With the Bay Area home to a vast number of attitudes, sounds, styles and such; the cult of garage rock innovations still remains a fascination of fancy and scuzz worship in excess. Keeping this contingent holistic and raw are San Francisco's The Spyrals, to toast idle behavior and rock idolatries with their premiere of “Lying” to celebrate today's release of the Out of Sight LP. Singer-guitarist Jeff Lewis takes an attitude ripped from the attic dusted bins and stack circulations of $1 records, joined by vision sharers Brandon Wurtz on bass [to the current bassist Dylan Edrich who has been playing with Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Mikal Cronin, etc] and the towering percussion drive of Elliott Kiger. Together they band together as a power trio-triumvirate that is more indebted to the transgressive trifecta of Blue Cheer than Cream; their sound stays mean while refusing to be crystalized within any set past or present placement of time.
Making their way through the haze and building castles in the sand, The Spyrals drop a song statement to make their presence known and heard. Searching for an escape, the 3 find it in a noisy, shredding sonic sound storm freak-out. Elliott maintains the steady rhythm to match the thumping drive of the bass progressions to ground Jeff's guitar that sings and squalls in a dialogue of it's own communicating to all involved instruments. The snarling minor blues chord processional goes from the looping proto-punk invitation to live show incidents, to the solo pageantry that got your dad and grandpa into rock and roll LPs to begin with. And just like the misunderstood hippies and rockers, Lewis and company shake and shurg off the squares' hurled judgements in the great night and day getaways of, “waiting for the night to come, sitting alone in the sun”.
The Spyrals' singer guitar Jeff Lewis shared a few thoughts on the art of “Lying” with us and further snapshots from the San Francisco scene.
Tell us a bit about the fuzzy inception of “Lying”.
Lying is a song about being misunderstood, confusion, and not sharing what you're really thinking. I think it's a feeling we've all experienced. The song came about pretty quickly with the group. It's one of the only songs on the album that gave us an excuse to freak out, especially in the whole middle solo/noise section.
With the lyrical double entendre of the title, is there any rebellion here in regards to San Francisco's “sit and lie” ordinance that is intended to prevent loitering from unsavory characters by our local home owning authories?
I guess you could say it relates to the whole sit/lie law around here cause those people seem generally confused but I never thought of that interpretation. I'm happy you did though.
How did your name come about, was it a conscious combining of “spying" and “spiraling”?
The name of the band came about before there was a real band behind it. It seems to fit the music we make. I wouldn't want to give a definite answer to what it means.
Thoughts on the current state of the San Francisco/Bay Area garage and beyond scenes?
The scene is always changing. There's always new bands to check out and it's exciting to be around so much music. I think we are lucky to be here. We have a lot of options. You end up running into the same people and I think that's really what it's about, making friends and being creative.
Insights into the album, summer plans here in the city, and upcoming release(s)?
We're excited to get this record out to everyone and see how people react to it. We're planning a tour for later in the Summer and working on writing some new songs too. Maybe we'll put out a single in a few months and hopefully another record next year.
The Spyrals' Out of Sight is available now from Mock Records.
