Knesset, a Phoenix-based indie rock band, recently returned from a tour of Japan in promotion of its debut album Coming of Age.
Coming of Age was released on & Records just over a year ago in Japan and is also available for digital download through Bandcamp.
According to vocalist Evan Fox, the album has sold well for a music release of its stature, recouping costs of recording and production.
The tour was also a success, with the band playing sold-out shows.
The band experienced more culture thrill than culture shock in Japan, which Fox said “makes America look like a third-world country.”
He enthusiastically recounted bizarre episodes from the trip: staying up late in a karaoke bar, riding out a 4.8 earthquake, watching Samurai soap operas, eating squid jerky and experiencing the technologically advanced wonder of Japanese toilets.
Amid such cultural non sequiturs, Fox found an underground scene hungry for American rock music that contrasts with the relative lack of demand he has seen in Phoenix.
“There is definitely a lot of talent here,” he said. “But the way Arizona’s geographically laid out, it’s really difficult to have this cohesive, local pride.” However, Fox did pinpoint his favorite venues as Phoenix’s Crescent Ballroom and Rhythm Room.
Coming of Age is surprisingly polished for a debut, a gem of the contemporary dream-pop genre. Where many of its contemporaries drown themselves in indistinct guitar haze, Knesset carves out shimmering, crystalline songs.
According to Fox, who is not only the band’s vocalist but also its guitarist and principal songwriter, the album’s title is appropriate given the band’s style and musical maturation.
“I thought the record had this nostalgic sound to it,” Fox said. “When we recorded that stuff, I was really proud and thought it was some of my better material.”
Fox drew inspiration from shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain, whose trademark was catchy pop melodies under walls of distorted noise. But for inspiration on slower, acoustic-driven songs, Fox turns to the pristine melancholy of indie band Sparklehorse.
Much of the unique sound can be credited to Texas-based producer John Congleton, who has worked with Modest Mouse, Explosions in the Sky, St. Vincent and innumerable others. But Congleton’s production only underscores Fox’s strong melodic sensibility and the band’s forceful performance.
For the band’s next release, an EP due in May, Fox wants to turn away from the jam-oriented songwriting that was dominant on Coming of Age, in order to spend more time individually crafting songs.
“(Coming of Age) is almost like a band playing a set; it’s just song after song,” Fox said. “The new stuff gives me the opportunity to completely decide how to make it sound really interesting. I think it can be much easier to do that by myself in my room with my computer and all my keyboards. There’s a great element to the spontaneity of jamming, but I want to take a different approach this time.”
Fox says he has 30 or 40 ideas for new songs. The likely centerpiece of the new EP will be “Color Schemes,” a song Fox says is “about how, if I had a paintbrush, and I painted a picture, I could physically control exactly what I wanted the picture to look like — the picture being my life.”
Closer on the horizon than the EP and an even more tentative sophomore album, Knesset are set to perform at monOrchid at the March First Friday with Black Carl and Wooden Indian.
Contact the reporter at bkutzler@asu.edu
