Friends share lovers. It happens. And usually it all goes horribly wrong.
If you write songs, however, you can spin shattered relationships into art. “Friends Share Lovers,” the second album by the Western, Mass., trio And The Kids, explores the dissolution of longtime friendships into hot-acid baths of betrayal and back stabbing.
“You can only really handle so much in the friend group that it was based on,” says singer and guitarist Hannah Mohan. “A couple of people would be like, ‘OK, actually I’m gonna leave you for this person,’ and people would be like, ‘That’s kind of weird,’ and then they would get over it and be like, ‘Actually, that’s kind of normal.’ And then it just happened again, and everything fell apart.”
This week, Mohan, drummer Rebecca Lasaponaro and bassist Taliana Katz set out on a monthlong tour, which arrives at New Haven’s Cafe Nine on Thursday, June 9.
Mohan and Lasaponaro have been playing music together since middle school. They met keyboardist Megan Miller in 2012, when all three musicians were interns at the Institute for the Musical Arts in Goshen, Mass. In four years, they’ve recorded two EPs and “Turn to Each Other,” a full-length album, which came out in early 2015 — weeks after Miller, a Canadian citizen, was deported. On Christmas Day.
“It was right before our first CD tour, and so we ended up having to go on the whole tour by ourselves,” Mohan says. “There are things that we embraced about it, and then there are things that we really didn’t embrace about it.
“We wrote some songs just as a two-piece, being like ‘This is all there is,’ and then later Megan would come to write parts for them. But I don’t think we ever thought about doing [And The Kids] without her.”
When the tour ended, Mohan and Lasaponaro asked Miller to scope out recording studios in Montreal. Miller settled on producer Jace Lasek, who also fronts the great Canadian psych-rock group the Besnard Lakes.
“[Lasek] was flawless, just a super nice human being,” Mohan says. “Super down to earth, not an over-producer, really just there to have fun and do what he loves. … Suuns, one of our favorite bands, has done a lot of their records with Jace, so that really worked out. So we really looked up to him for that.”
“Friends Share Lovers” was recorded in six days in Montreal, with another week or so set aside for mixing. Released June 3 on Signature Sounds, a Northampton-based label, it has the potential to propel And The Kids — charred remains of friendships, shared lovers and all — into a much higher realm of notoriety.
The band’s sound centers on Mohan’s sunny melodies, the delicate interplay between instruments and interlocking vocal harmonies. Surfaces are shiny and approachable; you get lulled into thinking it’s all just young lust, beachside drama gone bad, with significant rebound potential.
“Sun or rain, they both feel the same,” Mohan sings on the title track. It’s a song that draws parallel lines: “Either way you’re still complaining. Sometimes we like each other, and sometimes we just wish we were with another.”
On “Creeper,” over a slightly menacing alternation of chords, she looks outward: “Give me another tension-breaker / I need another reason to meet more people / You look like other people, or they just look like you.”
“It’s a little easier for me to deal with my own situations when I can make it about everybody,” she says. “Anybody feels better about their situation if they find out other people are going through this situation.”
Elsewhere, as on the caustic “Picture,” the music makes clear: Breaking up with friends is painful. There’s dissonance in the cloud-like harmonies of “Without Purpose,” and metrical weirdness in the grooves and steel-pan-like textures of “Strange to Be.” Lasek, whose atmospheric production style is well known to Besnard Lakes fans, tucks Miller’s synths slightly at the back of the mix while placing Lasaponaro’s expressive cymbals, toms and snare rolls way up front.
Miller can’t return to the U.S. for five years after her deportation; she’ll sit out the current tour. She’ll join And The Kids, with Katz remaining on bass, in a Montreal show booked in July, and hopes to pick up additional Canadian dates fairly soon.
“Every time we go out we learn something new about what we like, different energy drinks we like, new friends to stay with,” Mohan says. “It’s new every time but we do have our ways of getting by. … I’ll probably do this for the rest of my life. I just love it, and it’s what I’m meant to do.”
AND THE KIDS performs at Cafe Nine in New Haven on Thursday, June 9, at 8:30 p.m., with Vundabar and Bilge Rat opening. Tickets are $10. Information: manicproductions.org.
