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Weatherbox
Alternative Press - Tim Karan on 10/3/09 @ 6:52 PM - altpress.com
HQ: San Diego, CA
NOW PLAYING: The Cosmic Drama (Doghouse)
WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW 'EM: Weatherbox's knotty, post-stoner guitar-rock jams unravel in complex, algorithmic ways that only Brian Warren's warped mind can conjure, summoning the ghosts of indie-rock past.
YOU LIKE? YOU'LL LIKE: BRAID / CRITERIA / MODEST MOUSE
STORY: Brian Shultz
PHOTO: Chad Sengstock
Weatherbox's Brian Warren stopped getting high in the summer of 2008, a fact he revealed to AP in an interview last year for the Also Anticipated Albums Of 2009 online special. So it's a bit ironic he's having trouble remembering this admission. "Did I really mention that?" he asks, laughing. When pressed for a reason why he quit, Warren explains, "I stopped getting high because I got paranoid and didn't like it. I was definitely very addicted to it."
Throughout Warren's experimentation with marijuana and psilocybin "magic" mushrooms, he had several nervous breakdowns beginning in 2006. "I guess you can call it schizophrenia," he cautiously mentions. He's reluctant to elaborate further, nervously laughing about how this won't help deter comparisons to Say Anything's Max Bemis-which were rampant after the release of Weatherbox's debut, 2007's American Art. "[But] it's kind of clear to people that I'm crazy anyway, so who cares."
Quitting drugs to resolve these mental issues wasn't the first major transition in Warren's life. He found his musical tastes changing in 2004 as Mister Valentine, the "pretty abrasive indie-hardcore band" he was in, broke up. "When I heard Say Anything, it changed the way I was playing music," he says, characterizing that inspiration as pop music. But if American Art was pop, it certainly wasn't something Clear Channel would dish out payola for: The album was angular post-hardcore comprised of thorny riffs and quirkily catchy refrains, with Warren's honest, semi-nasal narratives about the discovery of youth. It wore its influences well (Say Anything, Cursive), yet produced a unique sound that landed the band tours with everyone from Cartel to Manchester Orchestra and Say Anything themselves.
"It takes a lot to go on tour," Warren says, "and some people can't really commit to it." Consequently, the same summer Warren swore off the drugs, the rest of the band quit, leaving Warren alone to reference the news as "THE COSMIC DRAMA" in his ensuing MySpace bulletin. "When bad things happen, I find more of a mystical overtone [to them]," he explains. "It was a shitty situation."
He spent the next few months working on The Cosmic Drama, receiving help from a few ex-Weatherbox members, Marc Deriso (drums) and George Pritzker (guitar), as well as bassist Jeff Striker (all three play in fellow San Diego band, Japandi). He also posted a few more MySpace bulletins, this time responses to news headlines in a heated political climate that were "freaking out" Warren, who thought John McCain would win the U.S. presidential election.
"I was just trying to do everything I could to get people thinking and talking about political issues," he says. "[But] I don't think [Barack Obama's election] changed anything, because a few days after he won, we fucking sent some missile into Pakistan. It's just the same, really."
Warren warns there aren't many overtly political statements on the digital/vinyl-only The Cosmic Drama ("I feel like CDs are at the very end of their existence as a product," he explains), but in its closing track, "No Hands," he spouts, "How dumb must it be for an entire country to back people like these/They're Blackwatering the lobby," referring to Xe, the private military contractor formerly known as Blackwater. "By not protesting the war in Iraq, we're saying it costs human lives to keep us comfortable [in America]. [It's] kind of the most flagrant, ridiculous American thing that we have a private company in another country. It just blows my mind."
That minor bit of political-fueled disturbance seems to fuel The Cosmic Drama. "[The album is] more of a personal thing," Warren says. "[But] it's affected me, so I guess it does affect the songs. The system that we have is for the benefit of us, but it's at the expense of the rest of the world."
UNDER THE INFLUENCE: WHICH ALBUM'S HAD THE MOST INFLUENCE ON YOU?
"I think that MODEST MOUSE's THE MOON & ANTARCTICA is my all-time, hands-down [favorite] record," gushes Brian Warren. "There's kind of a mystique about it [that's] pretty unexplainable and pretty amazing to me. [If you] think about Weatherbox, 'Modest Mouse meets At The Drive-In' [is] hopefully a close comparison."
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