Don't let the brooding tracks on GoMotorCar's Thanks For Sharing My Head trick you into making a false judgment on the band's demeanor.
Vocalist/guitarist Lenny D'Wayne, vocalist/guitarist Aaron Thorne, bassist joego, percussionist Dagmar Andrews and keyboardist Roger D are not shoe-gazing mopesters. Instead, they are a bunch of fun-loving guys who have seemingly poured every ounce of their hearts and souls into the band's freshman effort.
The nine songs on Head combine wall-of-sound guitar riffs, minimal strumming and sublime, introspective lyrics, all behind Andrews' proficient percussion.
The tales of love lost, mood swings and comfortable sinking are only possible, the band explains, because the members have invested their inner selves to create this crushing, crying masterpiece.
"It's really not an angry feeling," D'Wayne said in an interview. "You're talking about stuff that might seem kind of dark, but at the same time you're at peace with everything that's happened. And you're cool with it."
D'Wayne said once the band got together and the lyrics and songs began to gel, they seemed to coalesce into a concept album of sorts, and, indeed, the heavy vibe is present throughout. But joego said he was surprised once the album was all done.
"The first time I actually sat down and read the lyrics from the first song to the last song, I was thinking, `Wow, people who hear this might say, God, this guy's got problems,'" joego said. "But it's really about living and surviving and being able to deal with everything thrown at you."
The band expressed being influenced by the bands International Noise Conspiracy, Modest Mouse and . And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead, yet each member came into the project with their own ideas.
"Even though we thought we had a certain direction we were going in, it just kind of happened that all the personalities came together and fit perfectly," joego said. "I don't think we're changing the face of anything, but it's allowing five personalities to make this one project, which is hard in a band."
The moodiness of the album is due, in part, to the keyboards and sequencing, which lent to the ethereal sound that the band has cultivated. Andrews played the keyboards and handled the sequencing in the studio, but the band recently added Roger D, its fifth member, to handle those parts live.
"I just started to play keyboard, so I'm not some guy who wants to play a lot," he said of complementing the band's sound. "I'm pretty content with what I do."
The band's production also highlights its dynamics. At times, the guitar amps sound as if they are on the verge of breaking down, while at other times they are soft and lilting enough to lull the listener.
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The distorted bass, by converted drummer joego, lends heaviness when it's needed and drops back behind the landscape when necessary. The vocals plead loudly in "Broken Record," where Thorne asks, "When will I see I'm stuck in a daze?" then gently on "Block" when D'Wayne asks, "When you awaken, will you believe what I said?"
"We took bits and pieces from a bunch of albums that we love and things that we all listened to and applied them to every song," D'Wayne said. "We had the album produced in Santa Fe at Stepbridge Studios, and Tim Stroh is amazing. He took some of our ideas and expanded on them until we got a sound that we were really happy with."
"My Friend," a pensive love song by Thorne, is one of the album's most stunning tracks. His acoustic guitar shares the grooves with layers of clean and dirty guitars, spacey keyboards and Andrews' dirge-like drums. Thorne said, writing the song was the only way for him to deal with an overflow of emotion.
"I fell madly in love with this girl, we dated for awhile, and she dumped me on my ass," Thorne said. "But the whole thing behind it was that after all my bitterness towards being dumped, she really touched my life and I consider her a great friend."
Joego said the band's unorthodox name came when he was in Portland and sitting in a dark room.
"We've actually made a conscious decision to not have any imagery of cars associated with the band," joego said. "Before the band was together, I just said, `My next band's going to be named GoMotorCar."
Thanks For Sharing My Head is available from the band's Web site, www.socyermom.com/gomotorcar. You can e-mail the band at gomotorcar@socyermom.com.
