There’s a house that sits on the eastern end of Ybor City, barely within earshot of the traffic roaring by on Interstate 4, and it has a paint job that’s on the darker end of fire engine red. A stray cat, curiously named Spaghetti, has taken to the property, and it follows Connie and Frank Calcaterra around the neighborhood when the couple walk their dog around a neighborhood they’ve called home for half a decade. It might be the early morning haze — or maybe it’s the energy the band, all gathered on the stoop before a 14-hour music video shoot, is giving off — but the charm of the place is almost palpable. It says a lot about the work the Calcaterras put into the historic bungalow.
“It used to look like a crack house. Absolutely a fixer-upper,” Frank told CL about the work it took fix the house. “So much so that I didn’t even tell my mom we bought it until it had been fixed up.”
That charm also pours out of Our City, the debut full-length from the Calcaterras’ five-year-old quintet DieAlps! (pronounced “Dee-Alps”).
DieAlps!’s old sound — which used to lean hard on the 3/4 time signature to help bring Connie’s waltzy baroque-pop to life — never needed repairs, but it has definitely evolved into pristine yet muscled-up pop on the 10-track effort, which sees release on August 4 via Tampa’s own New Granada Records. The twee elements of early tunes Connie wrote in her childhood bedroom in Austria have been replaced by anthemic arrangements (“Hands Up”), stripped-back explorations of self (“Dwight”) and melodies (“Running Into Walls”) that could easily fill venues five times larger than Ybor’s New World Brewery, where DieAlps! will celebrate on release day.
“I continue to write all the songs in my bedroom, so this hasn’t changed,” Connie joked when asked about how her songwriting has grown up since the 2014 release of a self-titled EP. What can’t be taken lightly, however, is how much the Calcaterras — who demo the songs before bringing them to band members for approval and expansion — have been able to channel anecdotes about vulnerability, growing old and even tragedy into cuts that grow more and more endearing with each and every listen.
“I think the EP came out before we had really established what kind of band we really wanted to be,” Frank said when asked about his increased presence on DieAlps!‘s new stuff, adding that there was a question about whether fans would be alarmed by a new, non-Austrian male voice in the mix. “We continued to evolve. I felt like I had a little more to offer to the band than I had given on the EP, and it just sort of happened.”
Frank — who recorded, mixed and mastered Our City — made a big impact on the polished sound as well. Thanks to his engineering gig at Tampa’s Atomic Audio, DieAlps! had the luxury of taking its time in the studio, where it spent almost a year recording the effort without ever having to worry about disrupting neighbors or having cats ruin a perfect take during a home recording session. Frank says the studio allowed the band to “focus on the song and nothing more.”
DieAlps! appears to now be focused on delivering its new album to as many ears as possible. The group has hired a publicist to help get the album in new markets, and even spent $12,000 buying and repairing a van that’ll take it on more tours. And after enduring multiple lineup changes over the years — including the departures of members who played on Our City — the band has finally settled on a lineup that includes Sarah Modene on keys and drummer Jonathan Robbins, who’ve now been in the band for a year. Even founding keyboardist Ariel Cortes found his way back as a replacement for longtime bassist Doug Nelson.
READ MORE
Q&A: Frank and Connie Calcaterra talk DieAlps!’s new LP, losing band members, love and more
“Losing band members is hard, but so is band life,” Connie said. “[Moderne and Robbins] are amazing musicians, and we’ve all become good friends — we’ve known Ariel for years, so it’s funny how he came full circle.”
“Doug was an amazing bass player and always knew what we were going for. There was nothing I could program with my MIDI drum software that [Vinnie Cosentino] wasn’t capable of playing, and we thought we hit the jackpot when we added Cormac [Kavanagh] on keys,” Frank said when asked about his former bandmates’ contributions to the record. “[But] we’re at a place now where everybody in the band is fully onboard and excited about what the future holds.”
And the future certainly looks sunny. In April, DieAlps! released 50 vinyl copies of Our City as part of Record Store Day. Local shops immediately sold out. Songs and videos from the LP are being picked up by national websites. An upcoming run through the Southeast includes a set at Athens Popfest alongside bands like Superchunk, Palehouse, and the Apples in Stereo.
“In so many cases, all of this hard work and dedication can amount to nothing more than an unsponsored Facebook post, and five Likes from your closest friends. The goal is to keep doing it until we are no longer fulfilled,” Frank said.
“It takes a lot of courage,” Connie added, “putting up your hands, exposing yourself to the world saying, ‘This is me, with all my errors and flaws. I’m not perfect at all but here I am, still trying to do my best.’”
It is undoubtedly a lot of work with very little reward, but the fruits of the band’s labor have been nothing short of charming. And DieAlps! at its best is something our city can be proud to call our own.
Get more information on the LP release show via local.cltampa.com. Look below to hear Our City in full starting on August 4. Call your local record store to see if it’ll carry the release.
This article appears in Aug 3-10, 2017.
