In December 2017, Cinema Bar in Culver City opened its doors to the local Cheekface trio so that the group plays its first official show. More than seven years, hundreds of shows and tens of thousands of fans later, the band was ready to return to the place that began on a quick afternoon of Valentine's Day.
Unfortunately, Cinema Bar was unexpectedly closed, as did the donut store on the other side of the street.
“It's a bit appropriate,” drummer Mark “Echo,” says Edwards, with a laugh behind a facial mask and glasses while the Jaywalks band in Sepulveda Boulevard for the second time before settling at Maple Block Meat Co.
“For us or for Cinema Bar?” Both singer-guitarist Greg Katz and bassist Amanda Tannen Quip, almost in unison.
Edwards wanted to say it as an educated rib in the diving bar of Culver City, but it is also an appropriate joke about the group called itself “local band of the United States”. As an indie rock band that ventures in everything, from SKA to Crabcore in its new album, “Middle Spoon” (released on Tuesday), Cheekface, which was formed in 2017, is probably better described with words like “Scrapy”, “unconventional” and “surprising”.
“When Greg and I started the project, it was like, 'let's do everything with the intention of having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously,” says bassist Amanda Tannen de Cheekface.
(Carlin Stiehl / for the times)
Because? Well, for a band that launches its fifth album and headed a national tour of this spring, Cheekface is committed to a DIY mentality at the levels that many bands leave the second that know success. The three members have spent a lot of time in the music industry (both in other bands and in other positions) out of Cheekface, and each one is willing to use their skills acquired for the improvement of the band.
For example, Tannen handles all visual works of art and the side of the merchandise of things, while Katz uses his editorial experience to have a Cheekface self -evaluation all his albums without a stamp (and Edwards contributes his “bright” skin care routine, the band jokes). And it helps that the band has a writing style that intervenes the memorable ingenuity and humor in catchy songs on relationable themes, particularly for their millennial audience and zers genus to a large extent of assistance to therapy.
“I have come to understand that the only thing that matters in regards to a project that 'succeeds' is whether people like music and want to listen to it,” says Katz, with a pink round neck sweater. “The deeper you get, the more you will learn that again. If you get music that people want to listen, they will continue to vote for you to continue doing it. I also believe that we strip the need for external validation for this jump band, basically planning that it is nothing. “
When Katz says that Cheekface began without expectations, it means. The entire project began with the objective of him and Tannen writing a handful of songs together for his own mental health, freeing them in Bandcamp and perhaps playing a backyard show or two. But a local concert became many, with the group jumping to dozens of shows with bands of friends around Los Angeles in 2018 and 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic closed its tour plans in 2020.
When live music was one thing later in 2021, Cheekface was already two albums (“Therapy Island” of 2019 and “Infatic No.” of 2021) in his career and had begun to build an online monitoring of “Cheek Freaks”. The trio found a niche in the independent world often serious when using humor and irreverence to lighten the mood of his infused pop-rock with anxiety, winning a unique admirers base that covers generations, genres and scenes throughout the country.
Then, despite the fact that “Middle Spoon” was born from a 2024 traumatic for Katz (whose father suffered a stroke and grandmother died) and Tannen (whose long -term relationship ended in “a In fact traumatic rupture “), composers are rushed to point out that it is not a breakup album or” a dead grandmother's album. “
“Both Greg and I were going through a period of change at the same time just before [2024’s “It’s Sorted”] Liberated, “says Tannen, referring to his rupture and family losses of Katz.” I also just left my work full time to be able to concentrate on the face of my cheek, so all the things that were stable in my life were taken from under me, and I did not know how loss and find your balance. “
“Much of our music refers to the culture of self -help,” adds Katz. “In the culture of self -help, 'growth' is very romantic, where the work of encouragement and medites, and then mature in this philosophical version of yourself. But much growth is not intentional. It happens because some s, it happens and you have to move through that s …, you like it or not. That process is uncomfortable and painful and makes you look at a part of yourself that you really don't like. Much of this album fights with that discomfort we were feeling while we were writing. ”
From a logistic point of view, the launch of “Middle Spoon” is also a perfect look at how the DIY wheels of the cheek face turn. After having released his last album in January 2024, and then immediately touring at the end of May, the trio is throwing the new album only nine months after the band began writing it. And after having taken five albums (plus some EP, covers and other melodies) in less than six years, the fast change is effectively alongside the course for the trio.
While other artists see their launch calendar slowed down by the seal policy and the producers who play to perfect each song, Cheekface is not indebted to any of those limitations and does not see any reason to delay creation or release new music when you want.
“I have come to understand that the only thing that matters when it comes to a project that” successive “is whether people like music and want to listen to it,” says the singer/guitarist Greg Katz de Cheekface
(Carlin Stiehl / for the times)
“Writing music is the funniest part, and recording music is the second most fun part, so why would we block it?” Katz says. “If it is the fun part, we should do it more, because this band has fun. We do not have to deal with a seal because we are not in one, so there is no one to say: 'You should space this' or 'We have many other albums that we must take before reaching yours'. One of my favorite bands is Bad Religion, which has also retired from their own albums, and from 1988 to 1994, they launched six of Bad Religion albums most classic. “
“When Greg and I started the project, it was like, 'let's do everything with the intention of having fun and not taking us too seriously,” adds Tannen. “We just want to have fun and write some music, so the songs mostly Write quickly. If a song takes months to write, there could be something wrong with that song, and maybe not a Cheekface song anyway. We are not looking for something perfect, because there is no perfect. “
“I have been in bands where things are bogged down in that feeling of beautiful, where it is as if each song had to be perfect,” adds Edwards. “You can never move forward with 'good enough', and becomes very frustrating.”
“I don't think we feel overwhelmed to do a heartbreaking job of amazing genius when we sit down to write,” says Katz with a smile. “We simply make the music we want to hear.”
