the town. Our first album, Your Universe, Your Mind, introduced characters like the lonely cowboy archetype of Jerimiah Freud, the Clock Faced ones, and the town’s Candy Factory workers. The second album, ...and we shall call him Joseph, focused on the life of Joseph Bigsby, who instigated the rebellion in the town’s candy factory, and it plays out as a series of scenes of his life as he lay dying on the Candy Factory floor. Our latest, Angels and Demons, Space and Time, has a similar feel in organization to the first, but focuses heavily on the trials of an Interdimensional Space Queen who is tricked into descending from her throne into the world of matter and just so happens to land in the body of one of the town’s inhabitants, Rose Marie,” says Watkins.



“I felt that as far as concepts go, having a town is the broadest mechanism available for use as a concept. It’s also easy for people to relate to and doesn’t isolate mood or expression, because it’s just so damn broad!”



While I’m willing to admit a town is a pretty broad concept, and the idea of a town is easy for people to relate to, I would argue that, at least initially for a guy who’s just discovering the band, it’s all just a bit much to grasp. I was doing pretty well with things until the part about the “Interdimensional Space Queen.” That’s where he lost me.

The good thing about this situation is — whether I’m just too stupid to get it or the concept behind Hypatia Lake is a bit much to swallow — the show at Bob’s Java Jive is going to be musically fascinating all the same.



“I honestly believe it’s a form of transcendental communication that vibrates beyond matter directly to the Source of Being,” says Watkins of the music he makes with Hypatia Lake, which, driven by his creative visions, employs a large and rotating group of musicians. “So when I’m working through these Archetypes, this mythology is helping the universe evolve on that level, as well as giving me a clearer understanding of my own cognition.”



Got it?



If you do, maybe you can explain it to me at the Jive after I get done enjoying the kick ass music.



[Bob’s Java Jive, Hypatia Lake, Waves and Radiation, Destruction Island and Sons of Ivan, Friday, Aug. 15, 8 p.m., $5, 2102 S. Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253.475.9843]