Teradactyl spreading wings to Mainland

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

•	'The Yoba Show' A benefit show for Teradactyl Featuring Teradactyl, The Beta Release, Life in the Iron Lung, The bunkbeds, Linus, DJ Mike 8 p.m. Saturday Club Pauahi, 69 S. Pauahi St. $5; for 18 and older 521-7252, ordinarypopband.com Also: Teradactyl music can be found at mp3.com.

Hardly the stuff you get upon visiting the trio's whimsically designed Web site, ordinarypopband.com, and finding ... love songs. More specifically, instrumentally quirky, cliche-spanking love songs.

With names like "Lactose Intolerant" and "Sleepy Eyes," they document the hushed uncertainties of attraction — mutual or otherwise — with a rainy-day background of soft acoustic guitar, electric piano and synth, and the occasional splash of 'ukulele or banjo.

Just days away from its first-ever off-island road trip/tour, Teradactyl — multi-instrumentalists Jeff Sanner, Paul Bajcar and Ara Laylo — is organizing a benefit concert dubbed "The Yoba Show" tomorrow at Club Pauahi to help finance a San Francisco/Seattle/Portland jaunt.

"We basically have a rental car and airline tickets," says Sanner. "And we're staying with people we know." Proceeds from the concert will likely be used for three squares a day and temporary lodging.

"In between (shows), we'll probably have to stay at a few Motel 6s," guesses Laylo, laughing.

Formed two years ago on the ruins of a harder-edged foursome called The Missing Piece — its breakup a long, humorous story involving love found halfway across the world via the Internet — Teradactyl's membership is a mixture of twentysomething students (Sanner and Laylo are UH graphic design majors with day jobs) and a hopeful musician (Bajcar does sales at Music Mac).

If labels must be applied to Teradactyl's oeuvre, Sanner and Laylo prefer calling the band's music indie pop. More specifically, indie pop mirroring the quietly laid-back introspective electro-pop of bands they've admired for years like The Sundays, Everything But The Girl, Velocity Girl and Barcelona.

"When I was growing up, I really loved this band called The Descendants," says Sanner, quietly, cradling a cup of Starbucks. "They wrote the best love songs ..."

"... Ever!" finishes Laylo, her eyes widening for emphasis.

"They probably have a song about every experience you can have in a relationship," says Sanner. "Love songs have something everybody can relate to. I have a harder time writing about things that don't revolve around love."

Laylo — whose sweetly-lilting singing voice more than occasionally recalls The Sundays' lead vocalist Harriet Wheeler — playfully chides an embarrassed Sanner on his prodigious lyrical output.

"We're never gonna run out of songs," says Laylo, confessing that the band has more than 30 unrecorded Sanner compositions. "Jeff just pops 'em out left and right ... and is, like, 'Ara, you gotta learn the song!' And I'm, like, 'I'm still trying to learn all the other songs!'"