"It's about this far short of being the Spinal Tap album cover."Pseudo Heroes guitarist/singer Sam Williams is poring over a proof of the cover for his band's next full-length at the New World Brewery, and he's a bit nonplussed. The photo is a good one, a barely recognizable rendering of bassist Kevin Coss' head stretched out like ethereal taffy. But the graphic is a bit small for Williams' taste, leaving most of the cover to be consumed by darkness — "none more black," as Nigel Tufnel once said of his fictional band's compromised artwork.
Coss and drummer Carlos Velez offer various suggestions for augmentation, sticking with the original idea. After more than a year of recording, it's time to move toward release, and the band's label, New York punk imprint Go-Kart Records, wants the layout ASAP.
Following some back-and-forth, Williams relents. A little.
"No, it's a good place to start," he admits. "We can definitely work with this."
With this bit of business handled, Bob Dylan's voluminous jukebox emanations drive us out into the cold to tape a bit of conversation about Pseudo Heroes' ambitious new salvo, A Prison of Small Perceptions, and what led to it.
"It comes across like a demented mix tape from hell," says Coss of the 19-track opus.
Lots of punk bands have put out 19-song discs. Hell, some of them have put out 19-song discs that run 20 minutes. But in keeping with an evolving tradition of fine iconoclasm, PH have once again offered up something different. In addition to the frayed, introspective and utterly inimitable melodic rock for which the trio is quickly becoming renowned, A Prison of Small Perceptions also features guest lead vocals on seven tunes by some of the underground's most notorious names, each of whom served to influence Williams over the years: Government Issue's John Stabb, Napalm Death's Lee Dorian, Poison Idea's Jerry A., Blaine Cook of The Accused, Massacre's Kam Lee, The Pink Lincolns' Chris Barrows, and Dave Smalley from Down By Law, Dag Nasty and All.
"He was pen pals with a couple of guys who didn't have much going on, and just decided to write some other people," says Velez of the project.
"It was just the desire to work with some other people that I grew up listening to," adds Williams. "That was the main factor in doing it."
The band compiled a list of possible vocalists, and after enough interest was returned to make them think this thing might happen, they wrote the music for each tune, with each particular singer in mind. That Williams and company penned the songs ensured a resonance with the rest of PH's material; that they custom wrote 'em for each frontman adds to the record's already eclectic vibe. Williams sent CDs of unmixed songs to the luminaries, with a little money for studio time, and the singers wrote their own lyrics.
It was a time-consuming process, and a few connections (most notably infamous M.O.D./S.O.D. principal Billy Milano) fell through. The results speak for themselves, however, and Williams recalls the experience as surprisingly painless, although at times it tested his patience.
"Everybody was totally cool," he says. "They were totally up for doing it for as little money as possible, without really asking any questions, so it was pretty cool."
Though still establishing a presence both in the Bay area and on the national indie scene, Pseudo Heroes were already in a better position to pull something like this off than your average local band. Williams plays guitar in the aforementioned Down By Law, a fairly high-profile act led by punk veteran Dave Smalley. (DBL also featured St. Pete resident and Gotohells drummer Hunter Oswald at several points.) The association undoubtedly made it a bit easier for Williams to find and knock on doors that he might not otherwise have been able to kick open.
The special appearances serve to accentuate what would have been an excellent sophomore full-length anyway. Like last year's underrated Betraying Angry Thoughts, the disc vigorously rejects most pop-punk cliches, opting instead for a more intricate style. The hooks and blast are here, but come with textured riffs, atmospheric passages and cerebral lyrics you're won't hear from any other band.
Williams allows that the trio makes a conscious effort to distinguish themselves from the punk rock norm, and that Pseudo Heroes have thrown away more material than they've kept, for that reason.
"It's super difficult to do that, to have something that's sort of recognizable and easy on the ear, while being somewhat original at the same time," he says.
"It's easy to say you're doing something different when it's completely experimental — pissing in the forest and running it through a flanger, or something like that," adds the guitarist with a laugh.
They've had plenty of time to work on a sound that's already good and getting better. Williams and Velez have been friends since childhood, and the first Pseudo Heroes demos featuring the three-piece lineup surfaced more than four years ago. Williams' position in Down By Law resulted in a lot of lost time for PH, however, and will likely do so in the future. Still, he affirms that Pseudo Heroes has been his main focus for a while now ("I forget what Down By Law tour it was, but all I was doing was passing out tapes to everybody I met"), though he and Pink Lincolns alumnus Coss are discovering that building a band from the ground up is a whole lot different than being in one that already had the ball rolling.
"Coming from established bands … we joined them when they were established, and we had a certain amount of shit kind of handed to us — we were going on tour, making albums for labels," says Coss. "This thing was started from scratch, and (we found) we don't know what the fuck we're doing."
Williams brusquely dispels the notion that Pseudo Heroes' upward arc, recent as it is, is any more the result of the band's pedigree than hard work.
"It wasn't at all like 'Oh, you're in Down By Law — here's a record deal.' We started from the bottom. I basically didn't have anything that anybody else didn't have," he says. "I sent my tapes to people I knew at labels, and maybe they'd actually listen to it because I knew them, but they weren't gonna just hand us a deal."
Band associations aside, in the final analysis, Pseudo Heroes will hopefully be judged on the quality of their endeavors. And A Prison of Small Perceptions, due sometime in the first quarter of next year, deserves some serious consideration.
"I don't know. You'll either freak on it, or throw it in the trash," says Coss with his customary snicker. "I don't think there's going to be any middle ground — people will either like it or totally hate it."
Music critic Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2002.
