Pop music gets all the attention, but rarely the credit it deserves as a powerhouse of infinitely mutable creative potential. Unlike more ostensibly sophisticated genres, it can’t be pinned down to any one palette of instrumentation, and even if it periodically backs itself into a corner of rote vapidity and commercial navel-gazing, it always leaves room somewhere for the tables to be flipped, the rules overwritten and the infiltrators to subtly inject new modes and meanings into the DNA. For Damien Verrett, multi-instrumentalist and former prime mover of math rock experimentalists The Speed of Sound in Seawater, pop is simply the broadest possible canvas on which to test his constantly developing songwriting and production abilities while wryly toying with perpetual pop concerns such as power, authenticity and ego.

As So Much Light, Verrett has gradually cultivated these new stylistic leanings over several years, a time roughly encompassing his graduation from UC Davis, the humbling experience of moving back home and the countless hours spent chiseling at and defining the parameters of his new aesthetic. Toning down the intricate acoustic guitar work of his math rock days, he has taken the intimate, miniaturist bedroom pop of his previous solo project, Mansion Closets, and subsumed it into the more ethereal strains of present-day R&B. Sometimes the results can be downright haunting, as it is with last year’s single “Justin Bieber at the Gates of Hell,” which marries supernatural lyrics and macho posturing with dread-tinged, Erik Satie-like piano ambience. Much of Verrett’s latest album, Oh, Yuck, however, is characterized by a newfound ebullience in sound and vision, as showcased in the new video and single “Be Afraid,” a sensational piece laden with pipe-organ hooks and a carnivalesque atmosphere. Each track teems with perfectly placed flourishes on various instruments that make the record feel like it was recorded in strikingly different locales instead of the confines of a suburban Elk Grove bedroom.

The attention paid to every detail, the clear unity of impulse going into a tuneful record, seems enormously exciting in this day and age. If ever there was an era in dire need of more variance, more mystique and topsy-turvyness to its current music scene, it’s ours. In that sense, Oh, Yuck is weaponized catchiness, a compelling music-box with the depth to match its surface, seeking out a wider audience like a missile with inexhaustible imagination to fuel its fiery surge.

One can’t help but compare Verrett’s trajectory to a certain generation of artists who arrived in the wake of the first great era in alternative music. Young punks and experimentalists who began to move away from their scenes’ growing esotericism and set their sights on infiltrating the charts via a “new wave” of subversive takes on pop concepts. As he continues to extend his reach, one hopes that he continues the work of those forebears, leading new listeners further down the rabbit hole.

Below, we get Verrett’s take on everything from Disney musicals to H.P Lovecraft to Kanye West, and how the connection between all three may one day unlock the secret to the perfect record.

What’s the first melody you remember hearing that made an impact on you?
I actually remember.There was this song from Aladdin, I think it was “One Jump Ahead,” one of the first songs in the film. There’s this melody in it, I remember it sticking out to me when I was just a baby—I thought it was so beautiful. That, and “A Whole New World,” that whole melody. I think my first love of music came from Disney movies because it was the first really composed music I was ever exposed to. As a kid, you watch those movies so many times that it’s just like an earworm, and it must do something to your musical brain. It’s funny to think about now, because I think I lean in to some of those melodic stylings a little bit when I write songs.

How did you get into the math rock genre originally?
It’s a really big Sacramento influence, actually. I didn’t really give that as much credit until recently. When we’d travel with my old band, The Speed of Sound in Seawater, people would say “Oh, you guys are from Sacramento, you must know Tera Melos and Hella.” Other people perceived this huge math rock scene here where everybody knew everyone else, but they were from a totally different generation of Sacramento musicians. We weren’t really aware of how much the trickle-down from their musical style affected us, because we had a little venue in Elk Grove, where bands like Dance Gavin Dance used to play. Just by nature of it being near Sacramento, there was a lot of pretty complex polyrhythmic stuff going around. It’s definitely something I still like, and I’m glad to have had that influence, but I was always more interested in the pop side of things. I’m glad to have expanded my influences a bit; more complex, guitar-driven stuff for a while. I think it served me well in the long run.

