Musical chemistry is a funny thing. Bands that have chemistry are almost immediately apparent; you can taste and feel how easily each member jibes with the next. Everything is liquid and miscible and interweaving, and it leaves you better than it found you, always. Colorado’s El Toro de la Muerte has that, the sort of indefatigable chemistry that makes you shake your head and wonder how they make it look so effortless.

Formed in Colorado Springs, CO, in 2004, El Toro de la Muerte represents some of the finest and most adaptable talent the half-million-person city has to offer. With well over 60 collective years of playing, the group’s four members (Ryan Spradlin, Jeff Fuller, Mike Nipp and Jay Schwan) have, individually and together in different iterations, contributed mightily to the past 20 years of Colorado Springs’ musical well-being. If the names Girth, Victory Boy, Against Tomorrow’s Sky, and the Sacco & Vanzetti don’t mean anything to you, rest assured that they do to people along Colorado’s Front Range, who poured into basements and bars to see El Toro’s members during their formative years. There are hundreds of shows and gallons of sweat and acres of broken strings and drumheads shared between these boys, and witnessing their show or listening to their debut album, Dancer These Days, makes that instantaneously and utterly clear.

That four immensely talented guys found each other ain’t rare, but that they managed to stay together long enough to gel is. The other thing about chemistry is that it’s often explosive, and talent is a volatile element. But at a show or on the record, El Toro makes it clear that not only do they get along musically, they actually dare to like each other and love what they’re doing, well enough to translate how much fun they’re having. That’s rare, and in El Toro’s case, quite the sell.

Dancer These Days, recorded in the spring of 2011 with Colorado Springs’ J.D. Feighner, is a record that demands notice, not because of any kind of passing hipness or revolutionary technique or Day-Glo gimmick. Rather, the demand is a quiet one; you pay attention because you can’t help but to. The seven songs within are simple in the best sense: interesting, hooky, beautifully performed and so well-crafted that it takes repeated listens to realize how truly complex they are. It’s a fun record not because it’s bereft of substance, but rather that the substance is delivered by so sweet a vehicle. “I just wanted something that felt like a summer record,” says Spradlin, “Or maybe a record you would listen to on the mountain, or something. It’s supposed to sound rowdy and fun and I think that represents the way we play shows.”

Fuller agrees: “It's not a blatant retro throwback. It's not super futuristic. It's just rock music, but it's our own unique take on it.”

Their “own unique take” is just that: a craftily-blended amalgam of dozens of styles. It’s indie rock in the best sense, in that El Toro owes very little to anybody. The production that is Dancer These Days stars Elvis Costello and Neutral Milk Hotel and Bowie and Morrissey and Blur and Fugazi, each of them peering politely through the curtain before taking their turns in the greater piece. It’s not reinvention, but there’s something to be said for a band who realizes that reinvention, when it comes to rock, rarely ends in something truly listenable. Instead, El Toro concentrates on writing songs that challenge slyly, that get us stomping and singing along without thinking about the strings. That’s what intelligent rock strives to be, at its best: evocative, stirring, and just fun.

The future of the group is bright. With a number of local music awards, like 2010 Pikes Peak Council for the Arts Best Group and 2011 Colorado Springs Independent Best Rock Band, etc. under their belt, El Toro de La Muerte draws more and more with each show. Dancer These Days has generated considerable radio interest in the group, and they’ll be hitting the road in small stints throughout the western and midwest states in coming months, disseminating, as it were, the chemistry they’ve got to give.

Members:

Jeff Fuller: guitar, keys, vocals

Mike Nipp: bass, vocals

Jay Schwan: drums

Ryan Spradlin: guitar, keys, vocals