Every band has its unsuspecting influences that undoubtedly assist in shaping its sound. When the list encompasses the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Marvin Gaye and The Lion King soundtrack, listeners can expect an eclectic sound to be produced.
Best described as a bluesy funk-rock band, New Retro — which features vocalist Aubrey Adams, bassist Enoch Rowe, guitarist Weymouth Spence II, drummer Jason Stewart and trumpet player Neil Brown — delivers a sound as pleasantly eccentric as its influences would suggest. The band, which plays tonight at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center along with the university’s Repertoire Orchestra, carries a strong sense of pride regarding its unique brand of music, which it has spent the past three years refining.
“Everybody’s different musical backgrounds just collaborate,” Rowe said.
Although he was not the least bit shy in revealing where the band’s sound came from, Rowe admitted that even after many years, New Retro still has not settled on a genre label for itself.
“We don’t call it anything,” Rowe added. “Bluesy funk-rock is probably the best way I’ve heard it classified, but all of our backgrounds and influences are so vague and broad that it just doesn’t do it justice.”
To make labeling matters increasingly tricky, the band experimented with a variety of instruments during its earlier years. New Retro featured a saxophone player and a keyboardist before settling into its five-piece lineup. With a quintet established, the group took to stages around the state to perform — something band members strongly prefer to recording in a studio due to the raw atmosphere a live setting provides.
“The thing about recording is when you’re in there, redoing this and redoing that and chopping stuff up, you sort of lose the energy you came in there with,” Rowe said. “It just hasn’t been the same as the live tracks we’ve had.”
Though the group dabbled in recording last year, it opted to release an album of a live set instead of a typical studio record. The band’s CD, New Retro Live!, was recorded at Surf Club Live! in Hyattsville in May 2009, and Rowe said he feels the album captures the band’s sound and soul better than any studio recording could.
Plenty of this comes from improvisation, something Rowe said plays a crucial part in shaping the group’s live set.
“If you listen to two different live recordings, I don’t think they would sound the same at all,” he said. “When you get to the point where you’ve been playing everything so much you know what the songs are, you know what it goes into them, you think about what the band is doing and what you’re all moving towards in the music.”
It is a fitting approach for the quintet to take, as its groove-oriented jams shine when its spontaneity makes an appearance. For New Retro’s upcoming CSPAC performance, however, creating a more structured approach was key. Though Rowe said the band and orchestra are only playing four songs together, the arrangements for the show began in January. After more than four months of preparation and modifications, the band members are delighted to play during a distinctive performance.
New Retro will be joined by an orchestra of about 70 musicians, with a variety of wind, brass, string and percussion instruments rounding out the group’s already rich sound. The performance is by far the biggest thing New Retro has ever done, according to Rowe, who added that it might not ever get any bigger or wilder than tonight’s performance.
“We’re really looking forward to this,” Rowe said. “All of the things we’ve done culminate to this with the orchestra. … We realized no one does this; we’ve never heard funk-rock that sounds like this.”
New Retro, alongside the university’s Repertoire Orchestra, performs at CSPAC’s Dekelboum Concert Hall tonight at 8 p.m. Tickets are free.
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