(EDITOR’S NOTES — 1120 Press writer Benjamin Joe recently spoke with Elliot McAndrew, vocalist and guitarist of the Buffalo post-punk band Photosound, which just released its debut demo. The band is also comprised of Chris Daddario, guitar, Aidan Scherer, bass and Dante Simonetta, drums. It was a great talk. Please read our story below.)
Being in a band is sometimes a funny thing. Gaining a foothold in the local scene and getting your music heard isn’t always easy. Same with landing gigs. But then, one day, you get a cease-and-desist letter, and your luck begins to change.
Well, OK, not exactly. It takes a lot of hard work, of course. But the above-mentioned scenario is at least part of the story of Buffalo post-punk band Photosound, which dropped its excellent debut demo on the streams at the end of January, which you can listen to HERE.
The four-piece band initially started under the name Stay Inside. And by its own admission, it was slow-going at first. Shows were hard to come by, impacting the band’s ability to be heard. But then, as luck would have it, the band was sent a cease-and-desist notice by another group called Stay Inside, forcing them to change their name.
And, thus, ‘Photosound’ was born.
“A big reason we had picked Photosound was because when you Google it, nothing comes up,” said Elliot McAndrew, the band’s vocalist and guitarist. “Once we had changed the name, it was like, ‘we should release something,’ to lock it in a little.”
Which brings us to the ‘PhotosoundDemos,’ a catchy, thought-provoking and at times mesmerizing sonic journey. Recorded at Legacy Studios in Lancaster, and mixed and mastered by Buffalo’s Joe Ferrini, the three-song EP is a unique work that fuses a post-punk sound with an Interpol vibe and vocals that conjure reminiscence of late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.
“The way that I write songs, I don’t write in a coherent way,” McAndrew said. “There’s a block there for me, but I do a lot of shorthand writing and abstract stuff. I have a whole book, and I write down words or phrases that, a lot of the time, is stuff I hear.
“So, usually, when a song comes up, I just piece things together. I think ‘Morning After’ is probably the most straight forward song. The other songs, there’s a lot of allusions to romantic relationships… I don’t think about what the songs are about when I’m writing them because I’m piecemealing them together. It doesn’t seem to matter what the words are, but how they sound.”
Such was the case for ‘Precipitation,’ the second song on the demo following ‘Morning After.’
“I had the basic droning for the beginning and a rhythm for a melody,” McAndrew said. “Then Dante came in with his drum ideas, which was really helpful for establishing the drive of the song, and Chris was able to bring in a lot of the dynamics in his guitar parts.”
In creating its distinct sound, the band’s members bring to the table their own wide range of influences including Dylan and elements of Americana, indie inspirations from groups such as Tame Impala, electronic music, and the mainstream as well.
“I, personally, have drifted from a more garage-rock, kind-of-grungy aesthetic and found a love for the post-punky sort of thing,” McAndrew said. “So, if there is an evolution, it’s in that.”
With a few gigs in the books and the release of its demo giving them a presence on the streams, Photosound is aiming its focus now in the year ahead on playing more shows and writing.
“I think we are one of the only bands that sound the way we sound,” said Mc Andrew. “There’s plenty of other bands that we have some amount of kinship with, but it’s a small group of that post-punk revival, indie rock kind of sound. There’s only so many of us.”
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