The Scourge of the Sea

By Ashley Willard
Photo by Jonathan Moore

The Scourge of the Sea's history is almost as poetic as its songs: A couple of years back, Robby Cosenza was housesitting for a friend in Lexington, Kentucky. Hearing music coming from a nearby apartment, he was inspired to go knock on the door of Andrew English, whose guitar playing had captivated Cosenza for a good 20 minutes. The pair instantly clicked, and along with English's friend Justin Craig, they formed the band that has since released 2006’s stunning Make Me Armored on California's Alias Records and toured extensively in support of it.

Make Me Armored has received many critical accolades in the year since its release, and for good reason. The 10 tracks (plus one bonus hidden track) are gorgeous, thoughtful songs with smart and well-crafted lyrics.

The liner notes of Make Me Armored make clear the diverse musical talents of each member — instead of "Band Member X: Drums, Band Member X: Guitar," and so on, Craig, English and Cosenza all have long lists of instruments following their names. Cosenza mainly holds down the beats with English and Craig on the various strings; at live shows, this is the basic format as well, but it's not unusual for them to pull a switcheroo at least once per set. English, who birthed the bulk of the songs on Make Me Armored (with further credit given to the band as a whole for songwriting), takes the vocal lead, with full back-up support from the other two. They often close a set with the same track that closes the album, "Chocolate Chips" — a song that builds slowly before climaxing after about three minutes (on the recorded version anyway) into chill-inducing vocal harmony rounds and, in live incantations, evolves into an a cappella finale that leaves a major impression on the audience.

Though Cosenza, Craig and English are the three official members, they have many friends who play occasional shows with them, adding cello and other instruments to the band's organic and honest sound, which, according to the SotS MySpace page, has been compared to The Softies, The Mountain Goats and early R.E.M. The band recently asked Dickie Hayden, of Lexington band Petticoat Petticoat, to join them full-time on bass. "We've never really had a bass player," says Cosenza. "Justin played bass on the record. We've never really had the low end." At press time it was all but a done deal with Hayden, and the band planned on spending time over the summer working on new songs with Hayden fully involved in the writing process. Recording for the next SotS album will soon follow.

On the phone from the road, Cosenza eschews any rocker attitude in favor of instant camaraderie, making jokes and apologizing for potentially being aloof (he hasn't had his morning coffee yet). "I just try to stay busy," he says. "I jump on a lot of tours." He's referring to the eleven months he's just spent on the road, between outings with SotS and other bands he plays with. When not with SotS, Cosenza plays drums around the U.S. with Tarbox Ramblers and These United States; meanwhile, Craig recently accompanied Neva Geoffrey, also of Lexington, on a jaunt around the South. It's the day before Cosenza will return home to Lexington to take the summer off from touring and focus on The Scourge of the Sea. "We pretty much know what we're doing two-to-three months ahead of time," Cosenza says of juggling other projects with SotS time. "We don't spend a lot of time together as a band — we rehearse when we need to, we all write separately, we don't really write together. It's kind of a strange way to have a family but it's working.”

www.thescourgeofthesea.com