Snakeflower 2: Daydream City

In the Bay Area’s labyrinth of low-lit warehouses, cramped house parties and grimed-out dive bars, it’s a cacophonous tug-of-war for the three-chord crown.

This latter day resurrection of what was born in the late ‘60s--the Sears Roebuck guitars, the off key, offbeat attack, the new breed of onstage fearlessness--has fueled our scene for several years now with a mad flurry of unpretentious, all-for-one and one-for-all shows. Poised to snag a bit of the shiny stuff is Oakland’s own Snakeflower 2, a trio whose blistering, bare-bones repertoire seems as if it were dug from a dusty, attic-dwelling bin of decades-old, abandoned vinyl.

Vocalist and bassist Matthew Melton has lo-fi roots stretching all the way back to his hometown in Memphis, Tennessee, where he grew up playing in garage bands and jamming with prolific punk hero Jay Reatard.

Discontented with the lack of fire in the Memphis scene, he put together a ramshackle, road-ready outfit that would become Snakeflower’s first incarnation. They played what Melton, a lover of subgenres, describes as “art-punk non-songs”. Taking the new band and his musical dreams to California provided a gift-and-curse scenario.

“We decided almost overnight to go on tour,” he said. “It was really ill-conceived. We did a full US tour literally calling venues from the road, jumping on these bills and having pretty crazy shows along the way.”


The band reached their wits’ end by the time they made it to San Francisco, and Melton’s bandmates stranded him in the city and left for Los Angeles. He decided to stick it out and reform the band with new members, drummer Billy Badlands and guitarist Tim Tinderholt.

“Where I grew up in Memphis, you can be guaranteed that no one’s gonna pay any attention to you,” said Melton. “Here there’s so much more energy in the scene and plus, being surrounded by so many great bands is such a motivation to keep making great music.”

It’s easy to hear what the California scene has done for Snakeflower 2’s live shows and recordings; their aggression is undeniable. The band’s late-2008 release Renegade Daydream (Tic Tac Totally) is steeped in the dire urgency of a fragile heart under pressure. It grooves hard on dagger-sharp hooks and viciously airtight chord progressions, all hammered out at shit-hot speed to keep up with Melton’s nervy vocal swagger. “Memory Castle”, the album’s single, is awash in psychedelic, tunnel-vision reverb and ruminates on lost dreams and the courage it takes to get them back.

For the next album, due in Spring 2010 with their first European tour, Melton’s got his eyes on a new direction for Snakeflower 2. When his other brainchild, smooth-punk outfit Bare Wires, began to get hot, Snakeflower 2’s gigs took a hiatus. But during that time, Melton devoted himself to writing fresh and epic material unlike anything most garage bands have touched before.

“I’ve actually been working in secret to write and record a 14-minute long cantata called ‘Forbidden Melody’,” he explained. “I was really trying to find time to set aside to isolate myself for really pure ideas to work with. It’s something totally different, almost like a rock opera. I was taking choruses and refrains from songs and stringing them together. I’m trying to go a little bit further, really trying to come up with something new.”

Leave it to Melton and his mates to shoot the moon and score an album out of it, while the rest of the garage scene sticks to the ordinary.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the OG version of what appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Today I experienced one of the many varieties of potholes and shitstorms young writers must endure to get more than just their feet in the door: weird, unauthorized edits and a massively bruised ego. The ones my editors chose for the published piece came out of nowhere and fall flat on the page, and I almost involuntarily punched my boyfriend in the face because I was so overcome by anger.

My byline stands proudly here.