Surrogate

On the second full-length album for what is sure to go down as one of the most underrated bands to ever grace Tooth and Nail's roster, Surrogate open their folk-laden knapsacks of diversity wide and let loose. The result? Quite possibly T&N's release of the year, and there's not a breakdown or pop-punk guitars to be found. The album, titled Popular Mechanics, sounds like a logical progression from debut Love Is For The Rich, but more importantly, it sounds oh so good.

There's a lot of ear candy to be found on here. "Cynicism" opens with plucked strings but climbs upward in melody and becomes a beautiful alternative tune by the chorus. "Love Is for T=the Rich" and "Whiskey (Vomiting Words)" both draw from Neutral Milk Hotel in instrumentation, with the former finding inspiration in horns and the latter learning from NMH-style strumming. "State of Jefferson" is nearly pop-rock in approach, focusing on what seems like the negatives of the oft-praised state of California in its opening lines: "I like the way California smells / Before a natural disaster / You can always tell when a fire's coming." Yet perhaps the most interesting is the dainty "Water Tower," a soft folk song laid over a Scott Joplin-esque piano line. Suprisingly, the combination just manages to work, creating the most curious and captivating number on the disc.

Nevertheless, it's also a good thing Surrogate hasn't forgotten their roots; the pure folk ditties are still here. "Suprise" has the typical folk wit firing at full power right from the start. "Suprise, suprise / Don't stay too late, don't make mistakes / You can take what you want as long as it isn't mine," warns the band with smart-aleck sarcasm over calm guitars. "Popular Mechanics" has the vocal melodies getting all sweet and pretty, and "The Devil Gets What He Wants (Sometimes)" is a beautiful reinterpreation of Sufjan Stevens. Sometimes, nothing beats the simplicity of a competent voice and some lethargic guitars.

So when are Surrogate at their best? I mean, there's even a track where they get fast and loud ("A Constitution"), so which is the real Surrogate? Popular Mechanics seems to say that the band is all three: diverse, stripped-down and noisy, because despite the seemingly ADD record the album looks like on paper, it still flows like a complete album. I can't recall a single time when I was frusturated at an alleged lack of cohesiveness; every branch into new territory is done in good taste and does nothing but boost the album's lasting value. Let's face it, there's a lot here to pick out and enjoy.

As for Tooth and Nail, one of the biggest blunders they made this year is not properly promoting this. There are thousands of potential fans with ears waiting to be graced by this success. The mistake is to ignore those ears. But really, when all is said and done, Surrogate deserves all the attention they can get. Popular Mechanics is a quiet triumph. - Absolutepunk.net

I just recently had an interview with Daniel, from the band Surrogate. They talked about releasing the new Diamonds and Pearls EP, fun concert stories, the band’s future, and more. Check out the interview below.


LitS: First of all, how are you guys doing?
Surrogate: Good; busy. When we’re not doing this whole band thing, we all work, go to school, some of us are married and have families. All that real life stuff. So there’s definitely not a lot of down time.
LitS: How did you guys all meet?

Surrogate: We all live in Chico, which is a small college town in Northern California, and we basically knew each other from just being in bands and playing shows together over the years. Chris Keene and Jordan used to play in a band called Number One Gun, and when that band parted ways, they started working on some music together and started playing around Chico with Daniel Martin on keys and a couple of our other friends, Trevor, who was also in Number One Gun on bass, and Chris Armstrong who was in a band called Sherwood on guitar. This was 2006 or so. When Trevor had to split to go out on tour with another band, I took over on bass, in the early part of 2007, a couple months before Love is For the Rich came out. Michael took over for Chris A. right before the next record, Popular Mechanics came out in 2009 and we’ve all been playing together ever since.

LitS: What genre would you guys consider yourselves to be and what bands influences your music?

Surrogate: I tend to tell people that Surrogate is a melodic indie pop band, which is something of a cop out, the usual platitudes. But it gets the point across. You can’t really say that youre an “indie” band anymore, because that really doesn’t mean anything. And “indie rock” at least to old folks like me sort of recalls bands like Fugazi or The Dismemberment Plan or bands that were more on the loud side. So melodic indie pop seems to work, at least in so far as it lets people know that we’re definitely not yelling, or playing crazy riffs, but we’re not Ke$ha or some overly tuned radio garbage.

We all have pretty disparate tastes in music, but the Surrogate sound, at least as much as you can call it a general “sound” would definitely seem to fit pretty squarely in that pantheon of post-shoegaze bands like Pedro the Lion, Starflyer 59, Rogue Wave or even Death Cab for Cutie. We’re all constantly trying to dig new music, though, so it’s sort of a constant evolution.

