Video by Sierra LaDuke
Celebration Guns, circa 2013, was little more than an unfledged band. Back then, the four-piece group dreamed of headlining Crescent Ballroom but were still leaning on GarageBand demos and past memberships in relatively successful bands to gain credibility in booking shows, while still receiving condescending or nonexistent responses.
While their early accomplishments were significant milestones for a new local band — lo-fi Rubber Brother Records EP “Quitter,” a couple splits and an EP that the band considers to be disastrous, “Bright Enough” — they didn’t showcase Celebration Guns to its maximum potential.
“We made some CDs of it and those are all gone now, so we’re happy moving on, forgetting that,” vocalist and guitarist Justin Weir said jokingly about “Bright Enough.”
What Celebration Guns is moving on to is a new EP, titled “The Me That Used To Be.” After two and a half years, the band will finally be complementing its high-quality live performances with a satisfying album — one that Weir calls their first real recording — in which close attention to detail in production pays off and delivers a balanced, polished product.
“People are able to hear what they experience with us live recorded with this new EP,” Weir said. “I can almost guarantee that nobody else has ever felt that way about anything else we’ve recorded, so I think this is really important for us to step up our game and put out something that’s a little more professional-sounding and show what we have to offer.”
The five-track album begins with four snarky tracks, effectively satirizing annoying customers, close-minded people and the flakes of their most successful single off the album, “The Volunteer.”
While creating a satirical song majority for the album was unintentional, the title track — “The Me That Used To Be” — creates a theme of nostalgia and playfulness for the album, bringing lyrics about connecting to one’s younger self and inspiring artwork that includes awkward childhood pictures. While Weir said he typically focuses on the music first, he said this track was more reflective and personal, which will allow fans to connect to its lyrics without losing the band’s signature noise.
“It’s a little bit more mature-sounding,” Weir said. “The lyrics are a lot better than what I usually come up with. I actually connected with it. When I’m writing songs, I’m usually thinking of other bands I listen to that write similar, snarky lyrics, but in this I totally came up with my own theme for it, so it’s more personal to me. It’s a different, but good, side of us that people might not be familiar with.”
The band’s development and escalating success is also evident when looking at its history of live performances. The regularity and size of their bookings has increased including a place on the Viva PHX 2016 lineup, alongside the likes of Crystal Castles and The Growlers.
On April 8, Celebration Guns can add a weekend EP release show at the Crescent Ballroom to their growingly impressive resume. There, the band will perform all five tracks off “The Me That Used To Be,” after performances by Twin Ponies, Sundressed and Flower Festival.
“We’ve spent a lot of time just playing any show we can get — weeknight shows and really small shows — just so we can get our name out there and have people see us,” said Ryan Miller, the band’s bassist. “To be in a position where we can have shows at Crescent and put out a record there, that just shows the contrast of where we were at within the scene within a year, maybe a year and a half, that we started versus today. It’s a pretty noticeable change.”
Following the big release show, the band’s calendar is not dying down. Appearances at ASU are scheduled to precede a small tour, which will include major city stops along the west coast. In addition, Celebration Guns will be busy working on its first LP for release in 2017.
These accumulating achievements are direct results of hard work. Weir said the DIY-style band personally prints flyers and posts them throughout the city. They put a strong effort into bringing people to shows. Their frequent outreach has built the needed fan base to create a self-sustaining band — a band with enough support to produce a new high-quality EP to attract new listeners to shows.
As the maturity of the band grows, expanding opportunities, Celebration Guns is determined to extend its longevity by continuously developing in quality, while maintaining the unique, signature sounds at its core. Even with a single listen to the album, “The Me That Used To Be” is a clear testament to the band’s efforts.
“It’s hard to find something that’s different, but still recognizable enough to say, ‘I really like that,’” Miller said. “I think we have some of that in there. Most of the time, when people give us a chance, if you like the genre, then you’ll probably like something about it. It has that wide berth to what tastes it satisfies.”
Contact the columnist at Emily.Liu@asu.edu
