Soldiers of fortune

>> Spirit Marines infiltrate
New York and get lucky

GUNG-HO: Spirit Marines

by JACK OATMON

While the members of Spirit Marines spend the school year at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, during the summer, they make the age-old pilgrimage to NYC to try and cut their way into the music scene with their own punchy concoction of fiddly, melodic rock and groovy, pulsing beats. Guitar player Jake Aron had plenty to say about their mission to kick out their jams and make a name for themselves in a city that takes no prisoners.

“Honestly, I have a feeling a lot of the fans in the city are kind of chilly and just have cool haircuts and don’t really care about music very much,” Aron explains. “But in general, it seems pretty supportive here. A lot of people seem to say New York’s the hardest—that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere, and it’s almost impossible to get booked in clubs. But we’ve made some good friends and booking is really not so bad. We’ve been playing in the city pretty much every week. People are much friendlier in New York than I would have expected.”

Their quest for recognition is no doubt helped along by their slick chops, which make for a toe-tapping package that takes as many cues from Pavement as it does New Order. While immediately associable with many other dance-punk bands in the New York scene, the jazz training of Spirit Marines’ membership shines through the sanguine beats by way of delicate flourishes throughout.

“We all have very technical music training in our backgrounds, so it sort of just comes out like that. A lot of the time when we’re writing, we’ll just put in something goofy or stupid that we think is cool, but not very serious, but then it will develop into a really fast arpeggio or something. The guys in Malajube were saying that it sounds like technical dance music, which I guess is sort of what it is.”

With Famous Lovers and
Hollerado at Zoobizarre
on Friday, Aug. 10, 9 p.m.