What led to your huge change of style toward pop/R&B in the last few years?
It was conscious. I think the goal was always to be really expansive. I don’t want it to sound like it’s one person, I want it to sound cinematic, kind of orchestral in a sense. It’s very visual, and I plot out different scenes when I’m making music. As I got into programming and sound design, I realized a guitar can only do so much. Now I can write woodwinds, I can write weird bass sounds that aren’t anything like real instruments, I can have more nuance. I don’t feel attached to any one compositional element.

I remember in high school, and it might have been just because of the time period when we were growing up, but I remember people saying “Oh, pop music is so shallow and stupid, it’s not substantial in any way.” So I gravitated toward indie rock— it felt more substantial. But now I feel like the pop that comes out is done with so much more intention, the production, the songwriting and the arrangements and instrumentation. I started listening to the latest Justin Timberlake album that came out around 2013, The 20/20 Experience, and I was like “Oh my god, this is so much more complex, production-wise, than most experimental stuff I’ve been listening to.” It was so much more impressive, and it was being done at such a higher level. I think that opened my eyes to this way bigger world that was out there.

Does it kind of feel like you’re infiltrating the pop genre?
Yeah, especially lyrically. I think there is something to be said about pop music being a little bit shallow in terms of the ideas that are explored. We don’t need more breakup songs that explore these ideas in ways that they’ve already been explored. So for me, I want to know what a pop song sounds like and what it’s about in 2017 and what does it feel like it needs to be about to push the envelope in the present and also age well? There’s so many love songs from say, 50 years ago, and you listen to them now, and the ideas that some of them explored seem really dated. And oftentimes, the main thing you find is that the music is really misogynistic or shallow. So I wonder, what does the male pop star need to sound like in 2017 to not sound ridiculous in 2027?

I think it’s a good time to be making music that’s accessible, because complexity-wise, the ante is being upped in pop. The chord choices people are making are so less standard and boring and cheesy. People are hitting emotional tones that are really cool and complex and feel more like the human experience. It’s like you have to now, which is great. It’s such a good move, it’s going to make everything so much better socially and artistically.

How was the “Be Afraid” video thought out?
I did the video with Giraffe Studios in L.A. It’s these two sisters, Nicki and Juliana Giraffe. The video was their idea—they definitely heard the potential for a circus theme in there. They wanted specifically to reference Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. They sent me a clip from it; I’ve never seen the movie, but there’s this one scene where a doll comes out of this box and does this cute choreographed dance. They wanted it to feel kinda like that combined with an old Nosferatu-style horror movie—very harshly lit, very wide and surreal. I thought it was perfect. I felt like they did a really good job putting the song into a visual medium.

There seems to be a big supernatural underpinning to your songs.
That’s definitely something I’ve done a ton of throughout all my projects. I think it just has to do with my own interest in fantasy and horror. I’m a huge H.P Lovecraft fan. There weren’t many avenues to explore that in this record, but in my old band, I think I had around four songs about Lovecraft. That, and I’ve written like two songs about Buffy. Horror is my favorite genre ever. The sense of scale and drama, a cinematic feeling, is something I’m chasing. It sometimes feels like I’d rather be making movies if I had the means, but this is sort of like the next best thing. Budget-wise, you can make a song feel huge for a lot less money than you can with a feature-length film, or even a short film.

You tackle the ego a lot in your lyrics. What does it mean to you?
Yeah, it’s a running theme. I think it has a lot to do with just writing pop music, which is like this super egotistical pursuit. It kind of necessitates being that person and being so macho and so about your own brand, and it’s something I don’t really identify with. So I feel there’s a way to speak about those things that rings truer to me, and that’s how it comes out. Where I see the holes in that ideology. You can’t be so about your own being and also be a good person contributing to society on the whole in a positive way.

