With a sound akin to Owls, D.C.’s own Pagoda is gearing up to finish their LP and is planning for a summer tour. Having dropped their new EP, Seven Nights, earlier this month, the boys are finally increasing their presence regionwide, six years after first having gotten here. With an uncanny blending of sounds and influences, I am not sure what these guys and six months of eclectic LPs couldn’t do. We caught their performance at a "rock luck" with Richmond’s Gregor Samsa and chewed a little post-show fat.

Pagoda’s show was musically rich, blending with and playing styles of acid jazz, psych-rock revival, and country-folk. Their rhythms, rendered soft and dreamy on the recent EP, took a harder, more evocative edge live. In the narrow acoustics of the basement, the drums had a more assertive presence.

The timing and verve of their strumming and revivalist jams is their strength. On the opener “Broken Sticks,” they had a precision both organic and mechanical. The band’s familiarity and experience of playing together makes it seem like they are one. This was displayed heavily on “DCA” and “Seven Nights,” where the guitars flowed over each other like they were looped in a acid jazz fist-fight on the former, while Ken’s strumming and the snap of the snare drum would strike simultaneously, then narrowly miss to weave textures over the latter.

The jams were touched with psych-folkishness. Pagoda experimented with that sound on “Story in the Fold,” adding a live energy that fluctuated throughout the song, warped into a slow motion melody, and finished with Ben’s driving instrumental lead. The honeyed lead guitar on “Tear Down the Tents” got extra mileage out of the pedal shift along the way.

The one hurdle they faced was the vocals. I appreciated the clean, fey nature of Ben’s voice on Seven Nights and was a little disappointed when his onstage vox came off more as a mutter. His voice, however, did come through beautifully on their cover of the Trogg’s “6654321.” Ben’s blistering delivery and the fire of the melodies was thrilling, reminiscent of the odd moment in Dig! when the Brian Jonestown Massacre was actually playing onstage instead of getting fired. After the song’s crescendo, there was only rhythm guitar, and a dreamy flourish in the lead.

Setlist:
Broken sticks
DCA
Story in the Fold
Seven Nights
Tear Down the Tents
6654321 (Troggs' cover)
Throwing Stones

Visit Them at: http://www.pagodamusic.net/ or their recording blog.

See Them Next: TBA - Get the Seven Nights EP in the meantime!

Questions for Pagoda:

You guys have a subtle psych-rock influence. How did you develop that?

Raj: As with any influence, it creeps up on you when you're not looking, and you might recognize a genre taking hold of your hand immediately or may realize it in retrospect after writing a song. But sure, we're fans of the Dead, Roky Erickson, etc. no doubt.

Adrian: Fortunately with Pagoda we never set out to make music in any fixed direction or to mine a certain set of influences. We all like a great variety of music including old American folk, early country, psych, and punk. The band came together when Ben had a number of songs he wanted to record, and we all went to a studio to record Dearly Departed. After the recording we had some shows booked and thus kept on practicing.

Eventually the music became more collaborative and reflected all of our tastes. Sometimes you can’t quite say why a band ends up sounding a certain way. Everyone comes to it with their own set of tastes and sorta tries to steer it that way. Sometimes there’s some friction, but for the most part things still sound cohesive.

How did Pagoda come together as a band? How did you end up around DC?

Ben: Raj and I met in high school and Adrian and Elmer and I all went to college together in Fredericksburg, VA. We moved up here after graduation and then Raj joined us a couple years later. We're all friends, we all love music; it felt natural to start playing together.

You've lived in the area around six years and been a band for about four. How has the musical landscape changed?

Ben: When Adrian and I first moved up here, we rented a house about half a mile from the Ballston metro. Even just a few years ago, Arlington was a lot different, especially the strip along Wilson and Clarendon. Mostly it was mom-and-pops…you had some great restaurants like Cafe Dalat, Atomic Music had a satellite store down there, and there was a place called Now Music and Fashion which was a great CD store right by the Clarendon metro. They would host a lot of in-store performances and small concerts in a park across the street. For about a year or two, that area felt like the center of something to us. Some of the old haunts still seem to be going strong, but otherwise that whole Orange Line section of Arlington is another planet nowadays. When the Cheesecake Factory went in, you sorta knew something sad was about to go down. Now, whenever I drive through there it almost bums me out…like this place used to have a sense of geography. Now, it could be anywhere. Nothing’s wrong with change, its just when you replace a genuine sense of community with valet parking, ugly architecture and unrestrained gluttony, something’s gone wrong. So that affected things I think, but you know people make music despite all that. This idea of scene is important insofar as it relates to community and infrastructure, but the impulse to be creative comes from somewhere internal. You want to share what you create, it has a public face, but once you get into that zone of writing a song, that’s a really special place that nobody can touch. It’s personal.

What's the best thing about the D.C. music scene?

Adrian: DC’s got a great musical history, and there are a lot of really interesting people making music, working as engineers, running labels, and getting shows together. There are also a number of nice venues to play in. The fact that DC’s close to other towns on the eastern seaboard makes it a great place to start tours from.

What could be better/room for improvement?

Elmer: We need more go-go dancers.

Members of Pagoda all have day jobs - how does that affect your practicing and recording schedule?

Adrian: Sure we all have day jobs—you’d have to be independently wealthy not to have one around here. You have to set priorities as a result to make music a part of your life. None of us comes home in the evenings and watches Seinfeld reruns, as much as I’d love to do that sometimes.

How's the new LP coming? When is it due?

Adrian: The new LP is coming along well and we’re hoping to be finished with the recording in a few more months. It’s been slow going since we decided to do it on our own and not in a studio. In a studio it’s much easier to track everybody live and have all the basics done quickly. We’ve been recording everything part by part, and its way more time consuming. And none of us are really experienced engineers, so we’re taking our time to make sure we like the sounds we get.

Ben: Yeh, we’re slow. Luckily, we’ve had some help from our friends in the studio world along the way. We’re bad at blogging, but you can read all about our trials and tribulations here.

Pictures of Pagoda from http://www.pagodamusic.net.