Scene & Unheard Issue #36

Oakland

By Amy Westervelt
Published: June 1st, 2008 | 2:18pm

Cryptacize
LABEL: Asthmatic Kitty
PLAYERS: Nedelle Torrisi (vocals), Chris Cohen (vocals, guitar), Michael Carreira (percussion).
INFLUENCES: Musicals, classical, jazz; Ennio Morricone and different soundtrack composers. “I’m really into ’60s soul and girl groups,” says vocalist Nedelle Torrisi. “I get obsessed with their voices and try to learn something from their singing.”
SOUNDS LIKE: Rilo Kiley mixed with Belle and Sebastian and the New Pornographers with a sprinkle of Pirates of Penzanze for good measure.
THE LOWDOWN: Nedelle Torrisi was working on her solo career and Chris Cohen was playing with Deerhoof when they met up and collaborated in a band called the Curtains. The two eventually decided to start a new band from scratch, where they would share songwriting duties 50-50. They found drummer Carreira from a YouTube video and convinced him to join them in Oakland. “We try to think about what kind of music we would want to hear,” Torrisi says. “There’s lots that we wouldn’t want to hear, so we’re trying to make what we like the best.”

An Oakland resident for nearly eight years, Torrisi likes the grittiness of the city and the number of young artists working there, but says it’s a somewhat difficult place to make music. “It’s still so expensive and practice spaces are so expensive we can’t even find one right now — we’re practicing at home, and I think we’re bothering the neighbors. We’d like to play louder, but who can afford that?” If all goes well with the band’s current tour and next album, Cryptacize’s three members may just get to quit their day jobs to play loudly all day long, neighbors be damned.
URL: myspace.com/cryptacize

Xiu Xiu
LABEL: Kill Rock Stars
PLAYERS: Jamie Stewart (vocals, guitar), Caralee McElroy (vocals), Ches Smith (percussion), Devin Hoff (bass) Cory McCulloch (sometimes-member on synthesizer, bass)
INFLUENCES: Elliott Smith, Nina Simone, Radiohead. SOUNDS LIKE: Radiohead dancing to Joy Division at the graves of Elliott Smith and Nina Simone.
THE LOWDOWN: After playing in other bands for a couple of years, Jamie Stewart and sometimes-bassist Cory McCulloch formed Xiu Xiu in the hopes of starting a band that had honesty about life. Stewart’s cousin Caralee McElroy joined in 2004 on the Fabulous Muscles tour. McElroy gives props to fellow Oakland band Why? (coincidentally touring with Cryptacize at the moment) for their innovative, heartfelt music, and says she tends to prefer playing in small towns to big cities, even if the crowds are smaller. “People are super excited to see you because they don’t have much to do in their town. They really appreciate you,” she says.
URL: xiuxiu.org

xbxrx
LABEL: Polyvinyl
PLAYERS: Vice Cooler, Steve Touchton, Weasel Walter
INFLUENCES: “I think it’s safe to say that we are more influenced by what's happening around us, driven more creatively by our feelings than hearing a band and wanting to sound like them. I, however, have personally been modeling all of my new songs after ELO,” Cooler says.
SOUNDS LIKE: Boredoms, Blood Brothers, the Locust, peppered with spazzy bursts.
THE LOWDOWN: Decked out in shirts and ties, xbxrx play high-energy improvised punk shows that rarely last more than 15 minutes and leave audiences stoked, confused, or just plain angry but never bored.

Formed in Alabama in the ’90s, the band is more than happy to be living in Oakland now, although it’s an expensive place to be a poor musician. “On one hand, we have a consistent base of people who will come to see us play, but we are also not in any magazines or on any Web sites that seem to make up people's minds for them. It's sort of an advantage because the people who like us, like us, but on the other hand we are scraping by month to month,” Cooler says. Touchton adds, “I always say that even if the biggest housing crash ever happened and all of a sudden homes were half their value in Oakland, I still could not afford one. So that's the biggest challenge: the cost of living here.”
URL: xbxrx.com