A lot of Oh, Yuck is in my own head, my own ego. That’s why the album art is of me at the bottom of a well, because that’s what I felt like while writing these songs. I was super isolated, just me, writing these songs. I imagine that that’s where I’m performing all of the songs for no one, and nobody is hearing them—none of them are getting out of the well. It’s like a jab at myself. Maybe that’s actually the reality of what it is, but then again maybe it’s good for me to be down there in that well, doing it for myself.

What are your biggest musical influences?
The main one always is Joanna Newsom. I’m a huge Joanna Newsom fan. I think she creates a world with every one of her releases. It’s like when you’re watching a movie, and you forget that everyone’s an actor, that’s what her music is like. You forget that there’s anything outside of those songs, or that anyone has written any songs other than Joanna Newsom. I’d love to someday write a pop record that people feel like they can’t talk over. Like, you never put on Joanna Newsom at a party and just have a conversation over it. It sucks you in. I love Prefab Sprout. I was listening to them so much while writing this record, because the complexity of their arrangements and their chord voicings. I think if they had never existed and they came out today, people would go crazy for it, it’s still next-level.

And also, maybe it’s obvious, but Kanye West. I was listening to him a lot because when I was writing this, I felt very isolated. I’d just graduated and moved back in with my folks, wasn’t really doing anything and listening to earlier Kanye stuff. There I was, wanting to do this thing that was so lofty and ambitious, but having such humble surroundings, and kind of impotent about my ability to direct my own life.

You’ve said that you like to think of your songs as plays while writing them. Would you ever do a concept album?
I’d really like to weave a story into the next one, because that’s what I used to do with every Speed of Sound in Seawater song. They were almost all stories. It felt more appropriate to do the more introspective thing for my first pop-style record, but I think that the next time, even it’s not explicit, I’d like to make the songs more connected. I think it would be a huge challenge that would be a lot of fun.

And I have a lot of material already, and it feels like it’s all a part of its own world more so than Oh, Yuck did. On this album, it feels like a lot of things change and shift. For the next one, I’d want everything to be in one environment.

So Much Light’s new album, “Oh, Yuck,” is out Aug. 11, 2017 on Anti Records. Catch So Much Light locally in Sacramento on Saturday, Aug. 26, at The Red Museum’s Red Ex: Vol. 1 event alongside No Age, Ganglians, Hobo Johnson, Dog Rifle, Young Aundee (w/ Dusty Brown) and many others. There will also be live comedy, food, drinks and more. For info on that event, visit the FB event page. For more on So Much Light, visit Somuchlight.com.

**The interview above first appeared in print on pages 18 – 19 of issue #245 (July 31 – Aug. 14, 2017)**

The Speed of Sound in Seawater is Ready to Take the Next Step

Words by Andrew Scoggins • Photo by Phill Mamula

Sacramento produces some odd bands. From the barbaric yawps of industrial-rap duo Death Grips to the hedonistic dance-rock in short shorts of !!!, Sacramento has never had a concrete “scene” in the usual sense. Sure, there were a few smatterings of crust punk and that unfortunate period in the mid-‘00s where it seemed you couldn’t go to a venue without hearing Christian hardcore, but no one genre has ever truly dominated the scene. So it makes sense that math-rock band The Speed of Sound in Seawater would spring through the cracks in the concrete and onto the national stage. The Speed of Sound in Seawater is alternately geeky and totally badass, and it’s this awkward dichotomy that makes them so interesting and, well, completely endearing.

Everyone in the band looks like the quintessential laidback 20-something college student, which makes sense because two-thirds of the band is still going to school between tours. Damien Verrett just graduated from UC Davis with a degree in technicultural studies, bassist Luke Ulrici is currently studying microbiology and drummer Fernando Oliva is studying architectural design. These aren’t the easiest majors but it makes sense to have smart guys in a math-rock band.

