The sheer intensity of the music – loud and harrowing, alternately dark and beautiful – belies the size of mr. Gnome, a self-described “trip-rock” band performing at Diablo’s on Dec. 7. Certainly it takes more than two people to reach the volume of pure and simple noise the band creates. Yet somehow Nicole Barille and Sam Meister manage to mount an auditory assault on the senses comparable to the loudest, grungiest alt rock bands. And they sound pretty good doing it, too.
When Barille and Meister started playing together in a band a few years ago, it went well enough, with Meister writing songs and Barille messing around on the guitar, Barille said recently as the two were making their way from Cleveland to Cincinnati, where they were to play the first show of their tour in support of their newly released self-titled EP. But because of the other members of the group, the band didn’t go anywhere. So Barille and Meister started jamming as a two-piece and, two and a half years later, mr. Gnome – which should have a cool story about the name’s genesis, but doesn’t, Barille said – was embarking on its first lengthy tour.
Because the band is a duo, both members pull double duty: Barille on vocals and guitar, Meister on drums and rhythm. “Sam’s kind of like a bass player, filling in. And I naturally sing in a way that creates another layer,” Barille said. The term trip-rock, which Meister’s father coined for the band, combines the two genres the duo is influenced by: trip-hop and hard rock. Meister’s driving, rhythmic drums and Barille’s grinding guitar set the band’s hard core tone, but it is Barille’s haunting, beautiful voice that makes Mr. Gnome stand out, an indie gem in the cacophonous rough.
“Our music is really emotion-based,” Barille said.
“I’ve always responded to darker, beautiful music. (Our songs are) kind of melancholy, but the beauty shines through. That’s kind of like how life is.”
The band’s EP, released this month, has five songs that grab hold and thrash about in bi-polar highs and lows of pounding beats and psychedelic riffs. But Barille doesn’t want the band painted as merely hard core. “We’re not trying to be heavy. We have a softer side that doesn’t come out in the EP,” Barille said.
Despite their softer side, Barille said the band’s upcoming show will be high-energy – an in-your-face experience she described as “schizophrenic,” with the duo playing off each other, like a cat-and-mouse game where they try and keep on top the entire time.
The band’s independence is both a blessing and a bane. On one hand, they have complete creative freedom. But not being signed to a label makes life a little more difficult for mr. Gnome, Barille said, because she and Meister both have to work full-time day jobs to pay the bills that keep the band going. And when their work day is over, the two have to write songs, rehearse, perform and put together press kits for the tour. “It’s exhausting,”
Barille said, “getting to work at eight the next morning after playing a show the night before. But it definitely pays off.”
Even though this is the first extended trip for mr. Gnome, Barille and Meister have lofty hopes: “We just want to make it back alive,” Barille said.
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