LitS: What’s your songwriting process like? What was the recording process like for the new EP? Was there much difference in recording as a full band?

Surrogate: The songwriting process is typically Chris coming up with awesome songs and all of us being super stoked to be in a band with an amazing songwriter. I’d highly recommend it. For the first couple records it was just Chris and Jordan hashing out the ideas in the studio, tracking the songs and then bringing them to the band to perform live. For the newest EP, however, Chris would bring his song ideas into practice, or just send around some rough ideas, and we would all work through them, adding and subtracting and sort of trying different thing, which sometimes took probably a lot longer than it otherwise would have, but in the end, seemed to help the songs find different identities than probably anyone would have thought initially. For example, the song “Settle Down” on the EP, was a song that we fucked around with for more than a year, which went through all sorts of different versions, fast, slow, midtempo, stripped down, loud, before we finally sort of gave up and just started tracking it and let it kind of come to life spontaneously. And now that song seems to be one of the songs people like most on the record.

LitS: After leaving label Tooth & Nail, what was it like to independently release Diamonds and Pearls?
Surrogate: It’s certainly been a learning experience. Trying to get our record posted to all the various digital outlets has been a lot more of a trying task than we had imagined, whereas before, it all kind of happened magically. But on the other hand, it’s been liberating to be able to do things without having to “clear it with the tower” so to speak. And besides having amazing distribution and the novelty of being part of a label that has released so many great records over the years by bands we all listened to, being on Tooth & Nail really ended up being sort of negative for us, in that it turned a lot of people away from ever listening to our music who probably would have dug it. It also promoted certain inferences about what our band might be all about or sound like, that were pretty far from the reality. It was definitely cool to be able to call your friends on release day and tell them to buy your CD in Best Buy, but ultimately being able to sort of choose our own adventure on this record has been a definite plus.
LitS: What’s the best part about playing shows? Any fun/interesting stories?
Surro - Lost in the Sound

I just recently had an interview with Daniel, from the band Surrogate. They talked about releasing the new Diamonds and Pearls EP, fun concert stories, the band’s future, and more. Check out the interview below.


LitS: First of all, how are you guys doing?
Surrogate: Good; busy. When we’re not doing this whole band thing, we all work, go to school, some of us are married and have families. All that real life stuff. So there’s definitely not a lot of down time.
LitS: How did you guys all meet?

Surrogate: We all live in Chico, which is a small college town in Northern California, and we basically knew each other from just being in bands and playing shows together over the years. Chris Keene and Jordan used to play in a band called Number One Gun, and when that band parted ways, they started working on some music together and started playing around Chico with Daniel Martin on keys and a couple of our other friends, Trevor, who was also in Number One Gun on bass, and Chris Armstrong who was in a band called Sherwood on guitar. This was 2006 or so. When Trevor had to split to go out on tour with another band, I took over on bass, in the early part of 2007, a couple months before Love is For the Rich came out. Michael took over for Chris A. right before the next record, Popular Mechanics came out in 2009 and we’ve all been playing together ever since.

LitS: What genre would you guys consider yourselves to be and what bands influences your music?

Surrogate: I tend to tell people that Surrogate is a melodic indie pop band, which is something of a cop out, the usual platitudes. But it gets the point across. You can’t really say that youre an “indie” band anymore, because that really doesn’t mean anything. And “indie rock” at least to old folks like me sort of recalls bands like Fugazi or The Dismemberment Plan or bands that were more on the loud side. So melodic indie pop seems to work, at least in so far as it lets people know that we’re definitely not yelling, or playing crazy riffs, but we’re not Ke$ha or some overly tuned radio garbage.

We all have pretty disparate tastes in music, but the Surrogate sound, at least as much as you can call it a general “sound” would definitely seem to fit pretty squarely in that pantheon of post-shoegaze bands like Pedro the Lion, Starflyer 59, Rogue Wave or even Death Cab for Cutie. We’re all constantly trying to dig new music, though, so it’s sort of a constant evolution.

LitS: What’s your songwriting process like? What was the recording process like for the new EP? Was there much difference in recording as a full band?

Surrogate: The songwriting process is typically Chris coming up with awesome songs and all of us being super stoked to be in a band with an amazing songwriter. I’d highly recommend it. For the first couple records it was just Chris and Jordan hashing out the ideas in the studio, tracking the songs and then bringing them to the band to perform live. For the newest EP, however, Chris would bring his song ideas into practice, or just send around some rough ideas, and we would all work through them, adding and subtracting and sort of trying different thing, which sometimes took probably a lot longer than it otherwise would have, but in the end, seemed to help the songs find different identities than probably anyone would have thought initially. For example, the song “Settle Down” on the EP, was a song that we fucked around with for more than a year, which went through all sorts of different versions, fast, slow, midtempo, stripped down, loud, before we finally sort of gave up and just started tracking it and let it kind of come to life spontaneously. And now that song seems to be one of the songs people like most on the record.