On a recent visit to the band’s practice space (guitarist Damien Verrett’s parents’ house in deep Elk Grove suburbia), the living room is crowded with amps and instruments. The guys pick them up, and, after fiddling with a Mariah carey sample, Verrett looks over to Oliva, who counts off. And the band just goes.

The first thing you’re struck by is the technicality of the music and how seamless the transition is from their recorded songs. The beats are crisp, the melodies are spot-on and the band simply motors like it’s another day at the office. It’s like it’s not a big deal that Verrett is shredding with the frenetic energy of The Fall of Troy or that Oliva is beating every inch of his minimalistic kit to create the thundering, jittering rhythms that hold the intricate workings of the song together. But in between the complexities and musicality you find yourself humming along to the fat, glimmering pop hooks in songs like “Lots of Love for Logan,” and “The Oddest Sea.” Verrett’s crystal-clear voice brings comparisons to Circa Survive’s Anthony Green or even to some more pop-y indie acts like Freelance Whales or even Ben Gibbard. All these disparate elements blend and shift, and work in a way that doesn’t quite make sense, but is incredibly intriguing. And that’s The Speed of Sound in Seawater’s charm. The band is utterly without pretension, they’re simply really good friends who make really, really good music.

The Speed of Sound in Seawater is a band that readily rejects most, if not all of the typical rockstar clichés. There’s no band drama, the guys don’t party (“I’ll drink a little bit but then we have to get up and drive for 13 hours, so I can’t really drink that much,” Verrett said). They don’t have groupies (“It’s really just a lot of like really young girls and some old creepy guys, which is kind of disturbing,” Oliva said). They just come together and rock their balls off. And that is exactly what they did when they came together in August to record their first proper LP in Seattle, First Contact.

“In this one we just participated a lot more in the songwriting process together. Before it was just Damien who’d come and be like, ‘Hey check out this sweet riff bro,’ and then I’d be like, ‘Check out this lick bro,’ and then it’d be like, ‘You wanna put it together bro?’ and then we’d high five.” Oliva said with a laugh.

“I just wanted it to be really polished, really clean where you still have that verse-chorus structure but with some different elements thrown in to keep it interesting,” Verrett said.

This marks a departure from the band’s previous, admittedly brotastic, method of simply jamming out songs until they worked.

“Before, we would really just kind of feel out the songs and the time changes on the fly. It was super stressful,” Oliva said.

“It’s like one time it’ll be really good and the rest of the time it’s just going to be awful,” Ulrici said.

But this change to a more structured approach has not been without its detractors. The band has gotten a few calls from their “fans” to return to their older, more chaotic style that was present when they released their first two EP’s, Blue Version and Red Version, four years ago.

“It’s like you spend hard-earned money, you work for hours and hours writing and practicing, and then you go to a really nice studio to put out the best thing you possibly can. And then some stupid idiot on the Internet just goes, ‘well, it’s not as good as that one song you wrote in two hours and recorded in your fuckin’ bedroom.’ It’s just frustrating,” Oliva said.

But these small hiccups seem to just be growing pains for a band that is attempting to plan a national tour for the summer.

“I think every band goes through something similar,” Verrett said. “We’re just growing up I guess.”
“It’s just about writing good songs and good melodies. It’s about musicianship rather than just being like world’s best fucking drummer!” Oliva said.

The new approach seems to have paid off as First Contact is easily the band’s catchiest and most polished record to date. The technicality of the math-rock element of the band is still preserved in songs like “Soulmate 2.1” and “Anyanka,” but these sections are interspersed with hooky vocal melodies that give the tracks some breathing room. Instead of unhinged, frenetic jamming, the songs feel like songs. The dynamics build, ebb and flow. One of the highlights of the album, “The Macabray,” even takes a few interludes with violins, accordions and clarinets to build and layer the song brilliantly. It is in these instances where the technicality is honed to a heartbreaking point, that the band’s gift for writing simply beautiful music shines through.

