There was that red haired no shoes drummer again… I knew he looked familiar! Turns out SYSC’s AJ Tartol was filling in for Greyhaven‘s drummer. Just another example of the fellowship between bands on this tour. I noticed that both SYSC’s guitarists and their bassist were wearing these heavy boots and dress shoes while their drummer played barefoot. There’s not really any deep significance to this. I just found it humorous at the time while they tuned up their instruments and set the stage.
The lights dimmed, they returned to the stage, and then the band did this thing I’ve never really seen anyone do before. With their intro backing track building and drums coming in their bassist and guitarist started screaming into the mics doing what I can only describe as a bizarre combination of carnival barkers and shit talking. ‘Come on mother fuckers, get up, let’s do this! Is that all you got?!?’ Yelling all over each other SeeYouSpaceCowboy took the stage with a vengeance working up the crowd. It was unique, jarring, and a fitting prelude.
SYSC live performance is pure unhinged cathartic chaos at its finest. They utilize a wireless system like nothing I’ve ever seen as they all smash around the stage. Constantly switching places in an orgiastic frenzy. They seamlessly shift from song to song as lead vocalist Connie Sgarbossa yells out: ‘Dance time motherfuckers!’ Guitarist Ethan Sgarbossa screams, Connie does flying karate kicks, jumping off monitors, while Taylor Allen throws his bass into the air.
They also have four vocalists which they put to full effect. Especially on their new record Coup De Grâce which has an increased presence of clean vocals from guitarist Ethan Sgarbossa and bassist Taylor Allen. It becomes impossible to focus on any one thing as they shift between singers, styles, and melodies. Luckily I got a set list from their bassist or I honestly might not have been able to fully recall exactly what I had just bore witness to.
Looking at their set they played mostly older songs which allowed them to really highlight the new songs they chose to play; “Subtle Whispers to Take Your Breath Away”, “Lubricant Like Kerosene”, and “Chewing the Scenery”. Mostly the singles which makes sense given the album just came out the week before. They opened the set with the intro backing and clapping from “Respite For A Tragic Tale”. Played live this was an excellent opportunity for audience participation as we all clapped along in anticipation. In the music video the applause scene beautifully transitions from clapping into the drum intro of “Silhouettes in Motion.”
The music videos SYSC produced for Coup De Grâce are simply stunning. In an interview with Rock Sound, Connie expanded on the visual details on display:
‘This entire story is my thing. Every outfit that you see the band wearing is something I went out and found. Every shot in every video came from me running around and saying what was next. Being a creative director for other bands is my dream job, but doing it for my own was really nice, too. Knowing that this is what we were moving towards, this is what we wanted to happen. It was really motivating for me because this feels even more advanced than anything else we’ve done.’
“Lubricant Like Kerosene” is just a perfect live track. Dancy, fun, and carefree “Lubricant” emphasizes the hedonistic undertones of Coup De Grâce and cranks all that energy and sexual tension up to 11. Coup De Grâce is like a series of interconnecting scenes. In an interview with New Noise Magazine Connie talks about one of the main non-musical influences on songwriting for the album: ‘Song to song to song, the biggest influence was Frank Miller’s Sin City. Because all those books are different stories, some with interconnecting characters, some with entirely different characters, but they all take place in this city, and then that city becomes a character in itself. And that was something that we really wanted to emulate with connecting things in every song.’
They closed with “Chewing the Scenery” which was an exceptionally fitting choice as it was actually one of the first songs the band wrote for the new record. The song sort of opened the floodgates and gave the band permission to experiment with a heavily indie rock influenced sound. As Connie related in an interview with Good Noise Podcast: ‘We dove into this thing and how we could play around with these different influences that we were throwing in that we really hadn’t heard bands take from and how we could make it work. Lots of like staying in a cabin locked up together for a week or two weeks to write music and figure out how we were gonna do this. It was kind of a period of experimentation until we could lock things in.’
Again to Rock Sound, Connie elaborated on the freedom they embraced on the new record with a wide ranging mix of sounds:
‘Cowboy has always had this incessant need to change after every album. We need to imbue it with something different, and because I wanted to do something more ambitious, this was the right time to push forward in this way. If we’re going to do this, then we are going to commit. We will write an indie rock song. We will write lounge songs. There are still songs that have breakdowns, but there will also be driving bass and music to shake your ass to. It just has to be an extension of us. That’s the most important thing.’
Coup De Grâce by SeeYouSpaceCowboy was released April 19th on Pure Noise Records. For an even more in-depth look at the album be sure to check out our review.
