Last month, local indie rockers Nerves Junior released the EP “Craters,” their first offering in two years. Its three tracks are excellent, as intricate and tightly layered as anything the band has ever done, each one a musically noteworthy standout in its own right. But, as strong a release as “Craters” is, the most interesting thing about it might in fact be that it was even made in the first place. Indeed, coming off of 2012 – the most turbulent and challenging year Nerves Junior had ever seen, a year that saw the once seemingly unstoppable fivesome buckle, break, and hit bottom – the fact that Nerves Junior is still putting out any music at all, let alone music of “Craters” caliber, well, it just might be the maddest untold story in the Louisville music scene.
Things weren’t always quite so dramatic for Nerves Junior. The band formed in 2009 around a mutual love of the kind of experimental garage rock only heard in the fringe of the indie scene, if it was heard at all.
“The type of music we make has always been the type of music that we’re trying to find,” said current frontman Zackary O’Renick. “You know, I listen for it. And if I can’t find it, I want to make it.”
It was a simple approach that served them well from the start. Their style was ear-catching and immediately distinctive, each new song landing like an expedition to some dark, undefined corner of the musical landscape. With their striking, surreal use of synths and effects-laden guitar, anchored by the brooding vocals of lead singer Cory Wayne, Nerves Junior was all over the map in the best of ways, restrained and atmospheric one minute, crackling and kinetic the next, and yet always somehow firmly fixed within their comfort zone.
By the time their debut LP, “As Bright As Your Night Light,” dropped in 2011 on sonaBLAST! Records, the Nerves Junior buzz had already built to a steady boil. There were whispers that Louisville’s mad scientist quintet was on the brink of breaking out, and breaking out big. Local fans and out-of-state bloggers alike were quick to draw giddy comparisons to musical titans such as Radiohead. Whether or not these sorts of claims were audacious, the album’s overwhelmingly positive reception only seemed to confirm the things everyone had been hearing: This was a damned good band, making damned good music. Pretty Much Amazing, one of the biggest music blogs outside of Pitchfork, even named “As Bright As Your Night Light” their No. 1 album of 2011, calling it a “fully realized masterpiece” and ranking it ahead of albums by acts as big as Fleet Foxes, The Antlers, and, yes, even Radiohead.
“We blew that show to pieces, and not in the right way,” admitted multi-instrumentalist Chris Snow. “Everyone agreed we needed to get our shit together.”
But such rapid success comes with heightened expectations, as well as a sense of scrutiny that Nerves Junior simply wasn’t prepared for. A key end-of-year festival performance at New York’s CMJ Music Marathon, the first time on the road as a band for Nerves Junior, ended in disaster when a woozy and borderline incoherent Wayne fumbled his way from lyric to lyric, eventually abandoning the pretense of a performance, sometimes choosing to wander away from the stage midsong. The band struggled to play their way around his antics and, as a result, the music was shoddy and disjointed, nothing like the crisp, meticulous tracks the crowd had been expecting to hear. Some called it a meltdown; others suggested that Nerves Junior had simply been partying too hard. One writer for NBC New York – Dale W. Eisinger – was less polite, slamming Nerves Junior as the most overblogged act of CMJ and calling them a product of the hype machine, “built out of blogspeak rather than the slog of the tour.” The response from CMJ landed on the band like a bucket of cold water, dousing the energy and excitement of the months preceding it.
“We blew that show to pieces, and not in the right way,” admitted multi-instrumentalist Chris Snow. “Everyone agreed we needed to get our shit together.”
And so, led by O’Renick and Snow, the band cleaned up their act and returned to Louisville, ready to refocus their efforts and put CMJ behind them. Even Wayne seemed to have overcome the worst of his personal issues, with a renewed commitment to never let what happened at CMJ happen again. The band shot a new music video. They began booking new gigs, determined to prove that they could deliver focused, high-level shows on a consistent basis. At the turn of the year, Nerves Junior looked to be turning the corner.
As it turned out, the CMJ nightmare was just the start of the band’s problems. In January of 2012, after weeks of suspicion that equipment was being stolen from the practice space the band shared with several other Louisville acts, accusations were brought forth that the thief was none other than Nerves Junior’s lead guitarist, Stuart Phelps.
