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PROMOTIONAL
ANTICS FOR MY FRIENDS By Jonathan Perry Even a few years ago when they were playing to a room full of empty chairs, Mishima singer-guitarist Arto Payaslian and drummer Sean O'Brien believed that someday, those seats would be filled. For a band that in a few weeks will release "Hold My Breath," its debut album on the Boston-based Catapult label, someday is now. "I am so excited and thrilled that we're finally going to be able to get this record out there and that people will be able to tear off the shrink wrap and put the album on their stereo and look at the artwork on the cover," Payaslian says. "Hopefully, it will mean something to them in the way that records mean something to me." "Hold My Breath" (which is slated for release late next month) more than fulfills the heady promise of Mishima's inventive guitar-and-drums approach. On tracks such as "Twist my arm", "Draped", and a dozen others, the outfit excels with its diary-like lyrical detail and concise melodies that jump with delight one moment and swoon with melancholy the next. "Hold my breath" is, in its own way, a flag-bearer of the Boston pop tradition embodied by bands like the Lemonheads and Gigolo Aunts. the disc is a sweet-and-sour indie-pop gumball: small in scale but full of flavor. Even though Mishima - named for Japanese author Yukio Mishima - performs strictly as a two-piece on stage, the album includes subtle brush strokes of bass, cello, and pastel harmonies for coloration. O'Brien and Payaslian supplied most of the instrumentation themselves but recruited musical friends to pitch in here and there (on strings, for instance). Untouched, however, is the fierce sense of self-reliance that gives Mishima its unmistakable, tightly woven sound. Honed and refined over the years, the sound happened by accident. Payaslian had placed a classified ad looking for a bass player and drummer to form a band. O'Brien, a drummer by night and a child psychologist by day, was the first to answer. The two men soon found that none of the bass players trying out were making Mishima sound any better - or fuller - than it had sounded that first day, with just Payaslian and O'Brien jamming together. Likewise, knowing what to add (and what to leave out) in the studio proved an exhausting learning experience, especially for an outfit whose identity and reputation was built on its less-is-more configuration. "It was boot camp," jokes O'Brien. "We experimented, but we didn't add anything just for the sake of adding anything." Says Payaslian: "Ultimately, I think we feel so confident as a two-piece that we believed that in a studio setting, we could be more expansive without worrying that people thought it would be cheating." Since when is a band that gives its audience everything it's got - with heart, imagination, and a bundle of hooks - guilty of cheating? Jonathan Perry writes the monthly column Rock Scene for the Globe's Thursday Calendar section.
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Members:
Arto Payaslian (vocals, guitar); Sean O'Brien (drums, vocals).