This is not to say that The Speed of Sound in Seawater has given up the immediacy that made their early works so enduring in the eyes of their fans. The stomping payoff to “Apples to Apples, Dust to Dust” is as great a crescendo as the band has ever written. And if that isn’t enough, the band still uses their prog-y, rowdy shout-along “Hot and Bothered by Space” as a bombastic live finale.

Overall, The Speed of Sound in Seawater is simply a brilliantly talented band that somehow manages to stay humble even at the onset of their wider success.

“Honestly I get more excited to meet the fans than they are to meet me,” said Oliva, “I still get stoked when we’re hanging out in a parking lot in Oklahoma or something and somebody comes up to me and goes, ‘I drove six hours to see you guys and you fucking killed it!’”

“It’s like someone will get a tattoo and I’ll be like ‘Let me take a picture so I can show my mom!’” Verett said with a laugh.

The Speed of Sound in Seawater is still a young, growing band but look to see these guys blow up in a big way. Sacramento is lucky to have them, for at least a little while longer.

Start the New Year off right with The Speed of Sound in Seawater when they play what is sure to be a must-see show at Luigi’s Fungarden in Sacramento on Jan. 2, 2014. It will be the first show of the band’s Unsinkable Tour, so be sure to send them off properly. Feed Me Jack and Paper Pistols will also perform.

The Speed of Sound in Seawater Are Out For A Good Time

There’s been a lot of crazy shit happening around the world lately–maybe you’ve noticed? Earthquakes, tornadoes, Osama bin Laden’s death, all this nonsense about the Rapture! It can be overwhelming and downright depressing at times to turn on the news or read the newspaper, or, let’s face it, stare at your Facebook feed. For these reasons and so many others, it’s important to have creative outlets in life where you can simply have fun and get your mind off things. The members of local indie-pop-meets-math-rock band The Speed of Sound in Seawater know just this. “If we ever stopped having fun, we would stop making new music,” admitted lead vocalist and guitarist Damien Verrett during a recent conversation in a midtown coffee shop. “That definitely is key.” Fellow six-stringer Jordan Seavers (who also sings) agreed with that notion. “Obviously the music is important,” Seavers said. “But we’re not so much like, ‘We’ve got to make it as a band!’ We just have fun playing music.”

The theory of “having fun” makes its way into every aspect of the band: song titles, album titles, even their promo photos–one of which sees the four young gentlemen dangling their feet in a swimming pool while sporting pink bath robes. “There are so many stupid little inside jokes on the new EP,” said Verrett, referring to the group’s latest offering, a five-track EP released on April 27, 2011 titled Underwater Tell Each Other Secrets. “Lyrically, in titles, so much of it,” he said. “Even the name of the album, it’s just this stupid inside joke. It’s something Fernando [Oliva, drums, vocals] said like maybe three years ago. We were all swimming in the pool and he comes up and whispers to me, ‘Do you want to play underwater tell each other secrets?’” He laughed and continued, “I just thought it was the funniest thing ever, and we remembered it. When it came time to name the new EP we were like, ‘Let’s call it Underwater Tell Each Other Secrets.’”

“We’re all pretty goofy,” Seavers butted in. “We like to entertain other people but we like to entertain ourselves at the same time and just be goofs.”