“Someone from another band came knocking during practice one day and said, ‘You need to talk to your homeboy, because we found our shit with his ID on it at Guitar Center,’” recalled O’Renick. “[Phelps] left right there in the middle of practice. We never played with him again.”
It was a devastating blow for the band. An undeniably talented guitarist, Phelps had been a vital part of the sound of “As Bright As Your Night Light” and, without him, touring on the strength of those songs would be next to impossible. What was worse, Nerves Junior, already notorious for their hard-partying, undisciplined ways, would now have to contend with a reputation for theft as well.
Nerves Junior works on their new three-song EP, “Craters,” in the recording studio.
Photo by Amber Garvey/Kertis Creative.
“We were just drug through shit after that,” said Snow. “Nobody trusted us. The people who knew us well knew that it wasn’t Nerves Junior – that it was just one person getting into all of this trouble – but it didn’t matter. That was the beginning of the end, right there.”
The band struggled to move past the scandal, playing a handful of shows in the following months that Snow called “half-assed at best.” The energy and enthusiasm of the previous year had disappeared, replaced with anger, frustration, and a gnawing feeling that the Nerves Junior brand had been damaged beyond repair. The negative atmosphere was too much for bassist Hunter Rose, who decided to leave the group early that spring, further crippling the lineup. Nerves Junior, once one of the most exciting and promising acts in town, was beginning to look and sound like a band without a future, a fact that weighed heavily on the band’s troubled lead singer. And with only three members remaining, things were about to get worse.
“It was about a month before Forecastle when we found out that [Wayne] wasn’t doing so well and wouldn’t be continuing with us,” said O’Renick, recalling the former lead singer’s abrupt downturn and subsequent departure from the band due to ongoing personal struggles. “I mean, [Wayne] is a total mad scientist genius, but, as unfortunate as it is, the issues in his life keep him from being a reliable person.”
“[Wayne] said it himself,” said Snow. “He said, ‘Guys, I can’t play. I’m not functional enough to be in a band right now.’”
And then there were two. With Wayne’s sudden exit, Nerves Junior had lost the majority of its members in a span of about four months, leaving just O’Renick and Snow. The fat lady seemed to have sung. Resigned to continue making music, the two started talking with mutual friend and local musician Brennon Staples about forming a new band and finding a fresh start for themselves.
“[O’Renick] called me and said, ‘Nerves Junior is broken down, man. It doesn’t have legs anymore,’” said Staples, explaining how he came to start collaborating with O’Renick and Snow. “That first night, the three of us just spent a lot of time talking about stuff like Burial and Portishead and geeking out a little bit on all this dark electronic stuff that doesn’t have a huge presence here in town. We wanted to expand upon that and be one of those bands that we love so much.”
Nerves Junior had flatlined and O’Renick and Snow were all but ready to call the time of death and move on. But the more they looked at their options and talked things over with close friends like Staples, the more they realized that Nerves Junior might still be worth resuscitating.
“It was as much [Snow and O’Renick’s] band as anybody’s,” said Staples. “At the end of the day, when everybody else had given up on it or couldn’t do it, they were still there.”
“We kind of came to the grips of, ‘Well, we didn’t do anything wrong,’” said Snow. “We held up our end of the deal. And, in the end, we really just wanted to play Forecastle, so we had to keep going for at least that long.”
Rumors of Nerves Junior’s demise, it would seem, had been ever so slightly exaggerated. Against all expectations, the new threesome, now including Staples, announced that they would, in fact, be playing their Forecastle set as scheduled. Of course, with less than half of the original lineup, playing any of the elaborate, carefully orchestrated songs from “As Bright As Your Night Light” simply wasn’t going to work.
“Basically, we had two weeks to come up with an entire set’s worth of new music,” said O’Renick.
The three of them set out to do just that, with Staples taking over on the bass, Snow doing double duty on synths and guitar, and O’Renick taking over lead vocals and moving up from his drum kit in the back to a laptop and drum machine in the front (because, as Snow put it, “Nobody wanted him to Phil Collins it.”) Before long, embryonic versions of new songs were beginning to emerge from the practice sessions. The trio had rediscovered Nerves Junior’s sound. The only question was whether or not they’d be able to develop it for a festival audience in just two weeks. The preparation came down to the wire. By the time they took the stage at Forecastle, after just two weeks together, nobody – not even the band themselves – quite knew what to expect.
