Call it avant garage or electrospazz, or just call it shit. The Lost Sounds don't care. In their four years together they've been too busy with near-constant touring--and releasing four albums and numerous singles--to engage in the genre battles that infest the music world. With a drunk punk past, they're lifers who are taking things a bit more seriously while still shredding nerves and ears with a truly spooked violence not found in your average white belt's indie band. They've created one of the most forward-peering sounds of any modern guitar-based band, pushing idiosyncratic attitude in a world that prefers the familiar. So it's been either utter indifference or abject praise coming their way, little middle ground, less moola, and a guaranteed contract to be one of those "influential bands," a contract locked away wherever they hide those things for future generations, unable to be traded in today. Yet on they trudge as that doomed honest entity--the band that just doesn't fit.
Singer/guitarist/keyboardist Jay Lindsey served time in the Reatards, a band of destructive snots who released a few slabs of raw garage punk in the late '90s and spent their live shows slicing themselves and their audience members with shards of the empty beer bottles. But when it hits that music is more than a lifestyle, the adage "It's all fun 'til someone loses an eye" holds up, and what was once shocking becomes boring. As Lindsey explains, "With the Lost Sounds, instead of just physical violence, I decided to try to make the music itself more violent and challenging. I hate to use the word 'artist' because there's this pretentiousness they want to peg you with if you say that. But if you stick with this and work on your art, that's what you are, an artist. That cutting yourself up stuff becomes like pro wrestling."
The Lost Sounds have shown a way out of the garage-shock confines into a new place of neo-nuclear panic splashed like hydrochloric acid over beat-up analog keyboards, girl/guy screeching like the B-52's slurping Drano, jutting rhythms, the fiercest remnants of punk's teen flailing, and some hot flashes of metal flourish. "Mainly it's just the screaming guitars and the fast drumming of good metal that becomes like a melodic drone," says singer/keyboardist/guitarist Alicja Trout. "We're integrating two guitars more, and as we've done that, the keyboards seem a little restrictive."
So the Lost Sounds are already moving past the keyboard-centered new New Wave thing they can get lumped into. Not that that crowd embraces them either. "When we toured out West," says Lindsey, "we'd play with these West Coast art-damaged bands, and their audience thought we were too rock, or we didn't have the right clothes or whatever. Then we played with the Dirtbombs, and their fans think we're too weird and have keyboards. There are new bands we feel are doing a similar thing, like the Piranhas or Clone Defects. But I always feel like we have so many sounds going on that we just don't fit in."
Trout concedes it's not always fun trying to stretch beyond the capitalist grip with their forward-facing rock. "Yeah, sometimes it gets tough because in our society money is considered the only reward, so it steers you into that direction, like you're only as good as what you got paid last night," she says. "But then I think we're still accessible, and we'd all like to make a living at something concerning music. Anyway, I'm not going to get bitter about it anytime soon... we're having fun."
Lindsey adds, "I look at the world around us and I wonder why I can't write something nice." Well, some of their lyrics, wrought with demonizations of crumbling, technology-enslaved culture and monstrous graveyard visitations of creatures like a frazzled, speed-eating, Clockwork Orange-style cop, might seem quite lovely to a struggling future-shock sci-fi writer. "I never write about girlfriend/boyfriend stuff," Lindsey says of his decision to stray from the norm. "You look at the state of the world, even just watching the news, and it's like, 'Who cares about your girlfriend!' Even lots of so-called 'edgy' bands that are supposed to be so wild or whatever, and they're up there whining about the same old relationship shit. To me that's pop music, it's the easiest way to get someone to relate to you. I don't know, it all feels like high school to me. I quit school when I was in the eighth grade because I wanted to be in a band."
In all the spastic caterwaul of the Lost Sounds' sound, surprisingly catchy tunes sneak in. Tack that on to the smart determination and Devil-may-give-a-hoot attitude, and these Sounds may just be found out about yet.
