Born out of their drummer Evan’s bedroom studio, Steel Wool has been making waves across the southland with plenty of local radio love including shoutouts from KCRW and a live session at KXLU. The group, consisting of Sean Lissner (guitar/singing), Jaden Amjadi (bass/screaming), Sam Schlesinger (guitar), and Evan Landi (drums) have developed a reputation for their boisterous live shows in garages, backyards, and DIY haunts of all stripes. Their eponymous debut finds the dream-pop upstarts pushing the edges of the otherworldly, fuzzed-out sounds that inspired them.

In addition to making your EP available through streaming services, you’re releasing it on cassette, which has become a more popular format over the past few years. What do you think accounts for recent interest in that medium?

SAM: I think people crave something tangible. When your songs only live on the Internet, they feel a little more disposable. I want something I can hold in my hands. To that end, tapes are great because you can buy them at a show and they fit in your pocket. Anyone who’s ever bought vinyl at a show knows what a pain it is to carry this big fragile square around for the rest of the night. 

KCRW described one of your songs as having “pillow-screaming energy.” What song was that in reference to? What gives that song in particular pillow-screaming energy, and what does that phrase mean to you?

JADEN: The screams that stick with me when listening to emo and hardcore are the ones that sound like they’re genuinely straining their voices. I feel that undergoing this small amount of harm can create a truer and more immersive form of artistic expression. Screaming is so cathartic and really everyone should find a healthy outlet to do so. Unfortunately, screaming in this style has also meant an early death for some of the greatest screamo bands to walk the earth – I Hate Sex comes to mind. So there’s a happy medium for sure and our sickest screamers should remember to care for their voices too.

Your press release mentions that Steel Wool has “developed a reputation for their boisterous live shows in garages, backyards, and DIY haunts of all stripes.” What are some of the more interesting “DIY haunts” you’ve played? 

SAM: We had a show booked at a venue in Downtown LA, and then the booking agent got fired and the venue unbooked all his shows. Then we rebooked at another venue in East Los Angeles, and the day before the show, the landlord shut down the venue. We found out via their Instagram story. So with less than 24 hours to go, we turned a friend’s backyard into a one-night-only DIY venue. All the amps, lights, the PA, etc. were drawing from one outlet and we spent the whole night worried we’d blow a fuse. But it went off without a hitch, and the neighbors were super chill about the whole situation. 

The chorus of your single “Fading” includes the line “A shadow’s negative is everything you’re not.” It’s an interesting use of a double-negative. Was there anything behind that decision? How might that particular phrasing carry a different meaning, for example, than coming straight out and saying “You’re a shadow”? 

JADEN: My favorite lyrics are those that defamiliarize the familiar. “Fading” conveys a speaker who is losing touch with their mental stability, their memory, and their conception of self. Without the dwindling self to hold on to, the line represents the speaker attempting to outline their personhood against a big ‘everything else’.

The first verse of that song also includes the line “These chemicals are in my blood to stay.” Do you have any particular chemicals in mind? Or are they metaphorical? 

SEAN: Definitely microplastics.

Sticking with “Fading” for one more question, your press materials describe the song as an “ode to wasting away,” the phrasing of which positions the song as a somewhat odd bedfellow of Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville.” Is there any affinity between the two?

SEAN: Yeah, I think we’re tapping into the same kind of energy as Margaraitaville but our coping mechanisms are incredibly different. “Fading” feels like a song that’s working through the anger and bargaining stages of grief while Buffet has firmly staked his claim in acceptance with a hammock slung between two palm trees.

Your artist’s statement describes Steel Wool as “a collision of sound experiments wearing the borrowed work uniform of rock music.” Why is experimentation central to your sound, and how would you describe the musical experiments that you perform?

EVAN: Experimentation is everything! We like to make dense and unique textures under the pretense of rock songwriting. This can only be done by experimenting with sound design. Drum loop a little too conventional? Let’s pitch it up 2 octaves, throw it through an amp simulator, and slap some reverb on it. Fuzz guitar sounding too clean? Let’s export the track, play it through a phone speaker, record that with a room mic, and import it back into the project file. Sometimes this results in something beautiful and unique, sometimes it sounds awful. The only way to find out is by experimenting and finding an unusual and inconvenient way to achieve a slightly different effect. I’d describe it as taking the scenic route. 

By way of contrast, how does the “borrowed work uniform of rock music” relate to those experiments? And why is it only borrowed? 

SAM: It’s hard to describe your own music. I feel like every band can relate to this – people ask you what your music sounds like, and you totally freeze up. It’s loud guitar music, it draws from a tradition of American rock music, but if you just tell someone you make rock music, that could mean anything from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Nirvana. So if you held a gun to my head, I’d call it rock music, but the more precise you get with the genres, the more you’ve boxed yourself in to something that doesn’t really feel like it quite fits, kinda like when you borrow a coworker’s work clothes because yours are in the wash. 

What’s on the horizon for Steel Wool?

EVAN: A big beautiful sunrise.

Sounds lovely!