Imagine being so inspired by a band to end up forming your own, only to – a few short years later – end up supporting your idols on tour.
Joshua Calligeros of Sincerely, Grizzly doesn’t have to imagine. The singing, songwriting, guitar playing third of the Adelaide trio has already ticked that major part of his bucket list, and come this May. He’ll get to do it again.
Sincerely, Grizzly have just been announced as the support for Texan art-rockers …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead for their forthcoming Australian tour.
Particularly prophetic because they return down under to play their influential 2002 album Source Tags & Codes, which would have been Calligeros’ first exposure to the band, had fate – in the form of a lazy stall clerk – had not intervened.
“When I was 16, I went to a record fair with a friend and saw a Trail of Dead CD amongst a huge pile of others,” begins Calligeros. “The name… the Source Tags & Codes album art, and his nod of approval was enough to sell me without even listening to them.”
“The asshole who put the CD into the sleeve however, gave me The Secret of Elena’s Tomb (the EP after Source Tags) in [the] cover,” Calligeros recalls.
A moment he’ll “never get over” he says, “‘cause now I’ve got an imbalance in my CD to sleeve ratio.” More importantly though, was the impact of the music.
“As ‘Mach Shau’ started with that killer accelerando – it was like hearing the kind of music I had heard inside my head all my life, in my ears.” What happened next was beyond mere fandom.
“I bought all their music, learnt all their songs on guitar, and explored what each of them were about for the next few years,” explains Calligeros, offering the kind of detailed information about ‘Mach Shau’ alone that would put entire Wiki entries to shame. “I’m just waiting for Di Caprio to bust through my bedroom door and fuck everything up and take me back to the real world.”
His devotion eventually rewarded Calligero, “In 2009, I finally got to see them play at the Corner in Melbourne. Watching them there, I realised that all I wanted to do was make music that made someone feel like this band made me feel and let them know about it.”
Two years later, Calligeros – along with drummer Rowan Mout and bassist Griffin Farley – played warm-up to Trail Of Dead, at the very same Melbourne venue, in their first interstate show.
An achievement the frontman fondly recalls as simply “living my dream… Hanging out with them the night before the show and after the show, I realise that these guys that I’ve idolised for all these years are not only giving us the time of day, they’re making an effort to communicate to us and others like us and are generally trying to ensure everyone is having a good time.”
So how do you top ‘living the dream?’ Supporting Trail Of Dead for their complete Australian Source & Tags Tour, is “like living my dream, inside a dream in which I’m living my dream, inside another dream,” Calligeros enthuses.
“I’m just waiting for Di Caprio to bust through my bedroom door and fuck everything up and take me back to the real world.”
The ‘real world’ still hold its own benefits, including the Adelaide three-piece heading towards the final stretch of their own first national headline tour, in support of their debut EP Doom And Gloom; a fiery collection of songs charged by wiry, interlocking guitars, textural rhythms, and a hefty emphasis on lyrical and musical vigour. Or what the band dub ‘literature rock’.
When questioned if the tag is cheek or credence, “a little of the former, a little of the latter,” comes the reply. The former because Calligeros and his peers “got tired of having to explain to people [who] didn’t know the bands who influenced us or what we sounded like… we figured we’d just run with the moniker [and] wholeheartedly baffle them.”
The latter because it doesn’t take deep digging to find that it’s actually a fitting tag; after all, as the songwriter himself points out, “lyrically, a lot of what I’m talking about is influenced by or in response to literature.”
“‘Snakes & Ladders’ is written in the vein of a Thomas Hardy poem, ‘Us, or Optimism’ is a play on Voltaire’s Candide, or Optimism and ‘Kafkaesque’ is well, Kafkaesque,” he proffers.
While musically such high brow territory usually translates into the fey, bookish indie traversed by The Smiths to Belle & Sebastian, Sincerely, Grizzly run headlong into the opposite direction, into the arms of clipped, distorted riffs and the raw thrill of the traditional rock format. “It’s still difficult to concentrate on being frenetic and precise at the same time, but I think we’re getting there.”
It’s something that’s seen their sound regularly compared to bands of the 90s. “We do hear it often,” Calligeros concedes.
“We were brought up on a diet of 00s-era bands – Trail of Dead, Brand New, Biffy Clyro, Placebo, Jimmy Eat World, Death Cab, Modest Mouse, but have managed to find a way to 90s stuff like Codeine, Archers of Loaf, and Slint, through people telling us we sound like or should listen to those bands.”
Many of those touchstones have filtered through to Sincerely, Grizzly, and frankly any fans of the aforementioned artists would easily notch Sincerely, Grizzly onto the same musical belt with much satisfaction.