LitS: After leaving label Tooth & Nail, what was it like to independently release Diamonds and Pearls?
Surrogate: It’s certainly been a learning experience. Trying to get our record posted to all the various digital outlets has been a lot more of a trying task than we had imagined, whereas before, it all kind of happened magically. But on the other hand, it’s been liberating to be able to do things without having to “clear it with the tower” so to speak. And besides having amazing distribution and the novelty of being part of a label that has released so many great records over the years by bands we all listened to, being on Tooth & Nail really ended up being sort of negative for us, in that it turned a lot of people away from ever listening to our music who probably would have dug it. It also promoted certain inferences about what our band might be all about or sound like, that were pretty far from the reality. It was definitely cool to be able to call your friends on release day and tell them to buy your CD in Best Buy, but ultimately being able to sort of choose our own adventure on this record has been a definite plus.
LitS: What’s the best part about playing shows? Any fun/interesting stories?
Surro - Lost in the Sound

When writing wistful, quirky, indie-pop songs there’s definitely a most delicate balance to be struck between accessibility and interest. So simple to say, yet it’s fiendishly difficult to achieve the perfect balance; too accessible and the risk of dullness looms large, too quirky and you’re alienating everyone but the hipsters.

California’s Surrogate have, however, navigated this tightrope rather neatly. Their ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ EP is a collection of seven cleverly written, well-balanced pop songs.

First track ‘Pearls’ opens with a tone both measured and serious before taking an entirely more whimsical turn. It’s a neat little summation of the bands versatility and the breadth of their ideas.

‘Can’t Go Home’ captures the aforementioned wistfulness perfectly with its slow-strummed guitar while ‘Old Life’ and ‘Diamonds’ add a dose of energy and upbeat pop-rock sensibility to the proceedings.

There is happily no drop-off in quality across the seven songs. The gorgeous ‘Settle’ has a measure of programmed percussion sprinkled over its minimal verses before the more expansive chorus opens out beautifully into a memorable refrain. It’s a model that also describes appropriately affecting closer ‘Hope Alaska’, a simple verse setting the scene before the chorus pays off with interest.

Coming off the back of two previously released full-lengths, it is unsurprising to find an assured maturity in the band’s song writing. Happily, ‘Diamonds and Pearls’ is an excellent step forward, combining the erudition of their previous offerings with a more solid grasp on old-fashioned pop-hooks. It’s perfect summer listening.
- Alter the Press

After two full-length records on Tooth & Nail, the guys in Surrogate (both former members of Number One Gun) decided to expand to a full, four-member band and take things out on their own, self-releasing a new EP, Diamonds and Pearls. It is everything the former records were but better, full of even more moving music and lyrics as Surrogate pour their hearts out in every rock and roll minute of this indie-folk treasure.

These songs are decidedly heavy-hearted, even on the more upbeat tracks like “Old Life,” a snarky tune about having a heart attack and learning “rock and roll’s a young man’s game.” In fact, if I were to put together a playlist of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard, at least two from this release would have a good chance of making the cut: “Can’t Go Home” and “Hope Alaska.” The first is about a terrible break up with a girl and turning to constant alcohol abuse as a solution. At one point the verse sings, “Repetition takes the fun out of abusing substances, and we don’t have much fun around here.” The chorus is overflowing with emotion as it cries, “Gonna learn when all the bars are open, ‘cause I can hardly breathe when I’m alone. And I’ll drink away the memory, ‘cause I know that I can’t go home.” It breaks my heart every time I hear it, which is what I call unbelievably good songwriting. Things do lighten up for the soft and slow “Steal Your Blood,” a delicate love song about never being able to leave a certain girl with a big heart, but the album ends with my other saddest song, “Hope Alaska.” This country ballad sings of the humiliation of having to “pay my bills singing songs that someone else wrote, [because] no one round here gives a damn I write my own.” After identifying his cover band venue as a casino, it’s hard to tell if he’s serious when he says “gambling’s a sin,” but the point of the song is that he wants to get away to a place without all the brokenness, depravity, and monotony of everyday life.

