Dinoczar is a three-piece garage band from Mission Hill made up of guitarist/vocalist Paul Dunne, drummer Aaron Swartz, and bassist Jake Cardinal. Simple, right? We’ve heard all this before, so why bother? Even the band calls their older work “generic garage.” But with their debut album set to be released this week, they’re ready for that to change. The album, Sick Wind, is a coming of age of sorts for the close friends, a whetting of their earlier work into its true potential. That’s the album art pictured above.
Dinoczar has been playing for about two years now, with two EPs under their belts, but only now do they admit their music sounds like them as a band. Dunne and Swartz had been playing together for years, but didn’t call themselves Dinoczar until Cardinal joined in. Or was perhaps more like roped.
During his first course at college, he was approached by Swartz after class who asked him to play bass in his band. Despite not owning a bass, Cardinal met the two for his first practice with them, during which they handed him a list of their songs and told him to be ready for a show they were set to perform in four days.
But that’s the source of the fun. They write, perform, and just make it up on the spot. While some bands would be paralyzed at the thought, the friends in Dinoczar couldn’t care less.
The band has always run with the moment. When they recorded their last EP, Bloody Bobcat, at Q Division, they would sneak off to write lyrics while their other songs were being mastered. Dunne often makes up lyrics the day of a show, sometimes even on stage. The music for Sick Wind was recorded before their last tour—on the road, he would test different lyrics each night.
“Eventually, I found what stuck,” he jokes.
What stuck was a body of work inspired by magical realism of Lovecraft and Borges. The title is a reference to Red Apple and Silver Bells, a dark collection of children’s fables from the early twentieth century.
“I’ve gotten pretty good at embracing the weird, dark aesthetic in my mind that I’ve always pushed back and always been afraid to put out in songs,” he adds of his new lyricism, calling it the “in between where I can connect mysticism and just feeling weird.”
It’s about admitting to himself “alright, my head is a little fucked” but then asking “how can I push this into something where metaphorically I also feel like my bones are breaking?” Sometimes, it’s simply the connection between “Twin Peaks and not being able to get out of bed.”
The three have come into their own with the record. The songwriting is shared by all three.
Band photo via Facebook. From left to right: Cardinal, Swartz, Dunne
Recently, concertgoers of theirs have approached them, saying they loved their take on metal. While that’s not quite true, it’s not quite wrong either- at the album’s heaviest, it recalls the power and momentum of any Motörhead song.
“As time progressed we’ve gotten a lot heavier,” says Swartz.
“On accident,” Dunne chimes in.
“The album’s very different from what we have out already,” Cardinal notes. “Now anytime when people look us up, unless they listen to ‘Cream’… it’s not really what we sound like anymore. It’ll be really good to have this out there to establish that this is actually what we sound like.”
But their sound isn’t just a one-trick pony; the trio have slowly been evolving to fit in some psychedelia too. Sonically, Sick Wind is exactly what its title reflects. In even just one song, you can find yourself in a sludgy bog of riffs, and the next in an atmospheric chamber of Ukrainian dulcimer. What makes it so thrilling is that it all works.
“We’ve never been good at genres,” adds Dunne, “But I think that’s what changed, going into this album- just finding the right combination of sounds.”
The subtle experimentation in Sick Wind is led by the madness of Dunne, whose sonic tinkering is apparent throughout. A close listen will expose field-recorded cicadas, multi-tracked saxophone, and slowed, distorted cymbals. Inspired by Beatles’ method of recording, Dunne even fashioned a DIY imitation Leslie speaker by holding two recording microphones and spinning around a speaker-filler room on a rolling chair.
This is the band’s process. They produce in the moment, preferring the work to spontaneously make itself. Their job is to follow, and slowly digest what they’re given.
Sick Wind is out this Friday, May 20, for no other reason other than they needed a set release date when they released the video for their single, “Cream.” Now, they’re forcing themselves to meet the deadline.
“I think it hasn’t really hit me yet,” Swartz says of the album’s imminence. The three have been sitting on the record for about a year now, and setting a random deadline was exactly the self-inflicted kick they needed to put it out.
Mostly recorded at Q Division Studios, the album is being released on Ben Semeta’s label, Basement Sounds, and was mastered by one of their music professors at Northeastern, Jim Anderson. It will be available on both digital and cassette.
“I think everything we’ve done in the past has been so different and more DIY that putting things in other people’s hands is still foreign to us,” says Dunne. “I think this is the first time we’ve found solid grounding in who we are and who we know.”
Allston Pudding is proud to premiere Dinoczar’s debut album, Sick Wind. Stream it below, and be sure to pick up a copy when it officially released May 20 via Basement Sounds.