“We were seriously flying by the seat of our pants,” said Snow. “We were playing stuff that no one had ever heard before, stuff that we were proud of, but that maybe wasn’t quite ready.”
“But we faked it really, really well,” said Snow with a laugh.
Fans at that Forecastle show might not have recognized the songs, or known what to make of the new setup, but most everyone was pleased with what they heard. It was that same familiar trip into unfamiliar territory. Perhaps most importantly, Nerves Junior sounded like Nerves Junior. They sounded like that same damned good band, making that same damned good music, even if the new songs did seem a little bit rough around the edges.
Momentum seemed to have finally swung back in Nerves Junior’s favor. Re-energized by the success of the Forecastle set, the group doubled down on their future, adding longtime friend, turntable specialist, and expert percussionist Brey McCoy to the band to pick up where O’Renick had left off on drums. A sensational talent, McCoy immediately added an extra jolt of dynamic musicality to the mix, an emotive, jittery heartbeat pulsing within the reformed band’s skeletal structure.
Just speaking about McCoy’s contribution to the band, O’Renick lights up.
Above: Nerves Junior played Forecastle as a three-piece for the first time.
Photo by Joey Flispart.
“[McCoy] is probably the most incredibly talented musician I’ve ever met,” said O’Renick. “He lives and breathes music. He’s fucking all over it.”
O’Renick will even happily admit that, at the start of Nerves Junior, when he was still a relatively new drummer, it was his old friend McCoy who taught him “how to play drums cool.”
With McCoy in place, the band closed out the year with their noses to the grindstone, continuing to write new material and polish what had already been written. Confidence was slowly starting to creep back.
“Things kind of solidified for us,” said Snow. “We were finally like, ‘Cool, we can do this. We can book shows again and not have to wring our necks to make something work.’”
By the end of the year, Nerves Junior had done exactly that, playing several successful gigs in Louisville and beyond, including a stellar, sold-out show at the Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The band also put the finishing touches on “Craters,” three tracks born out of conflict and uncertainty that also just happen to make up one of the local scene’s most honest and intelligent releases in recent memory.
“If you listen to the EP, it’s a bit nervous and skittish,” said Snow. “There aren’t a lot of comfortable moments. It’s an anxious three songs, stuck together. I think that’s kind of where we were at when they were written. There was just this massive anxiety about whether it would work or not. We needed a piece of art that said, ‘We’re still here.’”
It’s a musical identity crisis that feeds directly into what has always made Nerves Junior noteworthy and unique. Just as they did with “As Bright as Your Night Light,” Nerves Junior is exploring, except now the exploration has turned inward. In the EP’s title track, O’Renick made his debut as lead vocalist, singing, “Can I breathe the way I used to, instead of always coughing up dust?” It’s the raw, sincere plea of a band that’s seen its momentum stall, a band mired in disappointment and self-doubt.
After losing their voice and the majority of their musical muscle, could Nerves Junior possibly recover and return to the level they had been at before? With “Craters,” the answer is a resounding yes.
After the introspective, mood-setting title track reintroduces Nerves Junior as a band hungry for redemption, the music hushes its way into the next track. “Intern” is a slow-burning powder keg of a song that easily ranks as one of the most perfectly executed pieces of music in the entire Nerves Junior repertoire. This is a song with tricks up its sleeve. It creeps along for the first two minutes, the music anchored by echoing guitars, subtle, restrained percussion, and O’Renick’s striking vocals. Then, just before three minutes in, it bursts to another level for its final act, spilling all of its secrets for the listener. It’s a bold, daring track that leaves little doubt as to just how much this foursome is capable of. If “Craters” is Nerves Junior’s second shot at greatness, “Intern” is their bull’s-eye.
Now, with 2012 behind them, “Craters” under their belt, and a debut at the prestigious South by Southwest music festival this month to get excited about, Nerves Junior is finally in a place where they can enjoy looking ahead again.
“This year, we want to have some fun,” said Snow. “We want to play tunes with our friends and be in a band for the right reason. We’re writing constantly. There’s going to be a ton of new material. We’re excited to get out there.”
Heads up, Radiohead.
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