Joe of This Is My Suitcase answered some questions for Double Dance:

How did This Is My Suitcase become a band?

The musical cyclone of This Is My Suitcase was originally conceived because, throughout my many years spent heading up punk bands, I had grown tired from constantly relying on other band members who simply did not have the same level of concern for what we were doing. I care way too much- it’s like a sickness. I wanted to have somewhere that i could musically go to be alone and freak out as I saw fit; a place to care about my weird songs by my lonesome until the cows came home- and This Is My Suitcase was birthed. By the time I had released the first This Is My Suitcase full length album, Missent to Thailand, I had already enlisted three band members to play alongside me at shows, as I missed friendship and headbanging  aspects of band life too much to remain alone. Over the next couple of years, we had solidified our lineup to what it is now: myself, Nicholas Manos (on the electric guitar and percussion), Jeremy Skeen (a true drum mastermind), Joseph O’ Riordan (the bass guitar), and Mary Lynn Gloeckle (our pianist and pitch-wonderful female vocalist). Obviously, our band has become an actual “band” and no longer a “solo project”, if i must use such dreaded terms as these to describe our situation. LONG ANSWER SHORT: This Is My Suitcase was originally the product of my madness, but, since then, This Is My Suitcase has blossomed into a full band musical explosion that I love more than ever.

For those who haven’t heard music from This Is My Suitcase, how would you describe the band’s sound?

For the millions of unfortunate souls who, for whatever reason, choose to read about how music sounds rather than listen to how music sounds: the music of This Is My Suitcase does not sound like the music from any band I’ve heard to date. The simplest answer I can give to this mind-bending question is: the wily music of This Is My Suitcase sounds like the even-wilier music I constantly hear inside my brain as I try to live out my pathetic life as a sad-yet-optimistic cat-person who dies for fast music and writing love stories through sad metaphors. To be honest, This Is My Suitcase tends to accidentally sound 1% like everything I listen to: a little bit like The Beatles, a little bit like Elliott Smith, a little bit like Ben Folds, a little bit like Mozart, a little bit like Good Luck, a little bit like Ok Go, a little bit like Dr Dog, a little bit like Death Cab for Cutie, a little bit like The Zombies, a little bit like The Flaming Lips, etc, forever and ever; HOWEVER, this begs the question: if you sound a weensy-little bit like a boatload of very-different bands, then what do you actually sound like? EXACTLY! This Is My Suitcase sounds like nothing, and This Is My Suitcase sounds like everything. Confused? Good. Now go listen to something from THE KEYS TO CAT HEAVEN (our full length album, released in 2009 through Paper + Plastick records) way too loud, and decide for yourself how we sound!!! When asked how our record sounds, I usually say something along the lines of: THE KEYS TO CAT HEAVEN sounds like the Muppets as The Flaming Lips covering (The Beach Boy’s) Pet Sounds in Hell, produced by Ben Folds.

Where did the band’s name come from?

Justin Zrenner, a brilliant poet that I am lucky to call “friend”, thought up the band name, and I thought to myself “holy shit, that band name is so good that I need to make a band for it!”

What would you say are some of the band’s influences (musical or not)?

Although I pseudo-answered the musical half of this question in a previous answer, I will try to answer this doozie of a question as best as I can! Lyrically, more-often-than-not, I am influenced by what is going on with/around me. For example, “Goodbye Sky” from The Keys To Cat Heaven (a song about my looming and fast-approaching death, with an “oh well, let’s party!” overtone to it) was written as a completely open window to how I sadly felt when the song was created. Whereas other songs, such as “Mean Fish” (a song about two beta fish who are separated and willing die of total heartbreak), are less literal but still have parallels to my real life. Typically speaking, all of our lyrics are influenced by my actual life, and all of our music influenced by me being a maniac that never leaves the house and drinks 200 cups of coffee a day.

If you were given a chance to tour with any band, dead or alive, who would you choose to tour with?

Holy Shit, why would you even tease me with this question? Obviously, you opening up the “dead or” half of the question makes answering impossible. Obvious answer: THE BEATLES; however, i would ideally tour with them post Abbey Road (to see “Oh Darling” live) and they had stopped touring by this point, so my final “dead” answer is: ELLIOTT SMITH. I could write a book on why I believe Elliott and I were destined to be friends, so a tour would be a perfect chance to work my charm and befriend this genius. As far as living bands, that is easy: WE WANT TO TOUR WITH THE FLAMING LIPS EVERYDAY FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES!

Who writes the songs in the band?

I (Joseph Anthony Camerlengo) write the music and lyrics for our band. Easy answer! hehe

What is your favorite color?

I am partially-colorblind, so I truthfully am not sure how to answer. The best answer is “blue”, although sometimes I think I am looking at blue and it is really purple, then everyone laughs at me and I tear up. My answer is either “blue”, “rainbow”, or “sad” (is sad a color?)

Would you say there is something (unique maybe) that sets This Is My Suitcase apart from other bands?

Let me answer that with an equally valid question, my dearest Kaitlin: Would you say that there is anything at all that This Is My Suitcase has in common with any other bands? Being in This Is My Suitcase is like being an albino squirrel in a park, no matter who sees us and no matter what we are compared to, we are always the craziest. Oh bother!

What are some of the band’s goals for the future?

