Collisions

We first heard about shoegaze/indie rock quartet Collisions in 2008, when their name was still Braille and they were humbly handing out free, self-packaged 6-song demos at their shows. Now the band is gearing up to release their debut full-length, Villain’s Spirit, on Santa Cruz punk label S.A.F. Records – also home to LA’s own the Mae Shi. Villain’s Spirit includes 11 of the approximately 40 songs they’ve written over the last 4 years. In fact, more than just the band’s name has changed ...

We first heard about shoegaze/indie rock quartet Collisions in 2008, when their name was still Braille and they were humbly handing out free, self-packaged 6-song demos at their shows. Now the band is gearing up to release their debut full-length, Villain’s Spirit, on Santa Cruz punk label S.A.F. Records – also home to LA’s own the Mae Shi. Villain’s Spirit includes 11 of the approximately 40 songs they’ve written over the last 4 years. In fact, more than just the band’s name has changed since the project started back in 2004 – when the members were barely 14-16 years old. Listening to the music nowadays, you’d never be able to tell that they were members of the high school marching band and had never even picked up a guitar before deciding to form a band. Starting off as a drum-and-bass experimental project, drummer Greg Black and lead vocalist/bassist Anthony Rodriguez were the first two pieces of the puzzle to come together, playing house shows around their hometown of Azusa, CA. Black’s cousin, keyboard player Anthony Perez, was the next to join. After 20 failed auditions for a lead guitarist over the course of 2 years, Perez’s best friend Ritchie Alderedie was brought into the fold and has stuck with it ever since. As teenagers who would ditch school for band practice when they first started out, the band’s influences included a who’s who of the early ‘00s New York indie scene –The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, The Strokes, and the Walkmen – along with usual suspects Radiohead and The Beatles. Recently they’ve looked more towards art rock and shoegaze artists such as Abe Vigoda, Animal Collective, Aa, and Explosions in the Sky – and it shows up in their frenetic, unstructured songs that run all around the place and back again, and which only include lyrics “because it’s necessary.” Alderedie’s guitar holds up the melodic end with somewhat pointed, Albert Hammond Jr.-esque indie rock, while Rodriguez’s lazily slow vocal drones and Perez’s synthesizer form the antithesis of Black’s terrific drummer’s ADD. This is a guy who could make a creative, unexpected beat out of two spoons, a rock and a bucket if it came down to it. But while most bands would be lucky to have one, or maybe two multi-instrumentalists, all four members of Collisions are in constant rotation when it comes to their instrument of choice, either at a songwriting session or at a show. At practice, the method of deciding who plays what is so haphazard and simple – whoever arrives first gets their pick – that it’s amazing how solid the songs are with the ever-changing lineup. Nonetheless, Rodriguez tells us that this Collisions trademark might be slowly phased out as the band members try to find their niche with their primary instruments. The name Villain’s Spirit came from a song the band had written and then forgotten about, but felt it described the record perfectly as “dark and somewhat negative, where nothing is sugar-coated.” The songs were recorded over 3 months with Josh Flippin at Monrovia, CA’s Grammahouse Studios, and Carson Lere at Manzan Studios in Glendale. The road to getting signed was one that many fledgling bands are probably familiar with – as the de facto businessman, Rodriguez went through “a lot of networking and a lot of dead ends,” before finally making any headway. “I was sending our stuff out to any labels that looked like they’d like us,” he explains. “I sent a 4-song demo to S.A.F. Records, and within 3 days [label owner] Matt Driscoll said he wanted to sign us.” But just because they’ve jumped into the welcoming arms of a label, the band has not stopped working hard on new material. Although it’s only their first full-length release, they view the process of recording Villain’s Spirit as a learning experience that has helped to define their next steps. This might eventually include a shift back to the instruments of their marching band days: Perez and Rodriguez mention that they’d like to add saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and mallets to the mix, though the former is quick to add that it won’t “sound like a ska band,” and that they plan to develop a more solid fanbase – with the help of the album and a possible California mini-tour -- before going down that path. “Expanding our sound and experimenting - that’s what we’re all about. We have ADD with music, and we want the next thing to be better and better,” says Rodriguez. “Villain’s Spirit was just about us finding ourselves, but now we know exactly what we want to do musically. That’s why every song on the record is so different.” “We’re better at our instruments now, and we know how to work together,” adds Perez. “Now we can move on to brand new things.”