Monday, September 15, 2008

Common Anomaly

Originally published in Colorado Music Buzz, September 2008

It’s hard to tell if Nick LoFaro is joking when he lays out the pre-show ritual for his band, Common Anomaly.

The others laugh, but no one attempts to refute, so I let my guard down. “We don’t really try to drink any substances or drink or anything like that, but we all slap each other in the face before we go on stage,” LoFaro says, laughing.

This, they tell me, lounging in the parking lot behind the Aggie Theater, is just the typical brotherly love of the Common Anomaly family: Vocalist/guitarist LoFaro, synth keyboardist Ian Walsh, bassist Sean Joyce, and the true brothers of the pack, vocalist/guitarist/occasional violinist Paul Simmons and drummer Adam Simmons.

Listening to their style of catchy cruising garage rock, it’s not hard to imagine these five pelting one another till the energy is right.

But this isn’t screaming-mad music. The roots of Common Anomaly are actually set in the acoustics, beginning a year ago when LoFaro and the Simmons brothers first took their act to the stage.

“It was basically tailored to fit a small acoustic venue,” Adam noted. “A drum set would be a little too overpowering for that, so we did everything on a Jambe and acoustic guitars.”

The addition of Walsh “plugged our asses in”, as LoFaro describes, “to a huge sound scheme” and “a huge attitude and a lot more depth to a lot of our songs, which were originally very earthy at first”, while Joyce, who moved from Chicago to join the band in July, rounds it all out. While keeping a regular routine of shows in FoCo and Denver, these up-and-comers plan to start recording immediately at The Farm, a barn studio owned by FoCo musician Jonathan Alonzo.

The band says “family” is the term to describe the group’s chemistry, and expect it to be essential to churning out their debut album.

“(Family) gives you the opportunity to tell each other when we’re off or when we suck, or when we’re doing really well,” LoFaro says. “It’s flat honesty, hard love and good s#!t.”

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