Ourselves, Alone, a charismatic New Haven math-rock trio, makes dense, volcanic music.
Much happens, in short time spans. Disparate groups of listeners — hardcore fans, indie folk lovers, prog-rock oldsters and jazz heads, punk kids and admirers of shred-level virtuosity — can reach in and grab whatever interests them.
“We play a lot of bills with a lot of different kinds of bands, and we fit well with them usually for one reason or another,” says guitarist Michael Cueto. “There’s always something we can play with.”
Math-rock conventions — odd meters in shifting combinations; face-melting technique; finger-tapping; pedal effects; cleaner tones; vocals positioned low in the mix; dizzying full-band tightness — rarely stray far from the surface.
But genre norms don’t dam up the powerful, emotional currents running through “Elusive Firsts,” the band’s forthcoming LP.
“We’ve sort of noticed that even if people don’t really love [our music], there’s something about it that intrigues them, whether it’s guitar proficiency or the drum proficiency, or the pedals and the sound, or the production,” Cueto says. “People stick around to see how it’s going to end.”
Ourselves, Alone performs at Lyric Hall in New Haven on Jan. 26 at 8 p.m. on a bill with the Most, Bat House, The Refectory and Brunettes.
Cueto, 28, met drummer Nick Restivo, 25, at a job training four years ago. Restivo was wearing a Don Caballero T-shirt. (Don Caballero is a pioneering math-rock band from Pittsburgh.) They hit it off.
“Even before we knew each other, our tastes progressed in a similar fashion,” Cueto says. “The first time we played together, everything just locked in. I’ve never played with a drummer where everything was so easy and seamless.”
A friend gifted some studio time, but their bassist pulled out. Cueto and Restivo went anyway. They pieced together “Pepper & Paprika,” an intricate, expansive track, out of composed parts and hashed-out transitions.
“It sounds more structured than most of our stuff, which is funny, because it wasn’t really structured,” Cueto says.
Cueto and Restivo eventually completed “Covet,” a four-song EP, with engineer/bassist Steve Perez at Spring Street Studios in West Haven, releasing it in August 2016. (Perez also played bass at a few live shows.)
Bassist Joe Rousseau, 27, knew Cueto from Grace Notes, a Milford post-rock band they both played in. “I’ve always wanted to play with Mike,” Rousseau says. “I was a fan of Arms to the Trees [Cueto’s early band], and I was always looking for an opportunity to start a band with him.”
The trio released “Trangulls,” a single, in January 2017.
Typically, Cueto brings new compositions — assorted riffs, strung together with imaginative transitions — to Restivo and Rousseau. There’s a process of breaking it apart, learning it piece by piece, and then coloring it in with sounds, delays and textures.
“I don’t bring anything in for us to jam on until it’s complete, or as complete as it can be,” Cueto says. “There needs to be certain transitions and dynamic threads that I need to sort out before we put it all together. Sometimes we just come in with a part, but that’s really the exception to the rule.”
Another rule: Ourselves, Alone veers away from turning songs into nine-minute, prog-metal workouts. Higher density also means a lower total output of songs, and that’s OK.
“It’s easier for the average listener to get through an entire math-rock album that’s only six songs, as opposed to a 50-minute opus,” says Restivo. “They’re listening to all this complex music that they’re not ordinarily listening to, and they’re burned out at the end: ‘Well, I’m never listening to that album again.'”
And while stretching yourself as a musician is part of the goal, it’s never presented as macho muscle-flexing.
“We do it because we like technical music,” Rousseau says. “When I listen to other bands in a similar style to us, I appreciate their virtuoso musicianship, and it’s what I really appreciate about playing with these guys. I watch them play, and I’m like, ‘Wow, my bandmates are awesome.'”
“Elusive Firsts,” recorded, mixed and mastered by Jeremy Kinney (of the band Peaer), is bombastic and outward-facing; “Arms to the Trees,” named after Cueto’s early band, charges ahead, section by odd-meter section, landing into traditional rock-song territory (Restivo handles all the vocals) in the middle.
Cueto’s finger-tapping and Restivo’s punchy, frantic tics drive the single-length “Stiff Jazz,” which builds to a fuzzed-out climax. The impressionistic “Morpheus Drinking a 40 in the Death Basket” (crazy song titles are native to math rock, too), the first song written for the new album (Cueto hears it as the bridge from “Covet”), sweeps through moods — pastoral, triumphant, martial — like a compact, symphonic poem. “A Poodle With Excuses” surges forward in 4/4 — a rare occurrence, perfectly positioned — toward a jammy finish.
“I listen to a lot of instrumental music, and for a while I didn’t listen to very many bands like us,” Cueto says. “I got burned out on [math rock]. I was listening to jazz and more compositional stuff, just the way that it moves. There are emotional dynamics that arc. It’s like a story that you’re listening to. You don’t need exposition in the lyrics.”
Ourselves, Alone would like to see some label attention. The band wants to book mini-tours, and a few longer jaunts. Both “Elusive Firsts” and a new EP will likely emerge before the end of the year.
“Math can neatly tidy up a bunch of different styles of doing it,” Rousseau says. “People have this idea that if it’s noodle-y and tap-py and crazy, that’s math. But it doesn’t necessarily have to do any of that.”
OURSELVES, ALONE performs at Lyric Hall in New Haven on Jan. 26 at 8 p.m., with the Most, Bat House, The Refectory and Brunettes. lyrichallnewhaven.com
