Local band to release new EP this fall
The boys are back in town.
Benji McKay, a 2001 USC media arts graduate, and Tyler Cook, a 2006 USC history graduate, are bringing the sounds of their power-pop group, the Lovecrafts, to New Brookland Tavern tonight. The band shares the stage with Hollywood, a rock band from Swansea, S.C.
The Lovecrafts, who have been making music in some form since 2001, will release a new EP titled “Seriously?” later this fall.
The band features McKay on guitar, Cook on keyboards and saxophone, Lloyd Owens on bass and “Nilla” on drums. All four members take turns on vocals.
McKay and Cook both became interested in music through family members. McKay’s brother is a musician in Athens, Ga., and Cook, who played in the marching band while at USC, took piano lessons from his aunt in the fourth grade, though his real love of music blossomed in middle school.
“In the seventh grade, I started band,” Cook said. “The tenor sax just captured my imagination.”
Listeners often think of the Lovecrafts as a punk band because the group’s volume is high, but members say that’s not the case.
“Take Rick Springfield and turn him up to 27,” McKay said. “We’re a pop band that’s really loud.”
The new EP is called “Seriously?” in response to listeners who called the band’s previous album “stupid,” according to McKay.
“It’s a remarkable departure from the first album,” McKay said. “These are songs that people will mistake as being serious songs.”
Cook is a fan of all of the band’s new songs, but particularly enjoys playing “Dance Yourself to Hell” because “it’s most like our previous stuff ... like a rock disco song,” and “Micah (Scrawny White Girl),” which Cook said is “the only overtly comedic song on the album.”
“Our music, lyrically, has gotten a lot cleaner,” Cook said.
The Lovecrafts are changing musically, too.
“We’re going in more of a pop-rock direction,” Cook said.
The band is also at work on a self-produced documentary.
“We are filming pretty much more than you’d want to see,” McKay said. “Every time we get together, we have the cameras on.”
But McKay said the film doesn’t try to play out like a “Behind the Music” episode.
“It’s more than just about the band; it’s about the relationships between the four of us because we’re four remarkably different people, and you can relate to at least one of us,” McKay said.
Cook put together the band’s set list for tonight’s show and said it’s packed with tracks from the upcoming EP.
“I’m pretty sure I got all the new songs in there,” Cook said.
The band will be playing in the WUSC 90.5 FM studio sometime in early October and may play a “butchering Bowie” set of David Bowie covers on Halloween.
Cook also just won the People’s Choice Prize from the Artsville Songwriting Competition with his original track coincidentally titled “Contest Winner.”
“I guess it was a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Cook said.
The band’s New Brookland Tavern show starts at 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Tickets are $5 for patrons over 21 and $8 for the under-21 crowd.