All jokes and goofiness aside, The Speed of Sound in Seawater are a really talented band, and Underwater Tell Each Other Secrets showcases their ability to blend technically advanced playing (i.e.: a flurry of finger tapping, complicated hammer-on riffs, shifting time signatures and rhythms, etc.) with an undeniable knack for writing pop-y, memorable melodies. When listening to their songs, it’s difficult not to think of one the genre’s pioneers, Minus the Bear. Verrett recalls when he first heard the Seattle-based group. “I remember just finding them randomly on some forum and someone was calling it ‘math-rock,’ and I was, ‘What the hell is that? I’ve never heard of that.’ Then I listened to it and I was like, ‘Well, that’s exactly what it is.’” Verrett went on to explain how he thinks Sacramento natives Tera Melos and Hella are good examples of bands at one end of the math-rock spectrum as far as being “way out there and not as accessible,” and that groups like This Town Needs Guns and Maps and Atlases are at the other end of the spectrum and are becoming “indie sensations who have songs in commercials and stuff.” He went on to say, “I didn’t really know if those two sects of math-rock were aware of each other, but I feel like we’re more leaning toward the pop-y side. I like that about us.”

For Underwater… TSOSIS enlisted Robert Cheek as producer/mixer/engineer and from March 11 to 13 they worked out of The Hangar, arguably one of Sacramento’s most credible recording studios, where they did all the takes live. Seavers and Verrett both agreed that it was a sonic match made in heaven. “I was actually thinking about this last night,” Verrett said. “Just how many records he’s produced and engineered that I’m a huge fan of. There’s got to be like six or seven that are just some of my favorites.” He goes down the line: Tera Melos, RX Bandits, Mister Metaphor; all bands that TSOSIS share qualities with. “It just fit so well,” Verrett said of the pairing with Cheek. “He’s from here, he records all the music we love, he’s really experienced in the genre. He just got us instantly.”

For months leading up to The Hangar recording sessions, the band practiced full-on dress rehearsal style, setting up microphones around them and demo-ing their songs in the living room of the house in Elk Grove in which Verrett grew up. “We actually share the same practice space as Damien’s dad does,” Seavers joked, referring to Verrett’s father’s R&B cover band formerly known as The Detours.

“Once my mom gets home we have to play a little quieter,” Verrett joked. “I really don’t like having to quiet down, these guys are always like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry Mrs. Verrett, we’ll turn it down,’ and I’m always like, ‘No guys, we don’t have to do that!’ It’s really funny, that has to have influenced our music in some way.”

This is a fair assessment, considering TSOSIS rarely use distortion on their guitars, giving their music somewhat of a shimmer and an overall easier-to-listen-to vibe than bands with heavily distorted guitars constantly blasting. “Damien and I both really like jazzy tones and stuff like that,” Seavers said. Verrett jumped in, “And all the distorted parts hit so much harder when they’re so infrequent, you know? If there’s hardly any distortion, you really notice.” Their songs are consciously “loose,” too. Frequently, the skilled musicians will slip in and out of one part into another, sometimes perfectly in sync, sometimes not, giving their recordings an organic feel. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Man we sound really sloppy, we need to clean it up,’” Seavers admitted. “But then sometimes I’m listening to another band and I’m like, ‘It’s so cool they’re sloppy, I want to play like that.’ It sounds a little more fun when people are sloppy.”

With a new EP freshly tucked under their belts, along with two others (2009’s Blue Version and 2010’s Red Version), TSOSIS has a plethora of songs to pull from when they tour throughout California this summer. “It’s odd that we’re at the point where people are like, ‘Oh your first EP is the best one!’” Verrett joked as our conversation was coming to an end. “It’s like, ‘Are you kidding? That was like $200 and we made it in like eight hours, and you think that’s the best? We just dropped a lot more on this one; you better think it’s the best.’”

The Speed of Sound in Seawater will play at Luigi’s Fungarden on Friday, June 17 alongside Town Hall, The Relatives and The Dreaded Diamond. Show starts at 8 p.m., is $5 and all ages are welcome. TSOSIS will welcome back their former bassist Lucas Ulrici for this show and a number of other performances this summer, as their current bassist Michael Littlefield will be busy recording with his other band, A Lot Like Birds. To learn more about TSOSIS and to stream or download tracks off all three of their EPs, visit Thespeedofsoundinseawater.bandcamp.com.