The Che Arthur Three’s Like Revenge is the third album of Arthur’s material to see release, but the first in a band format. It forges together the elements of postpunk, classic heavy rock and dark acoustic introspection - already there in his past work - in the most cohesive way a Che Arthur record has done yet. It is truly a bold step forward in his already-respected catalog of work.
Arthur grew up in the south and played numerous instruments in numerous bands there before moving to Chicago with Universal Life and Accident, the band he’d started in Alabama with drummer Adam Reach (now a member of Chicago's Poison Arrows, Reach also played on Che’s first two solo albums). After U.L. and A. ended in 2000, Arthur was asked to join Chicago band Atombombpocketknife, and would remain in the band until its end in 2005, appearing on i
ts final two records God Save The ABPK (Southern Records) and Lack And Pattern (File-13 Records).
All Of Your Tomorrows Were Decided Today (Flameshovel Records), his debut solo album, had already been released when Atombombpocketknife stopped, but now Che moved to Austin, TX and focused solely on his next record, Iron (Sick Room Records). The album would have a difficult birth. Working alone, Arthur tracked and retracked parts, mixed and remixed the album until, in his own words, “I really had no idea what was good or bad anymore. I almost erased the whole thing out of sheer frustration. I was telling myself that it would never be good enough anyway, compared to the sound in my head I was trying to create. That is why it took a year and a half to make that record. ”
Iron was in fact finished eventually, and was released to critical acclaim in the spring of 2007. For the first time in his solo career, Arthur decided it was time to recruit other musicians to play his songs live. Enter The Che Arthur Three.
With Steve Van Horn (formerly of the Reputation) on drums and Vic Robey on bass, The CA3
toured the U.S. in support of the Iron record. It was a return to playing in a band format after almost three years since ABPK had become inactive.
“I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until I was doing it again, but during that tour I knew that this was how I wanted to do the next record. I wanted to feel the immediacy of a band playing loud in a room. And after the ordeal of making Iron I just wanted to knock out a record really fast and keep the spontaneity, like so many of my favorite records from the past. No Sound Replacer, no robot-sounding vocal fixes, very little processing of any sort at all. Lots of the versions that ended up on the record are first takes, and two of the songs we had never even practiced before going in to record them.”
Energized after the Iron tour, Arthur wrote the Like Revenge songs in the last half of 2007 and early 2008. To record it, he moved back to Chicago and reenlisted drummer Van Horn. With new recruit Pete Croke (of Tight Phantomz and Sleepout) on bass, the band tracked the album in its practice space in the first two weeks of February 2009 with Arthur engineering and mixing.
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