By Kathrine Hoffert

Photo By Dave Potes

If art screams life, then the San Francisco three-piece known as The Mall screams it louder. This art-thrash band from the Bay takes an “emotionally emotional meets Zelda” approach and shreds it up with anxiety, melody and doom. Ellery Samson’s tearing vocals wreak havoc over the danceable world of Dan Tierney’s Casio keyboard, and Adam Cimino beat blasts it all forward with impending urgency.

Passing acquaintances in their hometown in Sonoma County, Samson and Tierney found each other again in San Francisco and decided it was time to approach music together as the quintessential novices that they were. Forming a band called The Downers, they were terrible on purpose and comprised of other non-musicians who had never really played their instruments before. Though the band was indeed awful and a rip-off of The Germs, the notion of just doing it was planted and soon the two realized that they didn’t have to sound bad anymore.

Samson and Tierney found Cimino soon after and everything just clicked. When it came down to getting serious about making music, “We didn’t need to think about it — all of a sudden we were The Mall,” explains Samson. Not altogether certain about the origin of its name, the band is quite sure that it is rooted in sarcasm. “We’re all genuinely cynics,” Samson explains.

Influenced by the post-rock ’90s, The Mall is adamant about avoiding long-winded styling and has adopted a 90-second song average, flipping the off-switch as soon as things start getting catchy. “Right when you find yourself at that point in the song where you just get it and can start to sing along, it ends,” Samson says with a smile.

It’s the Mall’s ability to catch the fleeting moment — that one violent electrical surge — before it dissipates out into the atmosphere that stands out on the band’s album Emergency at the Everyday. Lately, The Mall has started going into the studio to record new songs almost immediately after they’re written. This method keeps the songs from losing any velocity. In light of this new approach, however, Samson comments that when he listens to Emergency at the Everyday, he is actually surprised at how much energy it holds. “Those songs are three years old and they still sound pissed,” Samson says.

This quick turnover time reflects The Mall’s avoidance of any stagnancy or dullness. Only 300 copies of their first EP, First Before and Never Again, were pressed (on vinyl). Though the band’s sound feels very intense, The Mall’s approach to making music is really straightforward and punishingly honest. “Everyone has ultimate veto power, and you don’t even have to have an explanation as to why,” Samson says.

Though the three members of The Mall seem to be completely in tune, it is sometimes difficult for others to understand their sonic language. “Dan and I both went to art school — we’re not musicians — so we talk about music very abstractly in an artist’s realm instead of a musician’s. This makes it hard when it comes to recording an album, and communicating about sound.” After three previous recordings of Emergency at the Everyday, The Mall finally found an engineer that got it: Jay Pellici at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studio. Pellici, of the band 31 Knots, not only recorded The Mall’s album, but also filled in for Cimino on drums during the band’s national tour this past fall with Japan’s Green Milk from the Planet Orange.

During The Mall’s brutal blast of a live show, what appears to be an angry phone call is really just a clever reconstruction of a shoddy old PA system. The band has fine-tuned a very blown-out and dirty sound without the use of effects, reverb, etc., by rigging a telephone up for vocal projection and turning up their amps to the max. “The phone thing is simply a tool to achieve a certain sound,” Tierney explains. “It’s not a gimmick or anything. Clean, clear vocals wouldn’t have worked with the rest of our sound.”

After their fall tour, which included opening up for The Splits on several dates, The Mall’s members realized that they’re actually quite fulfilled. “When I first heard The Splits were playing a reunion show, I was like, ‘Oh, I have to get tickets for that.’ I had no idea we’d be opening up for them,” Tierney says.

The Mall has no intention to stop the momentum anytime soon, and will follow up their latest release with two EPs over the next year. “We are all very engaged with what’s going on in the world. We are constantly grabbing up everything around us and catching what falls out,” Samson says.

Now that is art.


www.themallthemall.com