In the months following the release of Candy Bars’ 2006 studio debut, Cutting Tigers in Half and Understanding Narravation, the locally-based trio garnered a flood of favorable press from some of the most respected taste-making online music rags around — Stereogum, PopMatters, Cokemachineglow, Pitchfork — and had reached a point where success seemed not only achievable but imminent.
They just couldn’t quite keep the momentum going. “It feels like we sort of fell apart right when all that happened, because of things going on personally in our lives,” singer/guitarist Daniel Martinez told me when I caught up with him last week.
Not that Candy Bars were ever truly inactive; merely flying under the radar and focusing on work, school and familial obligations while slowly working on a follow-up to CTHUH and squeezing in the sporadic live dates whenever possible, usually over the summer. (Martinez is working towards a Masters in Architecture at University of Florida, cellist Melissa Grady is a full-time music teacher at Nancy Bartels Middle School and private instructor at Atomic Audio, and drummer/percussionist Ryan Hastings manages AJA, the upscale Channelside nightclub.)
After nearly a year absent from the scene, the trio re-emerged in June to headline the Homemade Music Symposium’s live music showcase at New World Brewery. They packed the place, and not only demonstrated their continued relevance and talent with a compelling, high-energy set of their distinctive dark and dreamy experimental rock, but proved that people around here still cared about what’s going on with Candy Bars.
They also played two untraditional venues this summer — Cappy’s Pizzaria [pictured above, photo by Nicole Kibert] and Bartels Middle School, the latter a favor to Grady that turned out to be a very rewarding experience.
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2010.