Electric Banana, with Astro Fang, Blanche Devereaux and Roly Yuma
WhERE: The Brewery, 111 W. Water St., Troy
WhEN: 9 p.m. Friday, Dec. 3
COST: $3
MORE INFo: (937) 339-8595
Electric Banana, with Astro Fang, Blanche Devereaux and Roly Yuma
WhERE: Jimmie’s Cornerstone, 1001 Brown St., Dayton
WhEN: 9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 4
COST: $5
MORE INFo: (937) 424-1784 or www.thecornerstonebar.com
ARTIST INFo: www.electricbananarocks.com
It’s easy for high school friends to grow apart when they get older. Life intervenes, and personalities and priorities change. However, for childhood buddies that remain close, such as Sean Patton and Mike Schultz of Electric Banana, that longtime intimate connection can breed unique results.
Patton, 26, and Schultz, 27, have been tight since they were high school students in Troy. A decade later, that friendship fuels the duo’s music, which is a joyful, irreverent blend of indie rock, electronica, metal and ’80s pop.
“It’s just fun, man,” Patton said. “This is what we have to give you. It’s no reflection of anything — this is just what we do every day. The initial setup was different. Mike did keyboards, drum machines and sang, and then I’d just play guitar. That changed, and he started playing guitar, too. Now it’s a mixture of both.”
Electric Banana started performing live in January 2008, but Patton and Schultz started performing together a decade ago when they jammed together as part of a freeform collective. That loose, unpolished approach is still inherently locked into Electric Banana’s creative DNA, which imbues the duo’s drum-machine-driven songs with a certain ragged charm and more than a bit of humanity.
“At first, it was like five dudes just making noise in a basement,” Schultz said. “Then I went to college, and he stuck with me.”
“Then it was two dudes making noise,” Patton said.
“Then it was two dudes making albums,” Schultz said.
Electric Banana’s new EP, “Odds and Ends,” gets its official release this weekend when the duo hosts CD-release shows at The Brewery in Troy on Friday, Dec. 3, and at Jimmie’s Cornerstone on Saturday, Dec. 4.
“We called it ‘Odds and Ends’ because it’s essentially just a good mix of music,” Schultz said. “It’s got a little bit of every type of genre. Every song is different.”
The mixing of divergent styles is nothing new for the group. Electric Banana took a similar approach on its 2008 debut, “Denim on Denim,” and the 2009 follow-up, “Black Rubber,” but “Odds and Ends” is distinguished by stronger songwriting and improved recording quality.
“We never take ourselves too serious, but you can literally hear how much better we’ve gotten with each album,” Schultz said. “We’ve learned a lot and gotten better equipment. You compare ‘Denim,’ which is kind of rough, to our new one, and it’s actually pretty decent.
“But I’m sure three albums from here I’ll be saying the same thing about this new one,” Schultz added.
Contact contributing arts and music writer Don Thrasher at donaldthrasher8@aol.com.
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