Sincerely Grizzly meld different time signatures, keys and rhythms to create interesting and often hypnotic musical patterns. They aren’t straightforward – which is perhaps why they make for such an intriguing listen. The songs on their MySpace, which will be featuring on their upcoming self titled EP, are evidence of a band who take great pride in their ability to make a complicated and fragmented arrangement appear seamless and coherent. There is obviously a lot of …Trail of Dead influence in their music, but they emanate a unique creativity which sets them apart from their contemporaries. In this day and age it’s all too easy to copy another band and make a dollar/name (insert joke about ‘Jet’), but in listening to Sincerely Grizzly you’ll find that having the courage to do something a little different really can pay off.

The recent process of recording our EP was... something new to all of us so we were all very deer in the headlights about what it involved and how to go about doing it. We tried to do some demos ourselves before we got into the studio – but that didn’t turn out so well and we spent more time trying to figure out what time signature and tempo our own songs were in, rather than actually recording anything. By the time we went into the studio we were even more unsure of ourselves and what we wanted than when we started, but as soon as we got in there (Hillside Studios) things started to make sense.

Recording with Matt (Hills) was a really good experience. He was just a genuine nice guy who knew what he was doing and knew what would make us sound better. He’d done stuff for a lot of local bands I like, particularly with a band called Zeta, so he was already a preconceived choice for producer, but just what he did for us I don’t think any of us expected to come out as well as it did. After we finished our stuff with Matt, we took the recordings to Darren Thompson to master and with that we had an EP.

We also probably had a bit of a different experience to other bands doing our cover art, but that’s another story. (I later learned that this experience involved things of a slightly criminal nature and thus, probably not suitable for mass media publication.)

Collectively, our favourite bands are... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, The National, Foals and They Promised Us Jetpacks. Rowan listens exclusively to anything before 1990: your ACDC’s and Phil Colins’, with the exceptions of Hot Chip and The Saboteurs. I think we’re just trying to cover the entire spectrum.

Our EP plans are... we’ve got a big thing with first impressions so we wanted the first recording people heard of us to be the way it sounded in my head rather than compiling something for the sake of it. That led to us being a band for about a year without any recorded sound to show for it, but I
think in the end it was for the best.

Our arrangements... essentially start with either an idea of a sound in my head or a guitar riff with my hands, and I guess I just keep repeating the process until I have enough riffs or ideas to put everything together. I think the irregularity comes about because often those riffs are in and of differing tempos, time signatures and keys. That said, I like that kind of thing and push for it in songwriting. I guess the difficulty is amalgamating the parts to create a coherent song.

The best thing about playing music in Adelaide is… the way we’ve been accepted by other bands and venues when it comes to playing shows. It’s less competition than it is just wanting to help out and do the right thing by others in the business, but hey maybe people just don’t see us as a threat and we
don’t know any better.

www.myspace.com/sincerelygrizzlymusic