Last week, treatment I got a chance to catch up with Geoff Haliday to hear more about the band’s first headlining tour, look while they were hauling ass to Chapel Hill on an excruciating tour.They’ll be taking a pit-stop at Great Scott on Tuesday, June 4th, in support of their new album Synesthesia.

NT: First thing, I want to give our readers a chance to get to know you a little bit. I was hoping you could tell me where you’re from, what your favorite sandwich is, and who your childhood Hollywood crush was?

GH: Okay, so we’re originally from LA. And my favorite sandwich is… (conferring with the band) a sopressata sandwich? That’s what everyone’s telling me. A sopressata sandwich from a place called Larchmont in LA. I don’t even think I’ve had it, but I trust them. And my childhood Hollywood crush, I guess I have to go post-cartoon crush, like Jasmine from Aladdin, so I’ll have to go with Jennifer Connelly, from the Labyrinth?  Yeah, Jennifer Connelly, she was like 15 when she was in the Labyrinth. I was like 8 or something, so that, for sure.

NT: One more really boring question, just tell me briefly who is in the band and how you got your start.

GH: Well, it’s myself, Geoff [Haliday], Sean [Hess] on drums, Ryan [Sweeney] on guitar, and our bassist Alexander [Saniloff]. And we formed in Los Angeles a few years ago. We were all sort of looking for projects or things to take up extra time, since we all sort of fell into work-life after college. We all wanted to start a band but didn’t really know how to do that. So, through a friend of ours, who was actually from Boston, he introduced us to our now drummer at a party, then a few weeks later we met our bassist. So, sort of through the social network, but the actual one, not the one online.

NT: So it seems like you guys have a pretty hectic tour schedule, lots of places, lots of dates in a short period of time. What are the best and worst parts of having a schedule like that?

GH: You know, we’re kind of finding that out as we go. This is our first big tour like this, going out and headlining, so this is the first time we’ve really had to rely on ourselves and a bit of local support. But it’s been really good so far. For one, I’ve realized that I really like playing a new city every night. At first I was sort of intimidated by the whole process, because you’re like, “Oh my God, how am I going to do all of this driving and play all these shows,” but there was like a moment the other night when I was driving at like 3 AM to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and I kinda looked and everyone was sleeping, and I was kind of like, “Eh, this is okay. This has been really fun.” The one thing we don’t get to do is explore the cities. We just don’t have the time. Luckily we got to check out an awesome, condensed part of Atlanta last night, so that was fun.

NT: What have you guys been listening to on the road?

GH: Lots of Daft Punk records, which is awesome. And this new band from LA called Body Parts. They don’t have a record out yet, but they’re friends of ours, so they send it over to us. Check them out. And some country music, which I’d rather not name. We were all in high school once. And then a lot of hip-hop form all over the map. We had some Jay-Z today.

NT: Can you talk to me a little bit about the process for the new LP and how that is been different from your earlier releases?

GH: Well, the biggest thing we did was we didn’t go to a recording studio. We ended up going to our bassist’s wonderful grandmother’s house. She sort of vacated the premises, and we took it over and built out like a mini-studio. And there were kind of weekends and days here and there over a month just doing the recording and production process there, which was awesome. It was in a valley, sort of removed community from the where we all live. And the house had a pretty interesting vibe, she’s a unique lady. And that was that, we sent it off for mixing a week later. We wrote it all over the year prior, and put a lot of time into pre-production, really sort of dead-down-to-it nitty gritty.

NT: What was the biggest difficulty you had to overcome to put the album out?

GH: Honestly for us, one of the hardest things was just finding a home for it. I mean, we had written pretty much the entire album and demo-ed it out, and really wanted to find the right supportive label, or whoever would have a plan together. So that was pretty tough. As soon as that all fell into place, everything else sort of turned into a waterfall effect. We already wanted it done, the impetus was getting backing and a little of extra confidence behind the project.

NT: What about the style that you’ve put together for this new record? In my humble opinion, I think your pace has picked up a little, the tracks have a lot more depth, and some more effects. Did you have a goal of what you wanted this to sound like, or did it kind of come together as part of the writing process?

GH: I think, you know, we were honing in on a sound on the first EP. The kind of music that we recorded maybe no one heard. Then we did a 7” this year, which, in reality, was written and recorded long before it went out. I kind of look back at that stuff and think, not that we were misguided in any way, but that we didn’t really know what target we wanted to hit. And then putting together Synesthesia, we all kind of sat around , and I think we all were able to figure out our strengths Our guitarist Ryan actually had a broken hand up until the day before he was recording. I look back though, and think that maybe not playing guitar for a couple months made a whole new approach to things. Our drummer is an engineer, our bassist is a photographer. I guess we’re all involved in different kinds of art forms, which I think all played into the process just enough. I think we nailed down what we wanted to sound like on the record. I wouldn’t say there wasn’t anything we could improve, but I think it came together really well.  I’m definitely proud of what we did.

NT: So what’s up with the name Synesthesia?

GH: A lot of people think it’s a made up word of, like synthesizers, and amnesia. But it’s a disorder, actually a pretty serious disorder for some people, where your senses are crossed. Like the wires are crossed in your brain. And you could walk out of your door, and what someone else might experience as a loud sound, you might hear it, but you might also see an array of colors, or you know, feel pain or pleasure, or whatever messed up thing your brain has decided what this sound is. So, we kind of sat around trying to think of names for the record, and any time we had thought about it before, we had very conflicting themes, and how oculd we name the album there was a little bit black or a little bit  white without doing it so directly, so I think synesthesia is a really apt title to sort of explain that without giving it all away. But we consider our music to be a little bit visual as well. wE definitely pride ourselves on a live show. And actually I think live music is almost a form of synesthesia for a lot of people. Dancing itself is a form of synesthesia.

NT: The last question I have for you is what’s next for you after this tour?

GH: After this tour, we’re actually looking at a whole bunch of different possibilities. We’re looking at doing some stuff in the northwest, like a festival that we’re going to do, which I imagine we’ll roll a few more dates into. But we just got back from Europe two weeks ago, so we have some tentative plans to return to Europe. The tour has been sort of growing for us as far as attendance and just the excitement, so we’ll find out what’s next in the next few weeks. We had no idea that some of the shows were going to be as good as they were, so it’s been nice.