The city of Denver has been in the headlines of late as the only place in the country with any appreciable amount of snow. With the imminent release of No, Not Me, Never, Denver may become just as well known for the Photo Atlas’ icy shade of raucous dance punk.
The Photo Atlas got its start three years ago when guitarist Bill Threlkeld relocated to Denver after the demise of his band in California. He randomly made the acquaintance of drummer Devon Shirley, leading to a music discussion and the mutual desire to start a band. The next step in the band’s evolution was unexpectedly spontaneous.
“Bill called Alan (Andrews, vocals/guitar) and Mark (Hawkins, bassist), who still lived in California, and he was like, ‘You guys want to come here and start a band?’ And they packed up all their stuff and moved here like the next day,” recalls Shirley with a laugh. “Things just started to happen instantly.”
“Instantly” is an understatement. The day that Andrews and Hawkins arrived in Denver, their first priority was not to find a place to live and unpack. They tracked down Threlkeld and Shirley and immediately began playing music together.
“It was exactly the way we all wanted it to be,” says Shirley. “None of the other people I‘d played with ever had that click. The second they pulled into town, they pulled their gear out of the back of the truck and we started playing. And immediately it was exactly right.”
That immediacy turned into three years of evolution, hard work and constant gigging around the Denver scene. At the start, the Photo Atlas (originally known simply as Atlas, which was changed to avoid a conflict with a similarly named band) sported an aggressive indie punk sound which has since morphed into a frenetic Brit rock dance punk amalgam, a blazing cross between Fugazi and Gang of Four that satisfies the band’s avowed fixations with, among others, At the Drive In, Cursive, the Refused and the Pixies.
“We’ve definitely progressed to a more angular Q and Not U/At the Drive In mixture,” says Shirley. “We don’t necessarily try to be dancey. Honestly, we’re just a punk rock band. Live, we play really loud and most of the time a lot faster than the recording and it’s more aggressive and in your face than Radio 4 and the Rapture.”
When it came time for the Photo Atlas to record No, Not Me, Never, their debut full length, the band wanted to reflect their live sound first and foremost, an opportunity they felt they’d missed with an earlier self-released EP.
“We recorded at a really good studio and spent a lot of post production on it, cleaning things up, but at the same having that live feel,” says Shirley. “If Alan did something different with his vocals, if it sounded good, we’d leave it. A couple of times, we were tracking a song and afterward he’d say, ‘We should do that over, I did something really weird,’ and we were like, ‘No, we’re keeping it, it sounded really awesome.’”
For anyone who has last year’s locally released version of No, Not Me, Never, take note that you may want to seek out the new version that was released at the end of January.
“We’ve had this record for a year now,” says Shirley. “We recorded the record in Denver and released it under this little local indie label [Morning After Records], and then we got picked up by Stolen Transmission and they wanted to re-release the record, so we took two songs off and added three new songs. So technically there are three brand new songs that we were planning on using on the next record.”
While Denver audiences and the local media have been overwhelmingly supportive of the Photo Atlas, the band knows that its success lies in the wider exposure that will come from touring and the increased distribution of No, Not Me, Never. The band has already established a regular West Coast touring circuit, they’ve got a couple of SXSW gigs on their resume and their appearance at CMJ last fall allowed them to explore the East Coast for the first time. They’re looking forward to a national spring tour opening for Vaux, another SXSW date in March and more West Coast work, as well as anything else the new year and the “new” record brings.
“We just love touring,” says Shirley. “We try to tour as much as possible. There are so many good bands here in Denver but none of them tour and that’s their downfall. That’s why they’re not going to go anywhere. You can’t not get out there unless you’ve got a video on MTV or something like that.”
~ Brian Baker
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THE PHOTO ATLAS' NO, NOT ME, NEVER is released 03/02/07 on Stolen Transmission Records.
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http://www.stolentransmission.com
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