One thing I love about working on this blog is the kindness of most artists we cover, and how easily approachable and down to earth they are. Passionate but not pretentious, they care about the music regardless of making any serious money or playing for big crowds.
Deactivations is a fine example of this. Deactivations are a new band consisting of 3/4 of the members of The Passengers. I stumbled on their self-titled debut record on Bandcamp and took an immediate liking to the record which balances between solid indie rock and pop punk. In some songs Deactivations remind me of those US bands in the ’80s and early ’90s that blended pop and punk so well like Big Drill Car, Doughboys and early Down By Law. In other songs (e.g., Busy Signal, My Direction), they also remind me of the solo work of Dr. Frank of Mr. T. Experience. But I wouldn’t necessarily call Deactivations a pop punk band. There is plenty of power pop, and college rock as well.
Deactivations guitarist and singer Mario Viele – the three members share vocal duties, provides some background on the record. “We just tried to make a good record to share with our friends and community. Our previous band (The Passengers) came about after we’d all been younger and had touring punk bands (Sex Robots , The Modern Machines, Liarbirds, etc.) and our two albums with that band were about chilling out a little more, exploring songwriting and midtempos and stuff. After one of us moved away we decided to press on as a trio with a new name and throw together a record that leaned back a little more to our roots of up tempo punked out RnR to give the band a shot in the arm in our new formation. The record is pretty lean, not a lot of overdubs, we tried to just write ten good songs and put them down hot without too much thinking about it. I think the result’s pretty cool. Stuck in a Loop fulfills my lifelong dream of writing a song using just one chord.”
Running score for Deactivations? Pretentions: zero. Quality songs: ten. The record is officially out on the next Bandcamp Friday (Dec. 3rd), but you can already listen to it in full. Stream now, buy on Bandcamp Friday.
Add to wantlist: Bandcamp