One reason Rob Crow, the guitarist and one of the vocalists for Pinback, believes the band has lasted for 15 years is simple: What’s the point of giving up?
“I’ve never really understood why bands stop playing,” Crow says. “I’ve never really given up any of my projects except maybe my first two bands. I’ve perpetually kept a minimum of about seven bands together.”
Crow has played in silly-punk bands like Fantasy Mission Force and hardcore power-violence bands like Alpha Males, has performed with the jazz-punk band Creedless and is even part of a found-sound burlesque band called Optiganally Yours, so he definitely has a thing for exploring various creative musical outlets.
“I don’t think there should be any artistic limits, and it surprises me when people think it’s weird that a person will do more than one kind of music,” Crow says. “I mean, a film director doesn’t make just one kind of film, and an author doesn’t only write one kind of book. There are more things to be said or done. Life’s too short not to mess around as much as possible.”
But in spite of all that exploration, Crow always comes back to Pinback.
“It’s just a lot of fun,” he says. “There are so many places the music can go in one set. It has a storyline and hits all these different emotional points in terms of the feeling of the different songs and the style, whether short, long, loud or weird. I like to do it. I get exhausted every night, and that’s how I want to feel. I want to feel at the end of a set that I gave everything I could and that I don’t have anything left by the time I go and sit down.”
And while fun is the name of the game with regard to the live show, and Crow’s unbelievable number of solo and side projects obviously keep him engaged, this is a lot of hard, meticulous work. Pinback’s latest album, 2012’s Information Retrieved, features mid-tempo Americana-tinged rock (“Proceed to Memory”), catchy indie pop (“Glide”), piano-led jazz rock (“Diminished”) and a lyrical sense of humor (“Denslow, You Idiot!”). The band clearly tries to avoid going on autopilot. Crow and bandmate Zach Smith (bass, keys, vocals) are never in a rush to release an album before it is perfect.
“That’s why it can take five years to make a record sometimes,” Crow says with a laugh when referencing the gap in time between Information Retrieved and 2007’s Autumn of the Seraphs. “We go out of our way to try to manipulate happy accidents. We try to take however long it takes to surprise ourselves into something good by mistake.”
PINBACK
The Depot
400 W. South Temple
Saturday, Aug. 31, 9 p.m.
$16 in advance, $21 day of show
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