There’s an ambition and dynamism to their music that equates to an arresting live show. Revealing then, that Calligeros speaks with the determination of a man striving: “I think we’ve always had bigger eyes than stomachs in that we try and play and write things that are beyond our abilities,” he states.
“That’s something I don’t think I realised for a fairly long time and is probably the reason that after most shows for the last four years I’ve been pissed off,” he admits.
“I’ve known what we’re trying to do, but it hasn’t been what we’ve been doing. In a way it has been that dissatisfaction that has led us to understand that we need to emphasise energy and texture both live and when writing,” he says. “It’s still difficult to concentrate on being frenetic and precise at the same time, but I think we’re getting there.”
Indeed, their passionate, sharp rock – both aurally and lyrically – has earned them some considerable buzz in their few short years of existence.
They blew minds and ears at last year’s BIGSOUND conference, and earned coveted slots on the Adelaide legs of Big Day Out and Laneway Festival.
Not bad for a band with just six recorded songs to their name (four to the Doom And Gloom EP, and the double A-side single 21/Snakes & Ladders), then there’s the looming prospect and potential of a full-length album on the horizon.
“We recently went in and recorded a couple of tracks live to tape that were concurrently filmed by a great little initiative called Live at Twin Earth,” reveals Calligeros, but their touring commitments, and that second magical run with Trail of Dead, come first before they can think about an album.
“I lie, I’m always thinking about it,” Calligeros scoffs, “but for now we’ve come to understand that we can’t do things in half measures.”
“There’s a clue for the album title,” he teases, before displaying some of the trio’s penchant for absurdist humour, “unless Rowan gets his way with That’s a Moray, with the front cover being an illustration of a Moray eel.”
The drumming Mr. Mout has also taken to calling their current trek the ‘Dickensian Nightmare’, a phrase first coined by Noel Gallagher to “berate people wearing hats,” Calligeros explains. “That’s a textbook example of a literature rocker. As to why he wanted to call the tour that, that’s something that I’m not sure Rowan himself knows. His brain is truly a marvellous thing.”
It’s one of a few in the band if Calligeros’ plans for a pre-show ritual are anything to go by: “I’m attempting to bring in a [Michael] Jordan era Chicago Bulls intro where we run through smoke and lights to (UK prog rock veterans) The Alan Parsons Project,” he caws. “I guess in a way I’m still writing about modern problems, but now they’re mine and not somebody else’s.”
“We just need the smoke, lights, and Alan Parsons Project CD and we’re there.”
The group’s jovial off-stage temperament might come as a surprise considering the angst that bubbles in their spiky, cathartic rock.
The key breakdown of ‘21’ finds gloomy guitar shapes taking root as Calligeros sneers and mourns in equal measure, “I can’t see the appeal in Jersey Shore… I can’t tell sarcasm from rapport/I don’t know if it’s workin’ anymore.”
When pressed about the themes of modernity in his ‘literature rock’, the songwriter is cheerful; “I must be terrible company,” he jokes.
Describing his work as “objective, revolving around notions of pop-culture, extremist predictions about the end of the world and mass hysteria.”
“I’d like to think I’m not an inherently unhappy person but I do use songwriting as a means of understanding and coming to terms with what I’m really thinking and feeling,” he ponders aloud; “more often than not that ends up being heavy.”
Newer material has also taken a turn for the personal, including the dissolution of a long-term relationship.
“I was angry and had questions and that’s good gunpowder for songs,” he reveals. “I guess in a way I’m still writing about modern problems, but now they’re mine and not somebody else’s.”
As for seeing the new results anywhere than on the live stage, there’s still some waiting to be done. “If you can play your songs live, night in and night out and live with them, then I think they’re good enough to record,” Calligeros says.
“We’re still a few songs off having a record we can live with for the rest of our lives.”
Doom And Gloom is out now via iTunes and bandcamp.com. Sincerely, Grizzly wrap up their Doom And Gloom Tour this weekend, then support …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead on dates around the country in May, full dates and details below.
Sincerely, Grizzly 2013 Australian Tour Dates
w/ Dead Owls
PERTH Saturday April 20 @ The Bird w/ special guests TBC
FREMANTLE Sunday April 21 @ Mojos w/ Runner, Antelope & Race To Your Face*
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead 2013 Australian Tour Dates
Wednesday May 22nd – Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Thursday May 23rd – Metro Theatre, Sydney
Friday May 24th – Coniston Lane, Brisbane
Saturday May 25th – Rosemount Hotel, Perth
Tickets on sale now from www.handsometours.com
