Syracuse-based vegan-pop band to release album
Evan Jenkins | Staff Photographer
minnoe has played a over a dozen shows throughout the city of Syracuse and will play this Friday at The Scarier Dome with Super Defense and Furnsss.
Ian Marr said he’s disappointed.
“The Super Bowl was the other day and we didn’t play at it,” Marr said, sitting in front of a tea set in the room his band, minnoe, recorded their upcoming album “Pinwheel” in. “Is it realistic to think like that? I don’t know, not really, but you have to have that ambition to a certain degree.”
Alongside drummer Joe Librandi-Cowan and bass guitarist Ian Sherlock, Marr is the lead singer and guitar player in minnoe, a vegan-pop band that formed less than a year ago in Syracuse.
Their music is a clash of the 2000’s DIY hardcore scene on Sherlock and Librandi-Cowan’s side and a more eccentric pop background inspired by the likes of Frankie Cosmos, Katie Crutchfield and Robert Pollard from Guided By Voices on Marr’s side. Together they make short, fast, loud pop songs that are both pure and perfect in construction, Marr said.
The vegan aspect comes from their lifestyle and dietary choices, with each choosing to abstain from the consumption and use of animal products to varying degrees.
“Specifically in the realm of music it’s interesting to be able to talk about (veganism),” said Sherlock, a senior art photography major at Syracuse University. “DIY music in general, whether it’s punk, pop, whatever — I feel like any subculture is derived from questioning authority and the means that push meat and dairy consumption are an extremely powerful authority, and to go vegan is to completely defy those forces.”
With that, each member brings a different perspective to the band, individually seeking inspiration from both music and their environment. Librandi-Cowan is a photographer working on a photo story on the maximum-security prison in Auburn, New York. Sherlock is currently training for an ultra-marathon he’ll run this summer, and Marr, a substitute teacher, is a compulsive writer, dishing out handfuls of song lyric ideas each weekend.
“It was a running joke for a while,” Marr said. “I think I sent Ian (Sherlock) a song at one point and there’s a quote from him where he said, ‘All this kid does is grade papers and write songs.’”
They’ll start with a chord progression, a melody and some or most of the lyrics, which lead into the collaboration process come practice time. The three recognize that as musicians they can get better and with that comes a larger sense of independence in song development and performance.
“I think that our abilities are what makes the band fun for me because they’re constantly challenging us because we’re trying so f*cking hard when we’re onstage,” Sherlock said. “We can’t sleep when we’re onstage.”
Sherlock and Librandi-Cowan knew each other throughout their teen years because of the hardcore scene in Auburn, a post-industrial community of less than 30,000. At 16, Sherlock ran a practice space in a dingy, abandoned Nolan’s Shoe Store with no plumbing and a $5 per person use fee. Here, Librandi-Cowan’s band would practice and play shows.
After high school, Sherlock followed the militant straight edge music scene to New York City, and Librandi-Cowan started school at SU, where he studied art photography at the College of Visual and Performing Arts. With some convincing, Sherlock moved to Syracuse in 2013 where he slept on Librandi-Cowan’s furniture-less living room floor before officially moving into a bedroom.
At the same time, a little over an hour away in Binghamton, New York, Marr was a ranked Dance Dance Revolution player and avid gamer studying poetry at Binghamton University.
In late 2014 Librandi-Cowan and Marr met at a basement show in Syracuse and bonded over the four-piece punk band RVIVR. The two hit it off, exchanging verbiage over the instruments they play and ending with Librandi-Cowan suggesting the two start a band.
“But it’ll have to wait because I’m going to Prague for four months tomorrow,” he remembered he said.
The two kept in contact over Librandi-Cowan’s time abroad and reconnected when he returned. The two started to collaborate on music together and booked their first show in Librandi-Cowan’s basement early last year. They recruited Sherlock, who lived upstairs, to play bass guitar, an instrument he’d never even touched.
Over the course of their time together, the band has played a little over a dozen shows throughout Syracuse alone. This Friday, minnoe will join Super Defense and Furnsss for a show at The Scarier Dome. Entry is $3 to $5.
Their upcoming album “Pinwheel” is set to release late February with 10 songs the band wrote over the course of five months. Each song on the album represents a feeling or a memory from their writing process.
“To go a little deeper, we’ve all been super busy and we’ve all had some personal stuff go on in the past year and it’s just been so cool to have this as such a positive outlet, and in a way to make us stronger,” Librandi-Cowan said. “The band is what really kept me going.”
Published on February 9, 2016 at 9:31 pm