Overall: Diamonds and Pearls is a record of longing. Longing for home. Longing for an end to the emptiness and heartache. Longing for, ultimately, the hope of the Resurrection. It is only hinted at in the language of poetry and metaphor, but like the prospector’s gold it is glimmering just beneath the surface, covered by all the messy mud and dirt of this earth. And there is plenty of gold to find in this record, but only if you’re willing to get your hands dirty by stepping into the harsh realities of human life. - Indie Vision Music

After two full-length records on Tooth & Nail, the guys in Surrogate (both former members of Number One Gun) decided to expand to a full, four-member band and take things out on their own, self-releasing a new EP, Diamonds and Pearls. It is everything the former records were but better, full of even more moving music and lyrics as Surrogate pour their hearts out in every rock and roll minute of this indie-folk treasure.

These songs are decidedly heavy-hearted, even on the more upbeat tracks like “Old Life,” a snarky tune about having a heart attack and learning “rock and roll’s a young man’s game.” In fact, if I were to put together a playlist of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard, at least two from this release would have a good chance of making the cut: “Can’t Go Home” and “Hope Alaska.” The first is about a terrible break up with a girl and turning to constant alcohol abuse as a solution. At one point the verse sings, “Repetition takes the fun out of abusing substances, and we don’t have much fun around here.” The chorus is overflowing with emotion as it cries, “Gonna learn when all the bars are open, ‘cause I can hardly breathe when I’m alone. And I’ll drink away the memory, ‘cause I know that I can’t go home.” It breaks my heart every time I hear it, which is what I call unbelievably good songwriting. Things do lighten up for the soft and slow “Steal Your Blood,” a delicate love song about never being able to leave a certain girl with a big heart, but the album ends with my other saddest song, “Hope Alaska.” This country ballad sings of the humiliation of having to “pay my bills singing songs that someone else wrote, [because] no one round here gives a damn I write my own.” After identifying his cover band venue as a casino, it’s hard to tell if he’s serious when he says “gambling’s a sin,” but the point of the song is that he wants to get away to a place without all the brokenness, depravity, and monotony of everyday life.

Overall: Diamonds and Pearls is a record of longing. Longing for home. Longing for an end to the emptiness and heartache. Longing for, ultimately, the hope of the Resurrection. It is only hinted at in the language of poetry and metaphor, but like the prospector’s gold it is glimmering just beneath the surface, covered by all the messy mud and dirt of this earth. And there is plenty of gold to find in this record, but only if you’re willing to get your hands dirty by stepping into the harsh realities of human life. - Indie Vision Music

A duo of singers and multi-instrumentalists Chris Keene and Jordan Mallory, both formerly of the alternative CCM act Number One Gun, the Surrogate are an entry into the post-Modest Mouse pop-minimalist wing of indie rock. Keene and Mallory leave a lot of space in the simple arrangements of these 12 songs. Even when the tuneful, almost alt country-ish "Talk of the Weather" adds a banjo and a piano to the mix, or when "Photographic Memory" rolls in on a shag rug of electric piano, fat bass, and tasty guitar licks sounding uncannily like a late-'70s single on the Asylum label, a sense of restraint and quietude reigns. In keeping with that aesthetic, the vocals tend towards whispery and wavering of pitch, and the lyrics are so devoid of specificity beyond a general sense of emo-tinged yearning that it seems inappropriate to call Love Is for the Rich a CCM release despite Keene and Mallory's background. Songs like "Death Penalty," with its immediately affecting chorus melody, and the delicate acoustic opener "Shift the Blame" would appeal not only to Starflyer 59 fans, but to the wider pool of Shins and Death Cab for Cutie followers. - All Music Guide

So we should do it while we can, to the best of our ability, and hopefully have something to look back on when we’re all real old timers and be proud of what we accomplished way back when.”

Chico, California’s Surrogate is one of UTG’s favorite lesser-known bands and we’re overjoyed to bring you this interview with the (now) four-piece indie rock outfit. Having just released their third full-length effort in a DIY fashion, Surrogate are taking some much deserved time to attend to their adult lives but the impressive offerings from Post-Heroic and their previous efforts are still in constant rotation for us and many other fans.

Bassist Daniel Taylor took some time to speak with us in depth about Surrogate’s new album, their wonderful hometown, and the pros and cons of now being a do-it-yourself band. Please read through the break and enjoy this exclusive Q&A with Surrogate.

