Unsurprisingly, YouTube features a bumper crop of fan videos that hold forth on the oh-so-’90s genre of “emo rock.” Many of the posters seem to agree on what “emo” is (annoying) and what it isn’t (cool). The four folks in The Color of May have occasionally referred to themselves as purveyors of the E-word, but that’s mostly because they want potential fans to know they’ve been inspired by the likes of Jimmy Eat World and Saves the Day. As for whatever other baggage “emo” carries, Color of May drummer Matt Spivey hopes listeners check it at the club door.
“If it were up to us, we’d probably just be called ‘rock,’ ” the 25-year-old said. “I think labels can be helpful, but I’m not 100 percent sure what ’emo’ is anymore. I hear other bands where the singer is screaming his way through a song, and they don’t sound like us.”
Still, The Color of May displays several of the genre’s trademark qualities — in the most infectious way possible. Singer-guitarist John Spivey (Matt’s twin brother) pens lyrics about romantic ecstasy and meltdown with a wordsmith’s eye toward striking imagery — in “My Hometown,” he vividly imagines the citizens of his Johnson County burg of Joshua, on red-drenched roads cupping their hands to catch his words. The ballad “Heart Attack” re-imagines that medical emergency as a guy’s total surrender to the girl he’s enthralled with. Both tunes are included on the band’s second EP, Recovery, engineered by Grammy-nominated knob-spinner Alex Gerst (Doosu, Tripping Daisy, The Toadies). With Matt’s versatile arsenal of tumbling beats, the soaring lead guitar of Ryan Hanifin, 22, and the precision bass of Hailey Wynn, 22, the CD manages to sound unalloyed and majestic at the same time.
The Spivey twins got an early musical indoctrination in Joshua. Their parents were music lovers. Matt and John would accompany their mom to see their dad play the bass for kicks with different friends’ bands. As the tykes grew older, Spivey family outings grew ever more unconventional. They attended one late-night performance of the now-defunct L.A. punk outfit Jughead’s Revenge at a club in Dallas’ Deep Ellum. Later, they took a field trip to Austin to catch that year’s Warped Tour. Around junior high, Matt and John took up piano and guitar, respectively, and began jamming with their neighbors.
“There wasn’t a lot to do in Joshua, but that meant we spent all day, every day, with the same group of people,” said Matt. “These are friends we still have today.”
It soon became clear that John was emerging as something of a frontman or, at the very least, as a singer-lyricist who’d attract attention. Matt learned the drums, figuring it’d be a better fit for their shared musical aspirations. On the issue of competition between the brothers, Matt insists that their close relationship has helped matters enormously.
“It was a little hard at first to watch John take the lead,” Matt admitted. “But he’s my best friend. I don’t think we’ve spent more than a couple of weeks away from each other our whole lives. When we rehearse and write and play, we don’t need to explain our ideas to each other.”
The Color of May formed in 2003 and has gone through multiple lineup changes. A few years after Matt and John moved to Denton to take classes at the University of North Texas (and work their ways onto the musical scene, natch), the brothers met current guitarist Hanifin and bassist Wynn. Hanifin had heard Color of May’s music and contacted them through MySpace for an audition. Wynn met the Spiveys during a Denton battle of the bands competition and discovered their influences and opinions were simpatico with hers. Women and men playing in the same rock band is still relatively rare, but Matt sounds surprised that anyone would think it unusual.
“We didn’t set out to find a ‘chick bass player,’ ” he said with irony. “But [Wynn] shares our attitude and our sense of humor. She’s very talented. When we first met her, we knew she’d be fun to hang out with.”
All four members are proud of Recovery, and they’ll be spending the summer promoting it with a slew of dates around North Texas. They also want to expand their presence into Austin. The members’ various college deadlines and responsibilities will figure into their musical schedules until all of them earn the diplomas they’re seeking. But Matt feels that living in Texas means time is on their side — they can drive miles in any direction and find a variety of new musical scenes to explore. To that end, the band wants to buy a small touring van, so they’re pressing the merch hard. Every penny in profit is committed to putting the quartet on the road.
“If people want to buy a shirt because they like our music, that’s great,” Matt said. “If they just want to help us get a van, that’s great, too.”
The Color of May
W/Brandin Lea
Sat at The Aardvark, 2905 W Berry St, FW. 817-926-7814.
