'Waves Recoiling' by Leo Lasseaux
While the throes of the pandemic derailed most people’s plans, it was no deterrent for one Milwaukee band. “We really wanted to see how far we could push it,” says Kevin Schwab, guitarist and vocalist for Leo Lasseaux. “With COVID going around we were already quarantining and isolating ourselves, so we didn’t see location as being an obstacle. We looked internationally to put the finishing touches on our album.”
For their debut album, Waves Recoiling, the band linked up through the web with an artist from Germany, Bjorn Bauer. Commissioning him for the album artwork, the band gave Bauer some color ideas and vague concepts to guide his artistic choices like “structured chaos” and “organic fluidity.” The result, an image of a huge ocean wave crashing towards lush vegetation and swirls of smoke. The psychedelic imagery and swirls of earthy color goes far to reflect the music on the album, which is ambiguous and not so easily pinned down or labeled.
Made up of members Kevin Schwab (vocals, guitar, synth, keys), Nathan Toth (bass, synth, keys), and Jeffrey Roush (drums, percussion), who have logged time with other local bands, the trio pull from a diverse range of influences including and not limited to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Vulfpeck and Led Zeppelin. “We label our band alternative rock because it covers all the different genres that come out in our music,” Toth says.
Dabbling in Paisley
Waves Recoiling dabbles in the psychedelics of the Paisley underground, the transcendence of progressive rock, the intensity of punk rock, and the staccatoed syncopations of funk. What could potentially be a detriment and an indicator that a group is still trying to lock down their sound, works to their advantage. The transitions are dealt with carefully and the stylistic elements blend in a way that feels as fluid and organic as the album art, working well with Schwab’s hard rock-sounding vocals.
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To fill in the compositional cracks on a few songs the group looked locally and commissioned John Larkin on trumpet, Paul Sekulski on violin, Kevin Radmer on saxophone, and Myles Coyne on bass. For additional mixing and mastering the band sourced the job through a Reddit thread, connecting with an Argentinian sound engineer named Mariano Palmedessa.
Leo Lasseaux, aside from sounding French, does not translate to anything. Instead, Schwab wanted it to sound like a name, like the impression Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd made to some people. “When I was younger, I always thought it was funny how some people thought those were names of real people. Leo Lasseaux is my take on that concept and is meant to serve as a character in the album.”
Though this accounts for one character on the album, the songs feature different characters for which the lyrical content, as Schwab explains, is a synthesis of personal and shared experiences, jumbled up in a surrealist way. The songs put certain details under a microscope and illuminate a story told with vivid imagery. “I just tried to create quirky phrases that were intuitively compelling,” Schwab says of his lyrical process. “Drive Back Home,” the most directly COVID inspired, is about reflecting on where you’ve been and where you are going, while “Cactus Flower” and “Gasoline Tumbleweed” explore the different phases of love.
Shared Experiences
Waves Recoiling is the group’s debut release, an album that they wrote and recorded themselves without the help of studio professionals. While it might be expected of self-recorded material to sound like a lo-fi bedroom recording, the album sounds professionally recorded. That might be because of the band’s collective experience with production and audio recording. One of the most striking things about the album is how well the production quality gives a slick sheen to the tracks.
Although their debut album was released a few months ago, the band is already working on new songs. Schwab even has a whole backlog of songs on the chopping block. Energized by their debut release the band plans to celebrate their sonic achievement by booking shows for the future. You can find their music on bandcamp and watch for upcoming shows in the Milwaukee music scene.
