"If I were an A&R guy and I drove to any city in America and went to two or three shows and saw 10 or 15 bands that all sounded the same, that's gonna tell me what's popular today," muses GreyMarket drummer Mike Cargiulo. "But what's gonna be the act of tomorrow? That's what we're gonna be. I don't want to be the next anything, I want to be the first GreyMarket."
That's a pretty ambitious statement. But then again, GreyMarket is a pretty ambitious band with a sound to match. The Clearwater duo's mix of big, big modern rock and electro accoutrements — achieved live by using tracks and loops from a laptop to augment Cargiulo and guitarist/singer L. Cave McCoy's performances — is utterly unlike anything being plied by GreyMarket's Bay area peers.
Or anyone else, really; while the band garners consistent comparisons to the likes of Radiohead and Muse, its material is much warmer and more rooted in traditional songcraft than the former and much less melodramatic than the latter. It achieves originality by marrying rock's compelling rawness to electronic music's intriguing sonic possibilities without lessening or overdoing either.
The group began life in '03 as a more traditional trio, but Cargiulo and McCoy's shared influences and pursuit of a more innovative sound eventually found them striking out on their own.
"We got tired of looking for other musicians, of sitting around and waiting, and so out came the laptop," Cargiulo says. "Because we spent a lot of time together, we learned quickly what kind of music we were into, and what kind of music we wanted to make. We sort of had this grander scope in mind."
For the twosome, doing something original was every bit as important as doing something they liked.
"One of the number one things to us is, we don't want to play a club and sound like everyone else on the bill," says Cargiulo. "When we were fledgling bandmates and would go to shows, we'd say to each other, 'I don't want to sound like any of these bands.' We want to play music we enjoy playing and have the courage to try to progress things."
GreyMarket's music is undeniably progressive, though not in the self-indulgent ways usually associated with the term — it's catchy, dynamic rock grounded by a reverence for familiar structure. GreyMarket doesn't fuck with the basics but rather finds its unique style in the intricacies and experiments it erects atop a solid foundation.
Last year's release Insidious showcased a band that knows hooks as well as cool noises, and songs from the forthcoming, more aggressive Dauntless hint that the act has gotten bolder with its electronic elements, still without letting them sterilize the power chords.
Cargiulo is acutely aware of that particular pitfall; he and McCoy take pains to keep the records — and especially the live performances — as human and visceral as possible.
"We have the sort of flexibility in our musicianship to play around within the context of the song," he says. "What [McCoy] does and I do can be altered from show to show. We like to have fun, too. Nobody wants to play the same stuff over and over, and we're too eccentric to do that anyway."
The group's live guitar-drums-and-computer setup occasionally gives them trouble, but not as often as some technophobes might expect. According to Cargiulo, inadequate sound systems and inadequately experienced soundmen are a more frequent problem. (He's quick to say that most of the Bay area clubs GreyMarket plays are more than up to snuff but admits there are a few he simply won't bother with anymore, though he's too polite/politic to name names.)
Still, it's a small price to pay in the name of being a local band that doesn't sound like one, that sounds like something more and not like whatever happens to be influential at the moment.
"You've gotta do anything you can to stand above the fray," Cargiulo says. "Be the band that doesn't sound like so-and-so. If nothing else, it's definitely going to get you some attention."
This article appears in Oct 25-31, 2006.