The Everyday Visuals

By Miriam Lamey
Photo by Patrick Piasecki

Dorothy and Toto discovered long ago that the smoke and mirrors game is not where it’s at. You want a new brain, a heart? Better to find the meek old man behind the curtains and ask him what the deal is. Chances are, he’ll say you’ve got everything you need already. Boston-based The Everyday Visuals are determined to produce music that, in singer Christopher Pappas’ opinion, forms “an honest, organic record from start to finish,” shunning shallow posturing aimed at, say, A&R flying monkeys sent in from the West. Pappas wants music with depth and originality.

When discussing the Visuals’ newest and strongest offering, 2007’s Things Will Look Up, he conjures the image of an iceberg, where “the top third is visible and underneath is where the real heaviness is actually present.” Pappas is, in fact, exactly right. At first listen, the record sounds like “just a pop record.” However, with repeated listens, it becomes clear that there’s something else going on here.
“People crave something real that they can latch onto,” says Pappas. He stresses that making music is “like this storytelling of hurt and pain and all these fucked up emotions and at the end of it, you all come out a little better.” Perhaps it’s this personal aspect to the Visuals’ music that keeps fans coming back. Things Will Look Up is an album about personal struggle, pain, loss, and redemption — stories told with such candor and realism that they have to be genuine. The Visuals believe very strongly in their music, and consequently, their sincerity is their greatest strength.

Visuals also try to take this up-front approach with them through music biz brambles, ending up with a frank and no-bullshit band persona. “Some publicists and managers and record companies make you feel like you’ve missed the next big thing ... or that you’re missing the greatest record of all time, and thus it creates a crowd and people check it out,” Pappas says. “When you pull the proverbial curtain down on this Wizard of Oz kind of thing, you find out that it’s nothing except for the few exceptions that stand the test of time. In the Visuals, we get that façade and want to be one of those bands that you can pull as many curtains down as you want, but we’re still going to be here and still play the music we want.”

And if it turns out that fortune and glory and record execs get to the palace and never even bother to look behind the first curtain, no matter. The band refuses to sacrifice its creative vision for exposure. Guitarist Eli Sheer states, “We’d love to quit our day jobs, but not at the expense of doing something we love. That’s the point of it.” In the meantime, the Visuals have built an alternate framework for success. Refusing to rely on the record industry, the band defines their achievements on their own terms. Bassist Chris Zembower muses, “You don’t get signed to some big label, then you’re rich, then you’re cool, then you tour and then you’re set. It doesn’t work like that anymore. There’s a new model that’s going to be made and I don’t know if we’re going to have anything to do with it.” He emphatically continues, “The only thing you can do is be true to what you love and give it the best you can. What more could you possibly ask for?”

www.theeverydayvisuals.com