It’s been 6 years since the band originally formed. Changes have occurred and we’ll get to those, but how would you say the band has grown over the years individually as musicians and together as Surrogate?
Especially on this new record, it feels like we’ve sort of found our groove, stylistically. Whereas before, we were sort of hunting and pecking, bringing in a little of this, a little of that, it feels like we’re pretty sure of what we are now, although we might not really be sure exactly what to call it. We still definitely dabble; we push the boundaries of what we do, within our sort of stylistic parameters. On this record, there’s some pretty heavy duty doomy-metal drums on one or two songs, there’s sort of a pseudo pop punk vibe on one song, there’s a spacey ambient Album Leaf/Mogwai post-rock song. But it feels like all of the songs sound like us, if that makes any sense. Which is I think at least partially due to just playing with one another for a number of years, playing shows, making records. I guess we feel really comfortable being ourselves now, as opposed to maybe subconsciously trying to be somebody else. I think that also comes with all over being a little bit older these days. I’m 32, which is like 62 in band years. So I think, at least for me personally and I’d imagine for some of the other guys, it’s become less about pleasing somebody else and more about making something that pleases ourselves.

Since leaving Tooth and Nail a couple years back, how has the experience of now being a DIY band affected you guys?
It’s been cool in the sense of we can sort of choose our own adventure; we’re free to operate on our own timelines, and do things when and how we want. We have a neat little studio here in Chico, and lucky for us, Chris is an amazing producer and engineer, so we don’t really need much in terms of someone else telling us what to do or how to do it, and we don’t really need anyone else’s money to get done what we need to get done, although that would certainly make it easier in some respects. But doing ourselves has sort of liberated us to sink or swim on our own, and it’s definitely reinforced that we’re doing what we’re doing for the right reasons, because we enjoy doing it, and not because there is some idea of pecuniary largess waiting at the end of a record cycle, or some potential for a grand payoff being dangled in front of us.

The downside of it though, is that it sort of marginalizes what you do, because there’s not the credibility of being on a label, or the push that a label gives you to help you breakthrough to press and blogs. So you kind of get lumped in with the unwashed masses of bedroom bands and high school garage bands, which is fine: there’s a lot of amazing music being made these days in bedrooms and by teenagers in garages. But in terms of trying to gain any sort of broad exposure for your band, especially when your band is just a bunch of late-20s/early-30s beardos, not having a label to hang your hat on makes it near impossible to really get anything cooking on the publicity side, in the absence of being able to spend the money to do it yourself. Overall, though, it’s been worth the downside to be able to just do what we do when we want to do it.

Post-Heroic just dropped this month and it’s a killer album. Can you explain the album title and the cover art in relation to its content?
Thanks man. The title was something that Chris heard on the radio one day, in a discussion about the state of modern warfare, about how with drones and computers and all the technology that the military uses in modern warfare, that we were entering a “post-heroic era,” which inspired the song of the same name and seemed like a good over-arching theme for the entire record.

The cover art was done by our friend Oliver Hutton, who is an amazing graphic designer. It was actually based on a painting he had purchased at an auction, called “The Great Conemaugh-Valley Disaster-Flood & Fire and Johnstown, PA, Friday May 31st 1889.” He thought, and we agreed, that it was a pretty fitting repr - Under the Gun Review

Although it was probably never intended as such, Surrogate's "15" provides a welcome and soothing mantra for those wary of a celebrity-crazed culture. "So forget about the money / and forget about yourself," lead singer Chris Keene repeats throughout the deliciously low-key song. "And forget about the calculated risk that never ends well."

The California duo — drummer Jordan Mallory on drums and singer/multi-instrumentalist Keene — crafts a sneaky arrangement on "15," from its debut album Love Is for the Rich. With its killer combination of familiar ingredients (keyboards, drums, hooky guitars), it sneaks up on the listener, slowly but surely. The rest of the disc follows suit, with tracks that range from banjo-laced folk to simple pop to indie-rock — think Pedro the Lion or Sebadoh — as well as straightforward songwriting and hummable melodies. Surrogate may warn about the perils of fame, but that's a problem the band may have to face head-on in the months to come. - NPR

Although it was probably never intended as such, Surrogate's "15" provides a welcome and soothing mantra for those wary of a celebrity-crazed culture. "So forget about the money / and forget about yourself," lead singer Chris Keene repeats throughout the deliciously low-key song. "And forget about the calculated risk that never ends well."

The California duo — drummer Jordan Mallory on drums and singer/multi-instrumentalist Keene — crafts a sneaky arrangement on "15," from its debut album Love Is for the Rich. With its killer combination of familiar ingredients (keyboards, drums, hooky guitars), it sneaks up on the listener, slowly but surely. The rest of the disc follows suit, with tracks that range from banjo-laced folk to simple pop to indie-rock — think Pedro the Lion or Sebadoh — as well as straightforward songwriting and hummable melodies. Surrogate may warn about the perils of fame, but that's a problem the band may have to face head-on in the months to come. - NPR