Sonic Graffiti
Rock ’n’ roll is a bastard beast and it is nothing new for musicians to tap into its innermost troubled childhood and mine for more. It’s a deep pit that keeps yielding finds. Yet few of these diggers dare to go public with what they collect. Increasingly, musicians want credit for their bold experimentalism without having the courage to share its results.
Not so for Gulf Coast trio Sonic Graffiti. “A lot of our songs have room for improv so they are different every time we play them,” guitarist/vocalist Drew Giordano tells PureHoney. “Sonic is a punk band at heart, but I kinda just stick to the three J’s for musical inspiration: James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Joe Strummer.”
As the name suggests, their attack is multilayered — an accumulation that gives a painterly texture to the sound. They are exactly what punk rock needs to be in 2018. Formed in 2013 by Giordano after a prior band imploded, now filled by Jasmine Deja on drums and Chris Cardon on bass, Sonic Graffiti is returning attention to the Tampa/St. Pete scene.
“They’re probably Florida’s most anti-hipster rock band who still accidentally look like hipsters. Make no mistake though, Sonic Graffiti are no hipsters. For jam sessions, harmonicas and mandolins are not in a hipster’s arsenal,” wrote TuffGnarl.com’s Chuck Livid back in 2013. That appraisal still applies, but the band has evolved. After a lackluster experience recording their eponymous sophomore effort, and looking to recapture the raw lysergence of their 2014 debut, “Friendly. Unit. Creation. Kit.,” the band reverted to basics for 2017’s “Loner.”
“We came to the conclusion we’ll never go to anyone to record again. We can do it all by ourselves and it’ll be a million times better,” says Giordano. “We did it all ourselves at our house. The freedom, independence and no time limit opened us up to write songs which stretched all across the musical spectrum.”
Currently at work on several more records, Sonic Graffiti are hungry to create newer amalgams of rock ’n’ roll under their punk rock banner. They are the sons of no one; bastards of the young.
Sonic Graffiti performs July 6 at Voltaire with Red Light Motel, Thoughts and Bitter Blue Jays in West Palm Beach. sonicgraffiti.bandcamp.com ~ Abel Folgar
