Music | Arts & Culture | The State House
| Zero Years' debut album dropped last month; the band has a show at The State House this Saturday. Album art by Lindy Terrell. Photo courtesy of Zero Years. |
It took Jed Calo more than ten years to realize he wanted to turn an idea into a band, and a band into an album. Then it took several more to get the right person on the drums. Now that it’s finally real, he’s already thinking about the next release.
Calo is one-fifth of Zero Years, a project that he started with fellow guitarist Jeff Anderson in 2005, and grew into a four-person band in 2015. Last month, the group released its debut album, No Commemoration, with recording and engineering help from Jon Connie and Steve Hill. They play a show at The State House this Saturday, on a bill with Joe Division and Dangerous Animals.
No Commemoration is a fuzzy, indie-tinged tour through 11 tracks, largely written over the past four years. Originally, Calo said, the inspiration came from old material that didn’t have a home, save a few rough demos on Soundcloud. In 2005, he and Anderson started playing together somewhere between his home of Bethlehem—“literally the most boring place in Connecticut"—and Anderson’s digs in Cheshire, where he still lives. The two remained friends, making work together under the name StarFlower Technology and ultimately finding jobs together at the same food distributor.
At some point, Calo said, they got more serious about writing new songs. They rented out a practice space in New Haven, to which Calo moved a few years ago. Then they decided to turn two friends who were making music into a band of four. They recruited Jim Van Campen, who is still their guitarist,Aaron Piccirillo on synths and organ and drummer Don Freeman (their drummer is now Jay Bates). The group’s name comes from its track “Zero Years,” the final song on the album. Calo estimated that about 70 percent of the album is new material, and 30 percent is a throwback to their earlier years.
The result has a sort of rough, do-it-yourself aesthetic that Calo has been calling “esoteric pop.” From the opening track, it is clear that the group is having a lot of fun, playing with how fuzzy and distorted they can make the vocals (there’s a little nod to Cake in there) before making them clear and succinct again. Certain tracks sound like they have two or three or even five years of musical evolution between them, because they do.
Like “Ten String” or “Degenerate Muse,” which cut in with intensely mellow and almost trance-like interludes. Or “R. Clown,” with the addition of tremulous synth that makes the listener feel like they’re at a revival meeting, and Dead Milkmen’s Dean Sabatino is trolling a little in the background. The album is at its best with these long sections of relatively short songs, where it’s easy to become hypnotized by the music.
The longer the listen, the easier it is to tease out Calo’s influences—Elvis Costello, Dog Bowl, Dead Milkmen and the solo work of Built To Spill’s Doug Martsch among others. Anderson’s are in there too, loud and clear—Guided by Voices, The Smiths, Pavement and more Built To Spill.
It’s about time for the release, Calo and Anderson joked in a recent interview at Three Sheets New Haven. Even after deciding to record, the process of making the album was plagued with stops and starts. Of a handful of drummers they auditioned before Freeman, one was disastrously bad. Another removed his shirt before playing—“it was hot, but still,” Calo said—and ordered the band to look at him while they played, without singing any of the lyrics. When they found Freeman, Calo recalled, a wave of relief washed over the group.
Now that they’ve finished the album, Calo said they’ve already started material for the next one. While the two wanted to keep the same kind of tone, Anderson said they’re expecting it to be “a little more dynamic,” with songs that have more room to breathe between lyrics and instrumentals. They are hoping for a shorter production time, with a two year turnaround.
“You don’t want to stew on your own, old songs,” Anderson said. “We’re just keeping it going.”
Zero Years is available on Bandcamp. The group performs at The State House, 310 State St. in New Haven, on Sat. March 9. For tickets and more information visit The State House's website.