band of the month

Both at once.

The name came from a sticky note on Alex's wall. She'd written it working a crummy summer job a few years back. Sour cherry switchblade. She liked the sound of it and moved on. Jay saw it two years later and asked what it meant. She didn't know. Just words.

She found the meaning later. Sour Cherry Blasters and Strawberry Switchblade. Sweet and sharp. The acoustic part and the thing it builds into. Hope and anger, both. It fits whether she meant it to or not.

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That's how a lot of Sour Cherry Switchblades works. Eight different stories that end up in the same place.

Raynen and Jay played together through high school for seven years: brass ensemble, then orchestra, then jazz quartet. Raynen met Talon at Superstore and asked if he'd play guitar. He said he wasn't good enough, and they didn't talk for three years. Then he said yes. Jay matched with Alex on Bumble two years in a row, started dating, and told her about a band he wanted to start. Alex and Talon had crossed paths at university years before, though neither of them placed it at the time. Now they're all in a room together.

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For their first show, Talon had never played in a band. He got a text two days before: learn Schism by Tool. He learned it in a night. Walked on stage for the first time and played it.

They also played an original that night.

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When you listen, you can hear all of it. Alex's voice moves between things most singers don't try in the same song. Jay and Raynen carry years of jazz in how the low end settles. Talon spent a long time alone with a guitar before any of this.

It doesn't feel assembled from parts. It feels like four people who came from different places and didn't sand anything down.

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Songs start different ways. Sometimes with a guitar part. Sometimes with a poem Alex already had. Sometimes with Jay in his room for weeks, working through a riff four hours at a time.

"Death Dances" started that way. It's the newest song, recorded here for the first time. It goes somewhere heavier than before. More psychedelic. Still them, but moving.

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Alex writes lyrics the way she started writing poetry: sitting with whatever is actually there, not deciding in advance what it means. "Break Me" started as a song about a breakup. Over time she came to hear it differently. Less about a breakup, more about her own mind. She still hears new things in it. Other people tell her what it means to them, and the answers aren't always the same.

Sometimes a line comes from somewhere else. Raynen said one in passing, picking up Vietnamese food. They were talking about politics. "Raised by the internet, we were built for war." Alex wrote it down. It's in the newest song.

She says what she wants people to feel is hope and anger. Both at once.

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They're almost a year in. Two shows a month, sometimes four. Three originals recorded and waiting. A set built from close to a hundred different covers, almost none repeated.

They found out about Band of the Month at a show at Starlight Room. Ran into someone from Resonate. Ended up here.

It happens that way. You go to the show. You talk to people after. Something opens.

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They're on Instagram. Recordings are coming. Bandcamp first.