We want to be able to survive, in general and financially; right now we are failing at both, it seems. With any luck at all, one day, enough people will be stoked on whatever it is that we do that I/we will be able to pay our rent and bills with it, HOPEFULLY leaving enough money for some Harry Nilsson records after life expenses are taken care of. That’s the goal, i suppose. Survival and/or Nilsson.

I’d say that was quite an interview, wouldn’t you? Now show some love to Joe and go purchase The Keys to Cat Heaven!

The album has 8 tracks and features These Green Eyes lead singer Colin Cunningham on the song “Anywhere But Here”.

The tracklisting is:

1. Glassgow Smile

2. Anywhere But Here

3. In Waves

4. Sink of Swim

5. You Only Die Once

6. The Anchor Around My Neck

7. Black Tide

8. Corpse Paint

You can follow The Lows on Twitter and head over to their YouTube to see some updates from the studio.

Happy listening!

So, how do you help?

First off, click here.

On that page you will find different amounts of money that you can pledge, but you aren’t just donating money, the band is offering different things based on how much you pledge. By pledging, if the band meets their goal, you could receive anything from the new single before it’s released, to a round trip airline ticket to New York for the cd release show based on how much you pledge.

So help an awesome band and get something back!

Make sure you make a plede because if they don’t make their goal of $5,000, then nobody will get anything .

Get pledging!!!!

The Rise Records group is set to go on the Royal Family Tour with From First to Last, Eyes Set to Kill, and Confide this March.

Supporting bands are Relient K and fun. Tickets go on sale February 5th and 6th to the general public so don’t forget to get your tickets!

APRIL

26 Knoxville, TN — Knoxville Civic Coliseum
28 Charlottesville, VA — John Paul Jones Arena
30 Atlantic City, NJ — Trump Taj Mahal – Mark G Etess

MAY

1 East Rutherford, NJ — Arena Meadowlands Sports Complex
3 Columbus, OH — The LC Amphitheatre
4 Grand Rapids, MI — DeltaPlex
6 Rockford, IL — Rockford MetroCentre
7 Moline, IL — i Wireless Center
8 Council Bluffs, IA — WestFair Amphitheatre
10 Salt Lake City, UT — E Center
12 Seattle, WA — WaMu Theater
15 Bakersfield, CA — Rabobank Arena
16 Las Vegas, NV — The Joint

Get one now!

Keep an eye out for a new EP from the group soon!

It’s difficult to imagine that it’s been over 2 years since Alesana’s last album, Where Myth Fades To Legend, and they’ve come back with the full power of a harsh screaming and a symphony of madness. But instead of coming up with an entirely new repertoire to feed in to our ears, the band has simply emphasized what they’re made of; high pitched scream-driven cries of love and death.

In comparison with their previous music, The Emptiness is edgier, with, at times, recordings of what sounds merely like the cries of someone dying in a empty room, but also more powerful, in that there is a lot of percussion-driven parts and a faded strings section in the background to tie it all up. I’m left, at various parts of the record, feeling like I’m at the final scene of a thriller movie, with the orchestra playing and a spine-chilling prose filling my head.

One  must digress, however, to the fact that the record seems to have a lot of mechanics behind it, a lot of studio edited cuts; which brings the questions as to what some of these songs might sound like live. As part of releasing a good, full-bodied record, I believe it’s necessary to have the ability to perform the exact same song that’s found of the album—and with all the added harmonic sounds and the spoken word, who’s to say that Alesana will be able to keep the same dynamics as they’ve laid out in this album, while performing them on stage?

Nevertheless, The Emptiness certainly delivers with the same style of crunchy metal core that they defined for themselves in their previous releases. My track of choice from this album is “Heavy Hangs the Albatross”; it’s one of the slower tracks on the album, and sort of offers a little bit of a breather for me before rushing in to “The Lover”.

My Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Grab “The Emptiness” on iTunes today!

With getting ready to headline the 2010 AP Tour and seeing so much main stream publicity lately, it’s hard to believe that the sextet has found time to record and produce a new, full-length, album; but it’s certainly about time that we finally see one, as they’re stepping up from 4 EPs and a few singles—the string of 3- to 6-song releases was starting to get a bit tedious, and kept us dying for something we could actually listen to for more than 15 minutes at a time. Alas, the day has finally come. What Is Love? came out January 25th from Loveway Records, the bands own record company (which also includes his other hardcore alias, eatmewhileimhot)—but don’t get too excited just yet, as the album probably isn’t as exactly as you expected it.

Maybe it’s the cliché lyricism of an angsting boy, or the addition of more members in his group, but Christofer just didn’t do it for me this time around. I found that as I progressed throughout the album, I noticed a trend in the music: Christofer has a noticeably higher-pitched voice, as opposed to his older singles, almost a nasaly whine which gets on my nerves a bit. But hey, maybe it’s just me. You can decide for yourself. Also, did anyone else catch the choir-esque Beach Boys chant in “I Love You 5″?

However, I can’t be too negative, because the group redeems themselves more than a few times and displays a more finished product near the end of the album. Perusing the lyrics of “Past Times” implies an almost nostalgic feeling, and the meaning behind a bonus track, “Fifteen”, has real depth and meaning behind it. Lastly, my track of choice is, in fact, the title track, “What Is Love?” The single is a well-rounded representation of the album solely, and has a southern feel to it throughout. I’d say that it was a good pick to release as the single.

The album as a whole didn’t impress me too much, and I’d definitely say that Christofer and the group have a lot more potential. But in general, it’s good listen.

My Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Purchase What Is Love? on iTunes, or get the Bonus Track Version!