Enon Blends Indie Rock With Electro-pop
It sounds like the beginning of an extremely lame joke: What do you get when you mix the Midwest with the “Far East”?
Enon, that’s what — a band that merges the alt-rock sensibilities of veteran indie rocker and former leader of ’90s Dayton, Ohio, band Brainiac, John Schmersal, with the fresh, freaky drink of electro-pop dreamed up by former Blonde Redhead and Lapse bassist Toko Yasuda.
On a cell phone from somewhere between the Florida Everglades and the steamy sweatbath of Baton Rouge, La., Yasuda — co-songwriter, vocalist, bassist and synthesizer player — seems like the nice, polite type who would humor these kinds of cheesy attempts at wit. But right now, the Japanese-born and current Brooklyn, N.Y., resident is struggling to be heard — and understood — at a busy rest stop as semis roar past her on the highway. Enon is midway through a U.S. tour, and Yasuda, co-songwriter, guitarist, vocalist and keyboardist Schmersal and drummer Matt Schulz have pulled over on their way to Baton Rouge. They’ll be making their way to the West Coast next and appear at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco on Wednesday, Aug. 14.
It’s hard to be heard over the freeway’s fury, and it’s harder still to explain band chemistry. “I think [Schmersal and I] are coming from different backgrounds, but I think the musical approach is the same,” Yasuda says in her light, girlish voice. They both like to cook and ride bicycles as well as enjoying each other’s music. Of course, it also helps that they like the way the songs come out after they work on them together.
Shaped by a powerful mixture of synths and guitars, those tunes immediately stretch out their velvety, sharp tether hooks, latch onto the listener and drag him or her in. Just listen to Enon’s recently released touch-and-go full-length High Society, the follow-up to their acclaimed debut, Believo (2000). Tunes jerk between propulsive and hard-edged electro-rock, reminiscent of bands such as The Faint yet transformed by the breathy, almost naive vocals of Yasuda and more guitar-driven, almost glitter-rock tracks sung by Schmersal. Off-kilter rhythms, infectious melodies, unexpected chord progressions add further musical interest to the jarring yet strangely logical collage of hard rock and synth pop.
“Yeah, this record is kind of all over the place,” Yasuda, 28, concedes sweetly. “My sound is really pop, but I think the band had been doing electronic stuff before I joined the band.”
But it will all make sense when you see Enon live, she says, immediately urging me to see the band. “Please come! Yeah, you have to see us play so you get to know us.”
Named after a small town near Dayton, Ohio, Enon started out as Schmersal’s solo project after Brainiac broke up in 1997. When Schmersal decided to tour, he added second guitarist Rick Lee and drummer Steve Calhoun, both members of Skelton Key, but Schmersal himself maintained a firm control over the music’s focus.
That is until Yasuda joined the band in 1999. The Japanese native studied classical piano, but seemed greatly influenced by a mother who was crazy about David Bowie and Prince as well as ABBA and the Beatles. After joining an all-girl punk band while in high school, Yasuda moved to the States in 1992 and started playing with American musicians.
“I always loved music and I wanted to play in a band — everyone knows rock music is more fun than just playing piano at home,” she quips.
In 1995, she joined acclaimed New York City art-rock band Blonde Redhead, replacing her friend and original member Maki Takahashi on bass. But she didn’t stay long because, she says, “It just wasn’t working out … It wasn’t comfortable for me to write songs so I was kind of frustrated.”
Yasuda joined Lapse, a duo with former Van Pelt guitarist Chris Leo, who produced two well-regarded indie albums, Betrayal (1998) and Heaven Ain’t Happening (2000), and an on-again, off-again romantic relationship between the pair. But that ultimately didn’t pan out either. “Through the years, we had this really intense relationship, sometimes dating, sometimes not dating, and I think it got to be too much for her. I feel like it was coming from my end. I really f—ed up with some things,” Leo said of the duo’s breakup, before going on to praise Yasuda’s distinctive bass playing.
Yasuda began stockpiling her own songs, and when she left Lapse on the verge of a show with Les Savy Fav, with which Schmersal was temporarily playing, the guitarist approached her to join Enon.
After listening to the band’s first album, “I just felt very connected when I heard the record,” she says now. “Not all the songs but a few songs, I felt a connection with songs I would write. Then when we actually got to play — you just know instantly that it just felt right.”
Now that Lee and Calhoun have moved on and Schulz is in the band, Yasuda feels like she’s found her perfect musical fit, a group that makes her happy musically, playing and recording High Society, which, ironically, she describes as lyrically “dark … not a very happy album.”
The same can’t be said about Enon’s members, who will travel to Belgium for a rock festival after the U.S. tour and then begin working on their next CD. “We laugh a lot! We get tense out here, because on tour, you can’t be by yourself, so you always have some kind of clash. But we laugh a lot, and you know, we can talk through things, and I like the music we’re doing, so I think this is a good band for me. Yeah, I think so.”
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